Bike Gallery owner Jay Graves recently attended the annual bike show Interbike in Las Vegas. The following is his report of the event, with a focus on Bike Advocacy.

I caught this priceless picture on the way back from my first day at Interbike. Watching two bike cops ticketing a Lamborghini on Las Vegas Boulevard during the nations largest bike show was pretty surreal, it made being in the less than enjoyable city, a little more enjoyable. The only question in my mind is: do these cops need to be tested for steroids?

Day two of Interbike opened with a breakfast hosted by the International Mountain Biking Association honoring the top Bicycle Friendly Businesses for ’09. I’d guess there were over two hundred people crowded into this meeting room with standing room only to hear the announcements that two businesses made Platinum status. The two are Bicycle Sport Shop in Austin Texas, and Quality Bicycle Parts, a supplier/distributor/manufacturer in Minneapolis.

As last year’s winner of a Platinum Bicycle Friendly Business award, we here at Bike Gallery can appreciate the effort and commitment to cycling these two businesses have made. It’s not an easy designation at all. Check out the League of American Bicyclists for more info and to see all the other businesses that have won similar awards.

IMBA chose to host this Bicycle Friendly Business awards so they could highlight their new “Ride Center” programand educate many prominent retailers/suppliers on the great work IMBA is doing. IMBA has some other great programs in the works, like expanding their international presence and an over abundance of trail building projects (they just need more volunteers and money to get them done). The highlight of the slide show though was a new IMBA Ride Center in Oakridge, Oregon that just received word they were awarded $400,000 to build their area into a regional tourism draw. IMBA even showed a clip of an upcoming movie that’s being shot by a company called Howl at the Moon Productions. Very exciting trailer that tells a great story of how wonderful Oakridge is to visit/ride/explore and the community support they have received for transforming their city into a world class destination for mountain bikers.

Later in the day I attended a presentation hosted by component manufacturer SRAM about a program called World Bicycle Relief, now in its 5th year, that makes bikes available to needy countries. They have provided 55,000 bikes over the past 5 years, and co-owner of SRAM, F.K. Day, joked about betting on the number 5 while in Vegas because of his success with this program. He told some great stories and showed us pictures about how bicycles can change people’s lives so dramatically (sound familiar?).

A very inspiring project that I want to promote so others can see how utterly transformative bicycles can be for people around the globe, not just here in Portland or the US.

It is exciting to see the moves being made by our industry to promote both business locally to adopt better bicycling infrastructure, and internationally to empower individuals, their families, and their communities, to provide access to independence and livelihood through the power of bicycles.