bike show...

well, didn't do any riding this weekend but i did manage to attend the mid-atlantic cycle show at dulles expo center. mainly went to see russell mitchell from exile cycles. we got there early since we had other things to do during the day. it wasn't crowded, but i don't know if it would have gotten packed.

so we get there, wait a couple minutes for the doors to open, get in and head straight for the exile booth. i was planning on wandering around and "stumbling" on the booth, but my wife had another mission - find russell. what the heck, i'm not a hard one to convince... we deciced to start at one end of the building, scanning the aisles until we find him. as we're walking, our son, who loves motorcycles, wants to sit of every bike he sees and doesn't quite understand why he can't... so we're pulling him along heading to the end of the building to start our search...

as luck would have it, exile was in the first row... now the only problem with getting there early is that sometimes the builders aren't there yet - i'm figuring they like to party and stay out late... so we look at the bikes, loiter around and finally ask when russell might get there. they tell us he's on his way in. of course, as we're looking around, our son is desperately trying to climb on the bikes and we're doing what we can to keep him off. finally, one of the ladies working with exile says he can get on a bike. as he's climbing on russell's pure sex bike, a guy working for exile comes over and says he's got a better bike to put him on. he walks him over and helps him get on the trike. he was so thrilled to be on the trike.


well, before we knew it, russell showed up. he was busy getting some music cranked up. i missed the opportunity to see what was on his playlist, but it started with abba's dancing queen. not quite what i would have expected and it made me curious as to what else was on the playlist.

my wife wanted to get a couple exile shirts. i had to hit an atm to get some cash, which took a little longer than expected and was an adventure in itself - which will be the story of another post. anyway, while i was gone, i left her to talk to russell, which might have been a mistake since she thinks he's so hot. no need to worry though, when i (finally) got back, i found she hadn't even talked to him... anyway, we finally purchase some shirts, talk to russell, get some pictures and autographs.

(me doing my best russell impersonation)

here's our son trying to pick some money up. apparently russell thought it would be funny to glue some money to the ground and watch people pick it up. our son couldn't figure out why he couldn't get the money off the floor. russell was chuckling at him. he did manage to pry a penny up, which made him happy he didn't leave empty-handed...


after visiting exile, we checked out the rest of the show. stopped by d.c. cruisers to buy a raffle ticket for a mini bike. it would be really cool to win the mini bike - especially since they're only selling 100 tickets. but i'm not holding my breath... so we walked around the rest of the show. overall it was mediocre. it was smaller than i expected. not as many builders, but more vendors. not crowded, which was nice. after about two hours, we saw all that we were going to see, so we headed out...

here are a couple other pictures from the show...