International Motorcycle Show - San Mateo

The International Motorcycle Show rolled into town this week.  I had hoped that the show would be making a turn around this year but it actually continued shrinking as it had it since 2008. There were even fewer companies demo-ing bikes, just Harley Davidson and Yamaha (and their cruiser line, Star). Demo stalwart Kawasaki did not bring their demo bike's this year.  There were fewer vendors, one hall smaller than last year. No Supermoto races.  No exotic bike area.

But the bike's that were in attendance were awesome as always.

Here's a few pictures from the event.

Ducati Streetfighter 848

Here's a friend on the sportbike version of the Streetfighter 848, the Ducati 848 EVO.

There were some custom bikes at the show.  Here is a Harley Davidson powered motard.

This one is a Honda powered custom.

Here's a fellow blogger, Joanne from Gearchic.com, giving a great presentation on the how to shop for gear.  Remember, fit before budget!

I try to keep my gear choices unique and functional.  My current helmet, a Caberg Hyperx that I ordered from Europe, fits my requirements as it is unique and, with its removable safety rated chin-guard, functional as well.  And it definitely rates high on the cool meter. I only know of one helmet that has the removable chin guard that is available here in the US (the Nolan N43 trilogy series) so I was surprised to see this new from helmet from Nexx, the Nexx X40.  As an owner of one of their previous helmet models, the Nexx X30 (a great looking but flawed helmet design), I am interested to see if they've applied any lessons learned from the X30 to this new helmet.  I'll be looking into this and posting my findings, as well as some more info on my other helmets soon.

Overall, I'm still saddened to see that the IMS show is continuing its decline in size and attendance.  Hopefully with the record sales numbers that the european bike manufacturers are currently enjoying, those same manufacturers will translate that success to a much bigger presence at shows to come.  For now, I'm still enjoying the shows like a kid in a candy store. Even with the candy store getting smaller, it's still an awesome candy store.