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Only a matter of time before some utter moron at one of the drier race venues sets fire to the forest with one of those flares.

With regards to "cant believe we used to use "X" brakes!" Remember wheels were probably 26" or 650b, which have a better mechanical advantage compared with the current 29" wheels. The larger rotors were a year or two behind the bigger wheels iirc

Hottake, The new Q1 and Q2 formats are great and I much prefer it over rider protected status as its probably the most fair way to narrow the field down. Does it mean some really popular riders lose out? Yep. Does it also mean that seasonal consistency is more rewarded in WC overall standing points? Also yes. Seems odd to have both protected riders AND riders trying to qualify all in one group. It's either we lock the field to the same 30 riders for each race or everyone needs to qualify for finals. No offense to riders like Danny...

Seems like sram has a new dropper lever+flight attendant button combo. Comes on the new scott spark models that has flight attendant but no axs dropper. For example, Specializeds Epic 8/9 pro models with flight attendant and wired dropper, just comes without a pod for the flight attendant, which I always thought was strange.

I was listening to a road biking podcast recently. One of the guests on the podcast is currently a DS for a bigger team and used to be a world tour rider. One of the things that came up in discussion is how absolutely insane the new generation of riders are. They are SO fast. They are SO good in their training. They are SO dialed in their nutrition and recovery. The guest made a point to bring up an interesting-to-me factoid: They can't let the younger riders anywhere near the big-name riders during team training rides. None of them...

If you're ever able to get this project going, I look forward to cheering you on, enthusiastically adopting your new tech, and inviting all my friends to join the platform with me, and then later calling down curses on you and the Brines family for generations to come for the inevitable enshittification of your platform after you've sufficiently saturated the marketplace.

I just started listening to a whole podcast season that is about how outdoor gear, including camping, hiking, hunting, and even biking gear can trace a lot of its roots to the military. The Berry Amendment is a big reason why there is any domestic outdoor gear manufacturing industry at all. I've only started episode 2, but it's very interesting and I think a lot of people who are interested in this forum thread would think so too. https://articlesofinterest.substack.com/p/gear-chapter-1 It also goes into some of the sociology of how fashion developed for different outdoorsmen over the past few centuries and...

If anyone doesnt understand this bike I dont blame him, neither did I. But after spending few days in a Sud Tyrol town, through which runs a long distance cycle path that connects Northern Italy and Germany my perception changed big time: I only used said cycle path to link different trails for few km at the time but I'd encounter hundreds of elder people riding such bikes. It was eye opening and I realized there exist bike markets I had no idea about...

Yesterday I spoke with a guy who rode a couple of EDRs and would always ride xtr mech since forever but he was on a sram. He said not only the chain slap was unbearable on the new di2 xtr but he would also drop chains pretty much daily, to the extend the top of his crank which cought the chain became all scratched... The shifting was absolutely amazing but the reliability is horrible and he also noticed shimano sponsored enduro pros would run full dh chain tensioners or STFUs just to keep the chain on, which is mindboggling how...

Bizutch is a real dude who appears to be himself on here. Gotta respect him for that! 👊

surely this is the undisputed post of the year

You are correct, thanks for making mention before I could catch up in this thread. On longer climbs I would take the chain off but most times I just wouldn't care to. The bigger problem was the chain length in my largest rear cog when using the lower guide, only a problem during climbing though. The system was great while descending. But I just run the ochain now instead of the lower guide because it's manages the chain whipping and is less faff.

I think it has more to do with the speed they are carrying, the gradient of the slope, and the lack of trees. They are straight hauling so any little mistake and you are traveling a pretty good distance in the wrong direction real quick. The slope is pretty steep in the bottom where a lot of people are going off, they are trying to hold on a off camber with the worse dust and loose rocks showing up off line so miss your rut and all of a sudden you are along for the ride. The course is pretty...

To say riders wouldn’t have dsq’d today if there were tape would be a huge underestimation of the prep these riders put into a race run. Once race day comes along they aren’t seeing flags or tape anymore, just their line. Now I would argue that tape can sometimes be less confusing for the viewer on the broadcast but I think the lack of plastic waste and not getting tangled in the tape is worth that small trade off.