neal's blog

Some people never learn.

Remember last winter when The Enthusiast Group (publishers of YourRunning.com) sent Yann and me to Salt Lake City to check out the Outdoor Retailer Winter Show?

Well, not only are they sending us again, but the folks who run the show are actually letting us back in. Outdoor Retailer Summer Show, here we come!

Hey kids!

Finally - we've got all the product previews from the Outdoor Retailer Show finished. Click here to see short video features highlighting the coolest gear Yann and I found. You can see why it was almost torture being there: all that cool stuff, and we couldn't have any of it.

Most of this stuff is coming out soon, if it's not already!

Enjoy...

I'm not sure if this makes any sense at all, but last weekend at the 2007 Outdoor Retailer was the longest blur of a weekend I've experienced in awhile. It feels like just hours ago I was packing for the trip, but yet reflecting on the weekend's humongous amount of tomfoolery finds me thinking it was three times as long as it actually was.

I've never seen so much outdoor gear and so many outdoor-loving people in one centralized place. It was bordering on ironic how many outdoor-related people and events were taking place in what was essentially a sealed off bunker flooded with fluorescent lights.

Their products may be pricey, they might be the target of some resentment among their peers, and one can get the sense that they're a little too into themselves...but you've got to admit - they've got balls.

At the super-secret media-only Patagonia press conference at the 2007 Outdoor Retailer, president and CEO Casey Sheahan announced that the Ventura, California-based company would launch a bold advancement to their clothes recycling program. They've been offering to recycle consumers' old and no longer used Patagonia gear for years, and now they're taking a step further and really stepping on others' toes. They will now be accepting ANY old Polartec garment, not just their own, for their recycling program. If you've got a North Face, Cloudveil, Arc'teryx, or any other company's gear that has Polartec, they want it, and they're going to turn it back into Patagonia gear.

Green is king here at the 2007 Outdoor Retailer.

THE theme of this year's show is the number of outdoor manufacturers, from the ma and pop canteen makers to the corporations outfitting elite athletes, is sustainability. From carbon-neutral travel to 100% sustainable production, green is the key word. There are seminars, there are demonstrations, there is green beer (mmmm)...everyone is on the green train. It's not just Patagonia, Timberland and the like focusing on eco-friendly commerce anymore- a slew of companies are initiating a fundamental shift in industry mandates.

To quote the opening line of Van Halen's Hot for Teacher: "Uh, WOW, man."

Yann and I finally landed in a foggy Salt Lake City (the captain couldn't see the runway so he put it on "auto-pilot" - good times) and found our way to the motherland: the Outdoor Retailer Show. I'm currently in the Press Room trying to keep my HEAD FROM EXPLODING!

THIS PLACE IS NUTS!

Even if you're just remotely interested in anything that has to do with outdoor sports, you can't walk ten feet without being open-mouth mesmerized by a blitzkrieg of cool new toys that you just have to have. Unreal. Even if you didn't stop at any booths, you couldn't walk through the place in a single day. It's like an endless underground lair of adult toy temptation.

We're one day from the Big Man's Big Race in the Big Apple. The family has congregated in NYC for support and to collect dinner table fodder. Here's a couple of great emails Mike sent everyone before he headed to NYC earlier in the week:

Wednesday, November 1:

Hey all-- the big day is this Sunday.

*gulp*

My "race number" is 39658-- so apparently I've moved up from the
forty-thousands into the thirty thanks to attrition (which is how I
plan on winning this thing, by the way)... Supposedly you can track my
progress on the web, but I'm not sure how yet... as soon as I know
more I'll email you all again.

My brother is fat. Okay, okay, he's not "fat" or "obese," but he's also not svelt. He's not unathletic - far from it; he used to play professional volleyball in Europe - but let's just say his "playing-weight" days ended around the same time people were just getting over the Y2K scare. Since then, he's hovered around the 230-250 mark. In other words, he's the fattest guy that'll ever kick your butt all over a volleyball court.

My brother hasn't run in a competitive race since "Slick Willy" Clinton's second year in office. Even then, his longest event was the 800m.

My brother's idea of a "carbo loading session" ends with a hangover.