Incommudicado Post 3 (Utah/OR Show)

It was that time of year for the Outdoor Retailer Show in Salt Lake City. I left for the airport in Manchester on the 19th of July at 9:00 am, and landed in Salt Lake City at about 8:00 pm ish their time, which was about 10 pm ish my time, and waited for Perry to arrive. Poor Perry had to come in from Germany from the trade show he was attending there. By the time he landed he'd been flying 19 hours. Yuck. Luckily we landed about an hour apart, so we could get the car and go back to the hotel.

(During my travels, I had a layover in Las Vegas and had dinner in Jose Cuervo's Tacoquileria, and apparently sat right next to Cuba Gooding Jr, but didn't notice at all until the waitress said oh my god did you see who that was after he left.)

This year we stayed at the Metropolitan Inn, which was much nicer than the luxurious Super 8 (note heavy sarcasm) we stayed in last year. After we got checked in at the hotel, we went to Squatter's Brew Pub for dinner. I had a very lovely beer and a taco salad.

The next day we spent getting the booth up to speed. We tried a new booth system this year, which was like a cross between lego's and tinker toys, it was so easy to set up, we had the booth up in half the time we did last year. The panels fit in these little round connectors and it was really cool. It's supposed to be more environmentally friendly as well, because the panels weigh less to ship and can be reused by refacing them. We ended up going to the Red Iguana for lunch, which I really like (and which Shawn and I saw on the Food Network after I went last year.)

We had a good show this year, we were demo'ing the new Flash, with an upgraded burner system, which comes out in October and our new recycle tool which will come out in January. The booth was busy most of the time, and I think the Flash will be a hit.

I managed to score more swag than I did last year. I got two pairs of flip flops from Rafters, which were awesome. I also got a gorillapod for my camera, some instant fire, some hand salve and cuticle cream, a led light that recharges in your cigarette lighter of your car, and a half price Sigg bottle.

To demostrate our new recycle tool, we had a local artist make a piece out of used Jetboil fuel canisters. The pointy things with the ball at the end of them are hip implants. I did not ask where he got them. The piece did bring in a lot of curious onlookers though. One the Jetboil crew kept telling people it was one of Perry's early prototypes.

The other fun thing we did at the show was have an Iron-chefesque cook off at the show using the new Jetboil Flash. It was really fun, and afterwords, the winner, the woman in the pictures, kept raising her arms and giving a victory cry every time she passed the booth thereafter.

On Thursday, we normally have a keg and hand out cups with Jetboil cozies on them. We went through the first keg in 15 minutes. We handed out 200 cups in about an hour. For the next hour and a half, people kept asking us for cups, so I think it was a popular event.

We were able to pull down the booth on Friday within an hour of the show closing, which is unheard of. The new system was really awesome that way. We did not have the crates back from logistics, and that could take a few hours, so we decided to go to dinner at an indian place in Park City, the name of which completely escapes me at this point. After our three hour break, we got back to find our crates were there. It only took us about another 40 minutes to pack up and turn in the bills of lading and we were done at 8 pm.

The next day I went to the airport with Perry, which was better than taking a cab, but bad because his flight left at 8:25 am and mine didn't leave until 1:55 pm. I finally arrived in Manchester about midnight, and got home about 1 am after we stopped at Wendy's to get me some dinner.

Still have more to do, stay tuned for the next post...