My Danner Mountain Light II hiking boots on the plane ride back. A little dirty but none-the-worse for wear.
The annual Shooting, Hunting and Outdoor Trade Show (SHOT) is a mammoth affair. I’m talking epic. Hosted by the Sands Convention Center in the Venetian / Palazzo Hotel complex in Las Vegas, the SHOT event takes up all one million square feet of exhibition space. To put that in perspective, there are 12.5 miles of product exhibits – inside. If you stop at each exhibitor’s booth and spend every available minute on the show floor, you’ll have just one minute, sixteen seconds for each one.
Every year I disrupt the Ibuprofen supply chain to alleviate my sore trade-show-feet syndrome. I’ve always wondered just how many miles one walks per day at SHOT Show. Keep in mind, this is all indoors. We’re not talking nature hikes here, just roaming around the inside of a hotel trade center.
Last week we started a simple contest. I agreed to wear a FitBit Charge for the four days of trade show exhibit hours to track total miles per day. At the end of the show, I’d divide by four, and calculate the average miles per day of my SHOT Show 2015 experience. Many of you wrote in with guesses, so it’s time to tabulate the results and see who won a set of Crimson Trace Lasergrips from My Gun Culture.
First, keep in mind these figures count no outdoor miles. The range events had taken place the day before the inside expo started, so we’re only counting the inside time of the trade show proper. Second, Given the busy schedule of non-stop meetings and activities, these figures include no “walking outside” miles. I did go to a Beretta M9 39th Anniversary party at the Bellagio, but the cab service was door to door, so that didn’t add any miles.
Here are the results…
Tuesday: 8.60 miles
Wednesday: 5.86 miles
Thursday: 7.63 miles
Friday: 6.02 miles
Average miles per day: 7.0275
Wow! While not all that impressive for outdoor activities, that’s a lot of miles inside of a building. I figured it had to be more than 5 miles a day based on the sore feet of past years, and I was right.
Since the contest rules didn’t specify Price is Right rules about overbidding, we’re going with the closest guess as the winner.
And that would be…
Mike S. from Santee, CA! Mike’s guess was 6.8 miles per day, so he just about nailed it. My bad habit of running back and forth to the various booth happy hours probably threw my actual number 0.2 miles over Mike’s guess.
Mike: I’m emailing you now to work out logistics of getting you your free Crimson Trace Lasergrips. Are you even allowed to have Lasergrips in California? Sorry, I couldn’t resist that…
Congrats Mike and thanks to all of our other readers who entered with a guess of their own. We’ll do more contests like this, so stay tuned.
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