Dirt Rag Magazine would like to invite you to our own event: Dirt Fest. Mark your calendars for the weekend of May 21st-23rd, 2010 and head over to the Allegrippis trails at Raystown Lake in Hesston, PA.

Dirt Fest will be a fun mountain biking festival, featuring 32 miles of prime singletrack for a weekend of great riding. Camping will be available. We invite you to come and join the festivities, demo mountain bikes and check out the latest products in the industry expo area.

IMBA will be on hand to teach trail building clinics and advocacy, and other club events will take place.

Dirt Rag will be bringing the flavor of hops and barley as we host a Pennsylvania beer tasting event, complete with brew techniques and history. Other entertainment and spectacles will follow.

The cost for attending is $30 per person including two nights of primitive camping at Susquehannock Campground or $15 for the weekend without camping.

Visit dirtfest.blogspot.com for more information on Dirt Fest (and/or to contact the promoters about getting your company or organization involved in the expo area, or as an event sponsor). If you’re ready to rock and roll, click here for registration.

Dirt Rag’s Dirt Fest is brought to you by Dirt Rag, IMBA, Raystown Mountain Bike Association, Rothrock Outfitters, and the Friends of Raystown Lake.

It’s an eye-opener working the Dirt Rag booth at Interbike and having conversations with fans of the mag, or those that just want to express their ideas. Now that we have Bicycle Times too, the array of subjects to discuss and the diversity of people stopping by is pretty mind-blowing to say the least and somewhat overwhelming. In any case it’s great to be surrounded by people that share the same love for cycling as we all do.

On Thursday, six o’clock ticked away, signaling the close of the show for the day. Bikes were retrieved from the bike check and before the dust in the convention center settled, everyone was looking for a way to relax and keep the live atmosphere going into the night.

Dirt Rag’s night began innocently enough. Some of the staff rode back to the house we rented for the week and the rest of us rolled on. A several-mile ride along the backstreets of the strip brought us to the festivities hosted by Kona Bicycles. (Thanks for the food and Dogfish Head, Kona!) Such a great time there, awesome people and a steel drum band kept the good vibe going. That is until the band took a break and offered to explain music theory of the steel drum. A bunch of bikers gathered around, learned something new and took the opportunity to give it a try.

Yep! That’s Maurice working his way around the notes.

There were so many industry activities going on across Vegas that it was nearly impossible to attend each one, so our group split into two. Those going with Maurice, Robert from Two Fish and later Eric, cycled to the Gold Sprints held at the Italian Club. The rest of us, Matt, Andy, our web guy Jeff Lockwood, and myself rode over to the Crits in the parking lot of Mandalay Bay to check out the scene. We were quickly approached by a woman riding a Buddy Bike and encouraged to go for a spin. Setting his beer down, Matt jumped on first and probably scared the life out of his passenger as he veered last-second from the path of bystanders. Unlike other tandems, the rider in the back controls the steering while the front passenger holds onto an immobile handlebar. There’s more to this bike’s story and the life behind it so check out Buddy Bike’s website.

Next on the list was the Hard Rock Café, for no other reason than we didn’t want to ride home yet. Our fulfillment guy Andrew met us there and other friends were quickly found hanging out there too. Decent music, OK-priced drinks and time to kill turned into a lot of laughing, unwinding, and just straight out sillyness as we pushed the limits and tired Andy’s patience. Followed up with a good ride home and multiple bags of snacks destroyed and I could breathe a little easier knowing we enjoyably represented the magazines and closed out the day under a wave of fun.

Friday was the last day of the show. We saw a lot – here are just a few things to tide you over until we can take a breath and post more.

The whole week was a whirlwind. Besides all the ogling of stuff, there was also a lot of hanging out and having a good time – read Lockwood’s blog about his Thursday activities. Matt, Andrew, Shannon and Andy also took a trip to the Hard Rock and rubbed shoulders with what sounded like half the industry, from Floyd Landis to Hans Rey. There will be more photos and words posted about the after-dark goings-on, once we sort out the stuff that’s too incriminating…

Some of our hanging out and having a good time occurred on video, in fact, right in the Interbike TV studio. You’ll get to see this and the rest of our Interbike TV mini-shows sometime in the coming week, after Lockwood gets himself back to home base in Belgium and readjusts to an opposite time zone.

Here Nick Sande, Selene Yeager and Stevil Knevil expound on the pairing of bikes and beer. The nice TV people didn’t even kick us out for spilling some on their couch.

Our Interbike experience was made much better by the fact that we got to commute to the show on bikes graciously loaned to us, often traveling by quiet back streets, avoiding clueless tourists for the most part. We’ll be posting mini-reviews of these bikes in the next couple of weeks.

So keep checking this space as we decompress and debrief (and rehydrate – they don’t call it the desert for nuthin’.)

Thursday evening is usually the night to go big at Interbike. At least for me. The show closes on Friday, there’s a lot of parties and it’s the last chance to hang out with many of my bicycle friends until next year. So…it was a late night.

The fun got started around 2pm with DPow and Portland Design Works. Dan had me come over to their suite in the Venetian to have some beer and check out their stuff.

After I was done questioning Dan about all the products, he and I walked to the package store so I could get a case of beer for the day’s taping of Dirt Rag TV. And then things started to get really interesting. Though I’ve done much research on the subject, I wanted to get some professional insight into the relationship between beer and cycling. Stevil, Selene and Nick helped all of us understand a bit more. Theories were proposed, words were spoken and much beer was spilled. Thankfully InterbikeTV didn’t kick us out. I will get the videos from all the shows posted next week.

The beer pretty much flowed the rest of the day…into the evening. And then the morning.

Ran into BRose from the Shockspital over at the Surly booth. It’s always good to see Brian, and here he is showing off his newest product.

A bunch of us rolled over to the Kona Pool Party. They always put out a really nice spread of food, and a wide range of beer…everything from Pabst to Dogfish Head. Actually, it was pretty cool to see some Dogfish Head (from Delaware) out here in Nevada. About six of us sat and watched the steel drum player for about an hour. He sensed we all wanted to give it a spin and he handed over the sticks.

Our group split up there. Mo, Frank and Robert headed to the Pinball Hall of Fame and then the Gold Sprints. The rest of us headed over to the Crit Races over at Mandalay Bay. From there we moved over to the Hard Rock, where a varied and colorful collection of bicycle people had gathered. Some of us danced and some of us stood and watched.

But it was all fun.

There’s a lot of bicycles and bicycle bits here at Interbike in Las Vegas. The Dirt Rag & Bicycle Times editorial and photo crews will be providing plenty of coverage for you on that front. In fact, you can already find some of it here, here and here. In addition to that in-depth coverage, I’ve also been sending a bunch of quick updates and photos through Twitter and Facebook about everything around, and from, the show throughout the day…and evening. Not just product-related stuff, but quick shouts and photos of the people, places and things (both inside the show, and out there in the evenings and the mornings). I think it’d be in your best interest to become a fan of Dirt Rag and Bicycle Times on Facebook, and for you to follow us on Twitter, too. Because…you know…it’s the hip thing to do, of course.

Speaking of ‘hip,’ the DR Crue immediately started hazing me and asking if I needed some tight jeans when they saw my Charge Plug fixie/singlespeed, which was given to me to ride for the week. This bike is sure to delight the hipsters in the world. It’s got bull-horn bars and the rear wheel has the fixed cog on one side, and the freewheel on the other. Plus the aesthetic is absolutely fantastic. The only trick is that the five mile commute from the Dirt Rag house to the Sands Convention Center is not something where I should be wearing sandals on a fixed gear bike. I’m flipping it to the freewheels side this afternoon.

Part of the deal for me being able to ride this bike all week is that I write a mini-review of the bike for the magazine and/or web site. So stay tuned for that.

There are a lot of bicycles to ride out at the Outdoor Demo. All sorts of bikes…not just mountain bikes. For example, I decided to take out a Felt F3 carbon road bike to sneak a ride out to the Hoover Dam. Unfortunately, the most insane headwind I’ve ever experienced on a bicycle made me turn around after 4 miles.

In addition to lots of bicycle out at the Outdoor Demo, there’s also lots of beers to be had…after riding, of course. The trails in Bootleg Canyon, while very awesome, are insanely rugged and sharp. I would recommend against beer before hitting those trails. Nick and Sov from Surly were kind enough to give Mo, Andrew and I some suds, away from the sun.

There’s lots of good parties all over the place. Some of them are big, and some are more friendly. Of course some of them suck, but most are good. I made it out to the Soulcraft 10th Birthday Party, which also happened to be the same party to launch Steve Smith’s fine read: All Hail the Black Market. Of course, I didn’t get any photos or Tweets from that party since my phone was acting goofy, but I can assure you that it was a very cool affair…with wigs.

It was a late night, so let’s see what today holds…

Time to move the show into the cavernous halls of the Sands Convention Center. Surely I’m not the only one that thinks it’s a damn shame that the name of this giant box is the only remnant of the legendary hangout of the Rat Pack? But I digress.

Today we hit the show floor with a spanking new booth – well, at least most of it was new. In any case, it rocks.

We saw a lot of interesting stuff, and talked to some knowledgeable bike people. Check out our new-improved Gallery for the scoop.

We also did the first couple segments of Interbike TV: one on the theme of bike projects in developing countries that actually make a difference (“real good instead of feel good,” as Craig Calfee said), and one with a couple of mountain bike pioneers and their passion for getting people to ride all the time, not just on trails. We’ll have those videos up fairly soon after the show.

This evening, Maurice and Eric went to the Mountain Bike Hall of Fame induction ceremony, an Interbike tradition. Some others are just now heading out to Cross Vegas to check out the action… rumor has it some Belgians are going to show up to throw down.

Tune in at the same bat time, same bat channel tomorrow for more.