This week, I have been traveling a bit and otherwise extremely busy, so I have not yet been able to look through as many pictures from Interbike as I would have liked. Still, I want to quickly point out a few of the products that caught my attention. I wouldn’t consider this a comprehensive list by any stretch of the imagination. These are just a few of the images, mostly from Flickr and the MTBR galleries, which jumped out at me while I was surfing the web during lunch today.

Pictured here is Tom Boonen’s Specialized Tarmac SL2 (I stole this picture from a BKW Interbike follow up post that I also recommend that you check out). What can I say; this is a really great looking bike. I love the graphics treatment on the top tube and fork. You can see another shot of Boonen’s bike here.

This Isaac time trial bike is another one with a nicely shaped frame and clean graphic treatment.

While I am focused on nice looking racing bikes, I’ll also mention this Bridgestone track bike, which also caught my attention.

Last year, I mentioned the sub 7-pound Crumpton fixed gear from Interbike. It looks like they were back with that ultralight bike, or another version of it, this year. Check it out here and here.

I have always liked GT Zaskars as far as cross-country hardtail mountain bikes go. The new 2008 Zasker Pro with a carbon frame immediately caught my attention.

Another mountain bike that I think looks great is the new Trek Remedy. The headtube detail in particular looks very slick. Trek doesn’t exhibit at Interbike, but they unveiled the new design at the dirt demo. You can read more about the bike here.

Before I move on past mountain bikes, I’ll mention the new lighter Ibis Mojo SL, a really beautiful frame. The big new product from Ibis was not the latest Mojo though, but the carbon fiber Tranny. The bike features a detachable rear triangle that allows it to be used as a geared bike or a singlespeed (depending on the rear subframe used). The fact that the frame can be dismantled means that it can be used as a travel bike as well. Read more here.

Seven showed what looks to be an incredibly expensive titanium commuter bike with a porteur rack in the front. It looks very nice, but I can’t imagine spending that much on a commuter/shopper bike unless I could keep it in my office all day or carry it into stores with me. I used to commute to work on an old Litespeed, but I quit using that bike because I was a bit nervous about locking it up outside (used ti bikes hold their value pretty well, so they can be a target for thieves). Anyway, it appears that Seven wasn’t the only company at the show using titanium for non-performance oriented bikes. Lynskey had a titanium cruiser in their booth that I am sure attracted quite a bit of attention as well.

Lastly and most importantly, the Project Rwanda Coffee bike definitely caught my attention in the sea of photos from Interbike. How can you miss a bright green bike with a wheelbase that makes the average longtail cargo bike look like a crit racer? This bike was designed by Tom Ritchey to solve transportation problems for farmers in Rwanda. It is intended to replace the handmade wooden push cycles they use in that war-torn country to transport coffee bales as well as other crops and cargo. In addition to designing the bike, Tom Ritchey created the Wooden Bike Coffee brand to help finance the project and hopefully to send 100,000 more bikes to the farmers of Rwanda. It really does sound like an incredible project; I encourage you to read more about it on the Project Rwanda website. This is a great example of how a simple, well-designed tool can greatly improve life for those people who are not typically targeted by the work of designers or engineers. Tom Ritchey deserves a lot of credit for this effort; I hope it is a great success.

Of course, the Project Rwanda bike wasn’t the only longtail design at Interbike this year. I could talk about the other Xtracycle inspired long-tailed cargo designs for the U.S. market, but I am out of time. I’ll have to save that subject for another post.