With the 2009 Indy Dealer Expo finished there was nothing left to do but fire up the Airbus A319 and fly everybody home. I put on a few sweet moves just off the tarmac to avoid bird strike, took ‘er up to 36,000 feet, and reflected back on the last of the cool items from the show that I have to share with you -
Likely not to be made available in the US, there is a company from Japan called MudOff that makes foam to coat the underside of your fenders to prevent mud build up. But then they took it a step further and made a foam front number plate background with foam numbers. Totally cool, but I’m not sure how practical it would be for most racers.
Scott is always coming out with new colorways for their goggle. This bright orange one is my favorite. It’s cool, but also totally obnoxious, so it naturally got me homesick for my co-workers. The ones that weren’t as bright really reminded me of them.
Acerbis’ X-Seat is a totally revolutionary idea in seats. It’s all one piece, so you don’t have to worry about a ripped seat cover. They had ‘em set up like barstools to try out. Bench racing was never better.
Scorpion was showing off this wingdings themed helmet. They have a black one and a white one. They also had live scorpions in their booth (that’s no joke), so whenever they asked if anyone wanted to hold a scorpion, everyone grabbed a helmet real fast.
EVS added some leather to their Vision knee brace in the high wear areas. These guys are optimists, assuming you’re going to wear out the brace from riding, not crashing.
Smooth Industries has a bunch of cool items, but one I really dug was this windshield sun protector. This makes your truck look cool, and stay cool by keeping that sun from heating up the interior during your long moto.
Polisports makes these plastics with ‘built in’ graphics to stay looking cool without shredding from your knees rubbing or getting discolored from overfilling your tank and getting gas on ‘em. Yeah, you know you overfill your gas tank once in a while.
This new AXO boot got a lot of interest because of its price. Smilar to AXO’s top of the line Prime boot, this Dart model costs only $185. It’ll be available very soon, so warn your piggy bank it only has a few more weeks to live. AXO is also always coming out with great socks. This is the Huricane, the Banzai, and the Dublin green. They’re almost too cool to cover ‘em up.
Continental has these cool new intermediate terrain tires ready to keep you hooking up without draining your wallet dry. Based on the name of the company, I believe these tires are designed to work best on continents.
DID’s cool new rims come in two models, one for ultimate weight savings, one focused on maximum strength. I thought I had the hot scoop on these rims, then saw they are “as seen in Dirt Rider magazine.” Scooped by my own magazine! I don’t know if I’m happy or disappointed by that.
Christini was there with this GasGas 300 that they built. Does this mean I’m going to have to learn how to say ‘Christini’ in Spanish? Bilingual or not, this bike could be a very lethal combination. They also had a street bike there with the all wheel drive system, which is catching on and showing up on more and more bikes. Dare I say, the concept is gaining traction…
EK chains has some new colors, including pink. A pink chain? What do you use to lube it, skin care lotion? I’m just jealous because I’m not fast enough to pull off running a pink chain. So they also offer a ton of other colors for guys that are speed-challenged.
Rite Tie offers a bunch of cool tie down themes. If you have 250 bikes to tie down, you can even get your own custom design. Almost makes you want to go buy 249 more bikes. Or tie one bike down WAY too securely.
Ansr, I mean Answer, has some cool new gear. There’s some fast guy that wears this stuff, goes by the name James something. This was actually Stewart’s gear, which explains the JSR logo. The production gear won’t have that.
Want a factory Suzuki with replica graphics? The good news is you can buy it, the bad news is it’s a toy from Oak Hills Distributing. Still, if you make the sound effects it’s pretty cool, and you can play with it on your desk at work.
“Honey, I Shrunk the Semi.” I found out what happened to the MotoXXX racing rig. Yep, it got shrunk down and won’t be much use to racers on the supercross circuit, but it will make kids happy and give them hours of playing ‘fight for the best pit location’ with the other kids.
MX Tech makes some cartridge kits for kids bikes, that’s their new product, but their old product is spot-on re-valves that have been making riders and racers happy for years.
Arai helmets are great, but they don’t have enough new designs, until now. This Zach Osborne replica is a ‘for sure’ new colorway, and they had a few more on display they are considering. Keep an eye on Arai to see what makes the final cut.
Alpina makes kits to turn your tires into tubeless affairs. They have a spoke and nipple kit and a special rim that combines with your stock hubs. Not only do you save the weight of a tube, but you get the option of these awesome two-tone rims. Nice.
But after putting in the miles scouring the show for the best stuff, the coolest product of the show had to be the wrist bands that MSR was raising money with to benefit the family of Jeremy Lusk, the freestyle rider who just this week passed away from injuries he received in a freestyle crash. I hate to end my coverage on a down-note, but this shows the industry takes care of its own. How do I know? The wrist bands sold out right away.
That’s it from Indy. The foot traffic was down a bit, but from everything I heard the people who were there were the serious buyers, and most of the companies reported better than expected shows for themselves. This is a little glimmer of good news after the economy downturn, then that lead-products ban that just went into effect. Let’s hope the economy gets back on its feet, and as for that lead-products ban, take a look at the blog Jesse Ziegler did here on dirtrider.com back on February 10 so learn more and to see what you can do to get things fixed [http://blogs.dirtrider.com/6470022/news/youth-atv-and-dirt-bikes-banned-by-cpsia/index.html].
But the show itself was fun, and watch the site for our voting on our top ten, where you get to tell us what was the best product of the show.