Outside our local coffee shop, Art Cafe. Owen and his dad James stopped in to have a morning snack before heading out on their day.

One highlight of this year’s Interbike—albeit a hard-to-find one, is the Circulus race track that’s been imported to Vegas from Portland by Portland Design Works, and which today was the stage for an epic battle between Jeremy Powers and Tim Johnson. This is the official weigh-in for the battle of the titans. Seems these guys are a bit popular with the media, no?

Just after the match I had lunch with bro Chris DiStefano of Chris King, who was nice enough to let me hop into the center of the track to cover their PDW and Paved Magazine Pro-Am Classic.

It’s not that often that you get to see guys in squirrel, hot dog and in Pokey and Gumby costumes battle it out, but that’s what you get when you bring a (round) slice of Portland to Vegas.

More shots from the races on my Flickr page.

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As a reminder, so we don’t flood the BikeHugger blog with random observations from Interbike, we’ll be uploading shots first to Google+ and then flittering for the site. If your’e on Google+, you can follow Byron here and me here.

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If you’ve always thought “I wish there were a stamp I could put on my envelopes that would tell the world how much I love cycling,” 2012 is going to be your year. The USPS (if it should be able to stay in business) will be releasing a series of “Forever” stamps (they’ll be good any time the postage increases) with bicycling-based designs.

Generally when we head out to a show like Interbike, we pack massive amounts of camera gear. I usually have a D3s and D700, two SB900’s, five or six lenses and some other accessories. That’s been my kit for the last few years.

Today though I got my hands on our own Fuji X100, a camera that’s generated quite a buzz among pro and enthusiastic photographers.

Why, I thought to myself, am I going to bring fifty pounds of camera gear simply to shoot a ‘cross race and our Mobile Social/ Typically I end up with gear hanging off of me all day long so that I can do two hours of shooting.

Like a fixed gear in a road race, we’re going a bit low-tech. The X100 is going to be my main axe during the show, and I’m hoping it will push my creativity.

Fixed lens, wide open aperture, this is what I need to get over the “we’re headed back to Vegas” blahs.

Photos to come on Flickr and Google+ of our experiment. And for now, enjoy the gratuitous shot of my son Henry, one of the first image I took with the X100.

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While Byron was discovering he has a foot fetish in Paris we were at a wedding, where they serve nachos in a sombrero. We dubbed it the Hatcho.

Uploaded by davidjschloss | more from the Bike Hugger Photostream.

The folks at Chrome were nice enough to send us their new Anton laptop bag to try out, and we’ve been putting it to the test for the last few weeks. Yesterday we loaded it up for a photo shoot and filled it to the brim. (If you’re a photo junkie, we crammed it with an Elinchrom Ranger Quadra system, extra battery, Nikon SB-900’s, a few lenses and more.)

Here’s our video review of the bag, find out what we loved and what we’d like to tweak about this bag.

He is, without doubt, the greatest cyclist of our generation, and will likely be the greatest cyclist of all time. Even from that sentence alone it’s clear that I’m talking about Merckx, the legendary cyclist who, in his best year, won nearly every second race he entered.

To kick off their 50th anniversary, Bicycling magazine invited Merckx to a private party in New York City’s chic Classic Car Club. Perhaps few people on earth could command more attention than a selection of fine Ferrari and Porsches, but Merckx can and did, captivating the audience for the discussion of his legendary career. While engaging and honest about his career, it has to be painful for Merckx to relive some of the events—it’s been more than forty years since he crashed in a derby race in Blois and his face twisted in obvious anguish as he described the moment he fell.

It’s clear the degree to which fans love him. While many took the opportunity to get his autograph (and Merckx obligingly and smilingly provides them) many stood back and simply watched as he moved through the crowd, chatting with fans and VIPs. As an early mentor in Lance Armstrong’s career it’s easy to see how Merckx’s place in the pantheon of cycling helped shape the American’s career—the same forcefield-of-reverence encircles Lance as well, while the Texan carries a more jocular attitude.

I’ve often wondered if it’s hard for Merckx to accept the accolades at these events, it seems like he was most comfortable on his bike, and that surrounded by adoring fans he’s slightly out of sorts. When I saw him at last year’s Interbike he was moving through the aisles and people were sliding out of his way as he passed them, whipping their heads around as they realized who had just brushed by. Merckx’s face was turned down slightly in what I read as humility or a slight embarrassment for causing a scene. That same sense of humility came up during his conversation at the Bicycling event, where he made it clear that his victories came from hard work, especially in the off season.

In one of the classic moments, Merckx relived the 1971 Tour where he and Luis Ocaña engaged in a fierce battle for the yellow jersey. At one point Ocaña had nearly nine minutes on Merckx, and in a long day’s stage Merckx rode so hard that he finished in Marseille a half-an-hour earlier than was expected, throwing the whole Tour into disarray. Spectators hadn’t even lined up yet at the finishing line. After pulling back a minute on Ocaña the two battled on the Pyrenees, and Ocaña crashed (and then was run over), which resulted in Merckx getting the yellow jersey and eventually the win over the (then) second placed rider. After a pause, Merckx (who likely would have lost to Ocaña without the crash) said it was a shame that his rival had gone down, as he would have “battled” the whole way to Paris.

Clearly, the victory in the Tour by virtue of a crash had devalued the win, Merckx would obviously have preferred to fight to the finish and lost than to have won due to a crash.

And that’s why he’s a legend.

This is another one of those “thank god for Facebook” finds—Betabrand grabbed me with an ad for Bike to Work khakis, with reflective cuffs and pocket-thingeys. But while surfing the site I hit the BetaLabs link and first found the Caperon (it’s part cape, part apron) but was smacked in the face with the “Vagisoft Blanket.”

There’s even a handy Soft-o-Meter, which indicates that the blanket is softer than a pouch of a “cloud kangaroo” but not as soft as “the womb of a marshmallow mermaid.”

These are my people.

Tonight we’re headed to a Bicycling magazine cocktail party in honor of none other than Eddie Merckx, the greatest cyclist of all time. On hand to celebrate Bicycling’s 50th birthday, The Cannibal will be answering questions about cycling and his career.

So, any questions you’d like us to ask?