For the sake of my sanity, I'm doing today's update in a slightly different format: a huge wall of text followed by a huge wall of photos. It's the only way I can do this quickly. You will perhaps want to acquaint yourself with the scrollbar along the right hand side of your browser window - it's going to get a workout.

After visiting Pat Franz yesterday, we moved to KMX who had nothing new to show this year, though they did give me the shortest and most enthusiastic sound bite on video. One of their reps got into the fact that customers in Europe are looking more and more to do electric assist on KMX's (which I find bizarre even though a friend of mine has done that very thing - I find his modification bizarre, too), but that getting BionX and similar systems in the UK is painfully difficult.

We stopped at Triton a bit to check out their new seat backs which use a 6 pack of foam rolls as a support. While there, we also checked out their new folder and talked a bit about their successful marketing strategy. $1 million in revenue and 5K units sold for the Triton in the past year.

ATOC/Draftmaster was the scene of some activity. We came around the corner only to find Jerome Hediger and Ian Sims involved in conversation. While Rob caught up with them, I went on to take a look at the new split tray design for Draftmaster. They've made the tray narrower while maintaining strength and dropping weight. It is now split in two so that the tray can be adjusted for custom length. This is much preferable to my method of adjusting the length - a sawzall. They were also showing the tadpole trike mount and their wheel mount system.

Arkel had a wide assortment of bags, but the ones we were most excited to see were the Catrike bags! So we bought the display bags. We're supposed to pick them up tomorrow. We got to hear a bit about how many revisions the bags have gone through to make them perfect. The number of revisions has contributed to their delay.

Reverse Gear were on hand with their recumbent specific clothing. Nothing really new in the product line, but they are looking to do co-branding with recumbent manufacturers and dealers. Their first such collaboration was on a Greenspeed jersey which, unfortunately, was held up at UPS and didn't make it to the show.

Not too far from Reverse Gear was KangaTek, who sell a bike bandolier with zippered pockets in a sling configuration. Both Rob and I bought one to try them out on recumbents as we thought them a novel way to carry the small necessities without resorting to trunk bags or panniers.

Not specifically recumbent, but we took a look at the Proton Magnetic Pedal Locks. They are a set of magnetized pedal platforms that then mate with an SPD compatible metal plate. Two questions were immediate: how much pull could they take and how would we keep our feet from slipping down and off the pedals? 80 pounds of direct pull is the answer to the first part. The answer to the second lies in a small tab/shelf to one side of the magnet that normally keeps feet from sliding forward on upright bikes but could be reversed (by reversing the pedals) on a bent to keep feet from sliding down. We bought two pair to play with once we get back home. The pedals are $165 for the full size and $145 for the minis. And they are heavy.

Speaking of pedals, we visited Speedplay where I noticed something I had never seen before. Sure enough, a new pedal: the Speedplay SYZR. Terrible name, but it had adjustable float and looked like one half of a Crank Bros. egg beater decided to leave the relationship.

Sauntering into the J&B Importers booth, we encountered Freddy Markham who spoke about working on a carbon X-Stream and a carbon Volae. Then he threw in something about the Markham Malibu. Mostly, I was off to the side photographing Sun's new handtrike. We had no idea that one was coming!

Being a bit of a helmet fetishist, I was pulling Rob into nearly every helmet display at Interbike looking for bent friendly lids. Didn't really find any of those, but we did find the Ming helmet by Knucklehead. The helmet is fully covered with a reflective finish and comes with snap-on skins to change the look. Under camera flash, it lights up like TRON during a power surge, and should retail for $25. Yes, it's CPSC certified.

HP Velotechnik had only small changes to their products, but they were nice refinements. Their press release goes into detail on each one, but the seat bag that contains a rain cover and can also be used as a fanny pack was pretty great. The changes to the BodyLink seat were also welcome - the front lip has less of a curve to it while providing more of a seat pocket to reduce forward slides. The bolt holes in it are recessed now, and the entire seat uses less material and is slightly lighter. Getting the new BodyLink seat does require getting the new seat pad to go with it.

Day 6 was showing off a rowbike conversion for their seat-backed bikes, touting it as great for folks with disabilities even though it made it harder to step through the frame. It's still in the early stages of design and Day 6 are looking to develop a less expensive implementation.

BionX was showing off a half-height battery for their low end unit. And Rob got a lesson on how to tell which controllers go with which batteries (they keep changing them) for those units that we've cannibalized for custom builds.

By the time we got to RANS, I was burnt out, so I'm sorry to say I was barely paying attention at that point. They deserve a return visit tomorrow when I'm more awake.

And before calling it a day, I did two things. First, I got a photo of Hoo Ha Ride Glide for Rob Mackenzie over at the Recumbent Blog. Rob - they read your post and want you to know that ladies in spin class really like that stuff. :) Second, I headed back to ICE to get photos of the front suspension and get a lesson on how it all works. The photos I have are of prototype equipment, so please keep that in mind. What they've described as the final configuration makes more sense than what you'll see in the pics.

Did I mention we witnessed a bicycle fashion show? Yeah, that was terrible.

Okay, now here come the photos. These are not in the same order of the text and include images of some things I did not discuss. Go to it!