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One thing about the decline of world Enduro I always noticed was that a lot of the riders, especially the French, believed their job was solely to win the race, with next to no brand, location or even lifestyle promotion. I can name a dozen sick french riders from the early years that you probably would struggle to find any edits or interviews of from back then. Contrast this with Santa Cruz bikes who mostly (and I don't mean this offensively) sent out a few riders tot he EWS to get nice photos and clips of. Like we all know...

Posted this before, posting again... The old EWS points and event qualifier structure was a great example of a transparent, feasible ladder for talented and motivated riders to climb into the elite field. EWS points were earned at sanctioned local, regional and national level events each with their own points tier and value table. I remember on the website from 2018-2020 there were pages and pages of races you could earn points. An EWS license was about 30USD to get an account and start earning. It seemed that race organizers were welcomed with fair terms to have their races sanctioned...

It's an unbelievably vague press release. My first thought was that they were trying to sugarcoat "We're killing the series forever" in positive-sounding corporate-speak, but on second read it's kind of wishy washy and undefined, like maybe the UCI is exploring ways to offload the series to another organizer or multiple organizers, which is what it was all along until Chris Ball sold it to the UCI. Back in the day, the EWS was mostly a collection of events that were already taking place independent of the UCI, like the SuperEnduro series in Italy or Crankworx Whistler. After rereading it...

Sad it’s finally dead, stoked for the future. I don’t think enduro as a format is dead, but it needs to go back to people having adventures in cool places.

The media misreported; there was a final meeting yesterday where the law firm handling the bankruptcy case for RAD, the prior owner of Rocky Mountain, announced that there were no more funds to be allocated for unsecured creditors. I assume the file is now closed. Rocky Mountain Bicycles, under the recent Chaos Sports acquisition, is alive and well.

this is the kind of content we're here for

I know Lapierre is still a desirable brand making quality bicycles (whether they exist in the middle of the barbell, not withstanding), but I looked up Raleigh's current product lineup on their website, and my how the mighty have fallen. It wasn't that long ago that everyone I knew had a Raleigh Furley for commuting or riding cyclocross, but now Raleigh is just generic mass-market Walmart bikes with the Raleigh label slapped on them. Ironically the Union Jack flag is still flying proudly all over the website, even though these bikes have as much to do with the UK as...

Just have a "follow" mode like DJI drones

My megapost on Fox Factory is up. One fun side quest I took in this one was trying to show how/why interest rates matter so much, and even built a little calculator everyone can play with. TL;DR, when the discount rate goes up, future earnings goes down and the TAM is sort of eaten, the stock price tanks. https://jeffbrines.substack.com/p/how-fox-factory-lost-a-decade?r=cfzd9…

All bikes are fun. I was at a moto event recently where every kid had a Levo and they were all having a blast. Maybe more of a focus on just straight fun than the groms that normally inhabit the bike park. It was entertaining to see a bunch of moto kids ride the bike park. Some of them will convert to mtb riders in the future no doubt.

Sorry for the double post but ironic this just showed up in my inbox. No way it works at $4,200 lol. But maybe I'm wrong. Barbells and whatnot.

My first “nice” bicycle was a Raleigh Chopper like this one:

Raleigh going under as part of this is a real kick in the teeth. It’s a big part of British industrial and cycling history, it was once the biggest bike company in the world with a huge footprint in Nottingham. Growing up everyone wanted a Raleigh bike for Christmas. I do hope they can find someone to take it on, the name holds real cultural significance.

Few thoughts going into the week... Fox Factory reports earnings Thursday. I'll cosplay financial analyst and cover it for y'all. My guess is "SSG remains flat" in tandem with phrases like "we are really excited about the next 18 months". Just to echo what @NoahColorado said, I too am happy with more choices and would love a world where a high number of motor/drive unit/gearbox companies are successful. Despite what I might have said on the pod, I actually don't think the motor race is assuredly going to become a monopoly where DJI owns the market. That said, this feels...

Sorry for the digression but to answer, I have it setup 200mm/200mm and there are two problems HTA is 61 degrees. Which is just too slack. I have a works headset coming to bring this back to 62.5 The rear suspension feels like a longer travel enduro bike, not a DH bike. Or maybe its just a firmer platform than I'm looking for. A rider looking for a lot of support may like it? I don't know. The bike just isn't eating bumps notably better than my other bikes, and in fact I'd say my current e bike I'm testing...

Don't forget the PooBah and Grand PooBah John Tomac signature shoes from the '90's by Nike ACG. They even used recycled rubber soles.

The head tube angle makes sense, 61 is way too slack. As for the suspension quality, I wonder if that's a shock tune thing or the leverage rate and other kinematics. Very weird. I'm assuming you've played around with a ton of spring rates and have tried some very soft springs to confirm that's not it.

I wonder if some of the flexy Amflow chat comes from some of the early/preproduction bikes. The bikes were seemingly around for a good bit before they actually were available for purchase, and they were shown to shops etc. However it's quite easy to believe that they changed things, including the layup before production to address issues as part of a normal development cycle that just happened to be a bit more public because they were mostly focused on launching avinox. I get that people might think the customer bikes are still flexy, but were the early bikes SUPER flexy...

Especially that guy who owns a bike company. 🙄