All

Dak's in Schladming in a cabin halfway up a mountain. He said the wifi is nonexistent, but the host is working to get it resolved. We planned to chat this morning, now trying for Saturday or Monday morning. Also working around the 9 hr time difference and Dak training/testing before Leogang. Ohhh the trials and tribulations of the B Practice Podcast. Sorry for the delays, peeps!

Ethics and Dave Weagle literally cannot be in the same sentence. Impossible.

B Practice podcast from South Korea went up yesterday, YouTube vid is almost done uploading. Dak's travel home + driving to Mountain Creek delayed recording but we still love him. Sounds like he's playing a bit of catch up to find some comfort before the next major block of World Cups. https://www.vitalmtb.com/features/every-run-race-run-vitals-b-practice-…

Long time lurker, first time poster here. For some background I’m an aerospace composites engineer and spent several years in Advanced Product Development with an emphasis on environmentally friendly materials. There’s so much to get into on this topic and if folks are interested I’d love to start a dedicated thread on materials and environmental impacts. The TLDR is, carbon fiber as a green product on its own is a fallacy. The raw fiber production may result in a certain level of carbon sequestering, but the process is still so energy intensive I wouldn’t call it an environmental positive. As...

it’s not much yet, but so far they are able to offer the same controls with 2 different motor makers (shimano and tq). so if this plays out, they own the interface stack. let‘s wait to summer when they release their dji bike, if that will have the same controls. that and their ability to offer the bikes in custom colors are things no other big oem can do right now.

Some of the word salad gives me Office Space vibes. I genuinely like Orbea, but as a dude who obsesses over this stuff, when I read things like "Value protection," "disciplined sales plan," and "consistency with strategic principles," I sort of cringe. The company is bouncing along the bottom just like every other bicycle company that doesn't start with an "A." Things aren't getting worse, which is good. But now that there are new kids in town and margins/sales are under pressure, it looks like they are maybe pivoting to reminding us all how good Orbea is for the industry...

I assume it's bonded with glue, too, right? Wild.

You don't know me. Maybe that's how I roll.

neko doing laps at mtn creek with a 32" front wheel and cialis-sized FOX 40. pic by luca cometti the sniper.

Funnily enough, Wikipedia (which supports this use of the word) references but contradicts Wiktionary and its sources. If you think of an idler as being an intermediate part of a powertrain, i.e. not being directly on a power input or output shaft, and then squint hard enough, you might be able to rationalise it... FWIW I always assumed the meaning is as you state and will probably continue to do so.

For anyone who's curious what Weagle says about the Nighttrain suspension layout but doesn't want to scroll through IG comments, answering someone who asked about the design intent behind the bike: "Initially trying to gain a bit more mid corner traction on race bikes but as I hated [typo?] on the idea more and more I began to appreciate that it solves a lot of other issues. Definitely not an immediately intuitive benefit for me, it grew on me. In the end it turns out that by the numbers and by seat of the pants human pedaling a bike, this...

I can’t remember if it was Charlie Cs wet track did video or somewhere else, but evidently WYN’s crash was on a jump further down the track. Downtime post race with Neko and company indicated the same. I thought it was the big jump everyone was casing as well this whole time, but I guess it’s further down.