The weather was perfect, the venue is great and getting better, and the attendance was abundant for the first day of the Outdoor Demo at Boulder City’s Bootleg Canyon. The sunny, yet unseasonably cool 75-degree weather meant perfect conditions. Not hot, not cold, sunny, only occasional strong wind – those are nice conditions to ride a bike in.

The Red rear derailleur is shockingly light to pick up, and it shifts great and has precision-ground pivots.

The display booth area is a lot bigger now, with much of it even paved, making road riding a more viable option for bike testing than in the past.

Whereas in past years I have rarely taken a road test ride, given that the mountain bike riding is awesome in Bootleg Canyon and the road riding was not nearly up to that standard, road riding is all I did Monday, with the majority of the time being on SRAM’s Red group.

Red's Double Tap lever guts. The shift lever and the brake lever are both adjustable for reach, making this th

Retailers seemed to love it, and a record number of 3300-plus of them visited Bootleg Canyon today, according to Interbike’s Chip Smith.