Quick write-up for anyone here who may have felt a moment's twinge of regret at not being able to
attend this event: you didn't miss anything.
I went on Saturday morning. Organisation was wanting from the start - for example, they were not
even capable of clearly signing separate entry queues for ticket-holders and people buying tickets,
so I found myself waiting 40 minutes at the wrong entry. Crowds were huge even though I got there
fairly early.
Entry cost 10 Euros per passage of door, meaning you couldn't go out for lunch and come back in.
Once inside, you had no-where to sit except for some clement exhibition stands which provided
seating and left you unmolested (thank you, RATP!). This was to force people to the one or two
overcrowded, overpriced and smoke-stifling sandwich bars where there was seating. Otherwise,
circulate until you drop, or sit on the floor.
There was only one hall devoted to cycles. Many important dealers were absent. I was particularly
keen to get some information on the Giant bicycle I had priced out the week before, but Giant, Trek
and other majors were not present. Also there was almost no representation for electric bikes and
kick-scooters - two other areas that interest me greatly and that clearly do come under the rubric
"Deux Roues".
The range of cycles being shown was small, with a heavy emphasis on the
responding in an innovative way to my quest for a high-end, feature rich comfort bike capable of
handling steep elevations. There were some fantastically gorgeous carbon-framed racing bikes that
had me gawping on a design level (Italians, unsurprisingly), but that was not what I had come for.
Exhibitors were uncommunicative and not very well-informed. For example, at the Cannondale stand,
they had to rootle around in their Catalogue before they could find a bike that answered to my
specs, and they were not able to detail me the advantages of the various features of a model that
nevertheless cost 1300 Euros - where you'd damn well expect to know what you were paying for. The
geezer at Brompton was to deep into his sandwich to answer any of my questions willingly. Pity,
because in its way the Brompton T6 was the most interesting piece I saw.
Shimano, whom I wanted to query about the Nexus shifter, hub dynamo lights and the high-end
hydraulic disc-brakes which equiped the Cannondale Street 800 that I had enquired about, shoved a
brochure into my hands and left me to get on with my own research.
Today, I find myself more confused than ever, whereas the whole point of this fair for me was to
shed light on some of my questions. I do not trust most of what I was told, because what little
information I received was overly angled towards selling rather than informing objectively. I do not
feel that I completely wasted a day. I got some references that I will follow up on the terrain. But
this Fair was not nearly as fun and instructive as it could have been.
Elisa Francesca Roselli Ile de France