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Sterling Foest State Park and Ringwood State Park are both about an hour from the George Washington Bridge and offer the most contiguous singletrack in the immediate area. https://www.palisadesmtb.org/ is the local advocacy group for Sterling and just opened a fantastic new trail this month. Our hills top out at about 1200' but there is still plenty climbing and descending. If your willing to drive 3 hours for more elevation there is some great but somewhat limited riding in the Catskills. Roundtop and Elm Ridge are fun and there is some even better stuff in the western Catskills that isn't...

It's possible they locked the production bike at a certain point and the world cup team is still fiddling extracting more performance. You don't need to produce what the team is riding, there could be differences to make the bike more palatable to the general public...

Sponsored riders were using spider less saints for the past two seasons. Nothing new here.

All this drivetrain efficiency/Gearbox discussion is making me think about the joy I get from riding my singlespeed.

Gearboxes, the “fusion energy” of MTB.

Probably just means they haven’t spent much time dialing them in and maybe only recently got to ride production frames.

I am going to be completely transparent here in that I work for FSA, but I will say I worked really hard on making the 31.8 40mm Gradient alloy bar one of the most compliant on the market. and here is the proof: (chart from PB article)

100% no, the specialized enduro feels like a worn out couch, super plush and dh feeling, the sixfinity has more support and energy return to it, and to me feels way better than the switch bikes which I tried all. That being said, that was on the MTe-LTe and 160e But I think it would be a similar feel to the MTE with more travel, so, I’d say a better suspension overall compared to the specialized enduro, more efficient for sure and still nice off the top

using a oneup 210 but could fit a 240 easily on a size L sb160.

Sixfinity is the number of zeros in the price tag right?

This meme continues to be a poor interpretation of carcinization/convergent evolution... The crab is not some final form that everything is destined to become. The lesson from carcinization is that unrelated species independently evolved into crab-like bodies. Not that we will one day all be crabs. I think a more fitting example of carcinization in the bike industry would be floating brake arms: a variety of bike manufactures independently arriving at a similar tech to solve the same problem. And at the end of the day, that shit is sitting at the bottom of the ocean

Shut the fuck up about drivetrain efficiency. Holy shit. Go find a different thread.

I think you've got rose colored glasses on regarding the Amflow frame. The v1 got a lot of criticism for being very flexy, particularly in the rear end. It had the dubious design choice of a yoke-driven trunnion shock (Vorsprung says in their suspension design manual that if you end up with that design, you should "put down the bong and start again"). Slapping Fox suspension and Transmission drivetrain on it isn't some genius product manager move - almost every bike out there does that these days. The wheels, hubs, bars, and stem are all in-house products and not exactly...

"Riding stuff from Asia" is a pretty gross over-simplification of what actually happens to bringing a performance bike to market. I'd guess that the secret sauce for western brands is operating in a core environment that drives product excellence, which translates to a superior product to what non-core brands are able to offer. The Amflow frame, for example, is largely panned over by most and the focus of the brand is on the e-system itself. If that frame contained a Bosch of Shimano drive, it wouldn't have made the same impact. Frames like these are often referred to as parts...

Cannondale isn't niche at all. If PON cans it that is a huge loss to cycling as a whole. Cannondale is one of the most storied (and interesting!) brands across road, DH & XC.

Clearly this SHUSH product doesn't work great, it failed to keep Ridewrap silent.

As a person in the bike indusrty for 30+ years, Owned a bike store for 6 years, And has owned 5 Yeti's one of which is still my favorite bike my 2021 SB 160E still going strong. Today was eye opening! The MGU and CVT is real. DJI is not a copycat, And will eat the big 3 bikes brands lunch now. And the sixfinaty Yeti pedal bike is around the corner. Weird day..

Agreed that this motor/CVT is predictable, inevitable, and nonetheless a really BFD for the ebike market and makers of traditional derailleur-driven drivetrains. I know I'm going to sound like a broken record here, but high performance eMTB sales represent a very small market, whereas the real effects of this are going to be seen in the touring/commuter/pavement pounder market. I'd wager Shimano and SRAM sells 100 times more derailleurs/shifters/cassettes to the touring/commuter/pavement pounder ebike market vs. what they sell for high end eMTBs.