"Never A Dull Moment" - The SIA Chronicles

Posted by Ana Van Pelt on February 05, 2011 2 Comments

CHAPTER 1: SIA Prep

Preparing for SIA was the biggest nightmare. Everything that could have gone wrong, went wrong. But that's neither here nor there.. We were planning to drive our veggie bus out to Denver for the show, to be used as our booth in the tradeshow (yes, we brought the bus into the convention center). To save costs we decided to wrap the bus ourselves - poor decision. As a warning to all you 'do-it-yourself' ers who may be considering wrapping an extremely complex vehicle by yourself one week before it needs to be finished: don't. Thankfully we have some awesome friends, team riders and an intern who volunteered their time and helped us wrap as much as we could get done before leaving. Thanks guys, we owe you big time.

But back to the SIA prep nightmare. We had planned on handing out a bunch of beers from a local brewery (who actually happens to be awesome). However, after SIA told us we would be able to do so, they rescinded  their decision, and informed us the only beer we would be able to give out would be through their catering company. Thanks a lot... Then they told us we needed to move all of our booth items into the convention center a day earlier than planned, which was a huge problem because we had booked our condos 2 months prior, and would not have a place to stay the first night we arrived in Denver. Not to mention we would have no transportation, as our bus was the primary item in our booth. Fantastic.

All that aside, we didn't know if we would even make it out to Denver - this f---ing bus... We have basically had to completely rebuild the whole thing, transmission and all. After many hours of frustrating work and phone calls, Dustin got the bus running. Lets just hope it stays that way...

L to R: Dustin and Todd "layin' down the wraps"; its my dog in a box; Todd prepping the bus for adhesion.