Yesterday, I saw our 14 year old neighbor girl riding around on a brand new road-bike.

The road-bike boom has officially begun.

I had a look at interbike a while ago. As I recall, the sales figures from last year had road bikes taking up a larger percentage of bike sales than in many years.

The total number of road bikes sold was just about constant compared to recent years, however. The absolute number of mountain/comfort/hybrid bikes was dropping off.

There is definitely an upswing in the number of roadies, at least in the Chicago area. I am noticing more and more people out riding, even in the cold weather we are having here. It seems like there are more people riding than ever before. A good example was the last organized ride I participated in, the St Pats Ride in Wauconda, Illinois..several hundred showed up despite extremely cold weather and sleet/rain.

Mountain bikes are losing their popularity around here. Most people are figuring out there is not a whole lot of good off road riding around the Chicago area. We do have good bike trails. Once the weather turns nice, they are packed.

Agreed! My commuter has straps and the cheesy plastic cages for the same reason. As an aside, once I was buying a pair of cages for my commuter, and the shop owner offered me a pair of lightweight, stainless Campy pedal cages he had sitting around... the ultimate in their day. I turned them down and bought a pair of plastics. What was I thinking???

Ouch! Even hearing that story hurts.