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Hans Rey can finally retire though

No, no, no. It's not your fault. Don't beat yourself up over it. It's your daughter's fault. Blame her!

My earlier comment strikes me as too circular and I want another shot at saying things more clearly. Here's why I think you can't make inferences from the demographics of the study population even when they did collect the data (e.g. sex), not just when they didn't collect it (e.g. skill level). Every inference that can be supported by the data set has to begin with "If a rider sustained a spinal cord injury within the study time and place, then ..." This is because every rider who didn't sustain a spinal injury was excluded. I suppose you can say...

Interestingly one of the questions in the questionnaire I was given at the Thredbo medical centre when I wrote myself off there was "how many times have you ridden the trail you crashed on?"

Speeds may be higher on modern bikes, but I believe they are quite a but safer than the bikes of the 90's with their super short frames and super long stems that seem well optimized for OTB crashes. Make no mistake about it though, we were hauling serious ass on our ridiculous bikes in the 90's too. My Cateye computer told me so, and I often was pushing to beat personal top speeds attained on some sections of trail. But I see far less OTB wrecks these days than in the early days. There is also a heck of a...

I've been riding mountain bikes since 1992 (over 30 years! 😬). In 2021 I managed to crush two vertebra going OTB at MSA. I'm back to riding now because I got lucky and didn't damage my spinal cord. I have three observations: 1. there are way more "flow trails" and purpose built trails now than ever before. these scare me the most, as the speeds you can reach are dangerously high, and the skills required to ride them "safely" take a long time to to develop. like I said, I got lucky with my injury, and my 30 years experience...

so I read through the actual published study (link here for anyone interested: https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/neur.2024.0103 ). As someone who works in a medicine adjacent field that is also a experienced cyclist, I found one surprising omission in the study - that there was no data on the experience level of those who experienced spinal injuries (especially given the inclusion of other population data - gender, age, marital status, employment). I get it from a medical perspective (an injury is an injury), but from a cycling perspective I think it would be beneficial to understand whether or not the injuries are occurring...

I haven't ridden BC outside of a day trip to Whistler over ten years ago when I was a complete beginner. But looking at the videos from Remy and other YouTubers there seems to be endless "pro" level trails that I would probably stay away from despite considering myself a very good rider. That said, I'm blown away with some of the stuff I see on YouTube in the USA and particularly the UK, "easy" bike park flow trails now all of a sudden have massive jumps and drops. I feel like this is setting up a trap when beginners...

There are really multiple types of MTB riding. I'll mention two of them and we will call them "classic" and "modern" to differentiate them. Classic type is where you go out and ride natural trails in the wilderness. Modern is more bmx and moto inspired and has lots of jumps on groomed trails with higher overall speeds. The rise of bike parks has made modern riding much more accessible. I would say that jumping is the riskiest thing you can do on a mountain bike. More people jumping = more serious injuries.

I haven’t been able to dig into the article, yet. I’d be curious if it includes a meta analysis that might detect trends in the factors around the incidents. Types of trails, experience level of riders, type of protection in use or not present, etc.. If we are going to try to mitigate risks, it would be helpful to understand factors that might increase or decrease it.

Side point here, those who continue to frame China as a "large threat to the West", I'd encourage you to spend some time digging into demographic shifts. In short, the population of China has begun to fall and a number of institutions have modeled their population plummeting over the next 50-100 years. The effect this will have on manufacturing and their economy is dire. When you combine this with some of their questionable monetary policy decisions the last few years you end up with a situation where the "threat of china" is more bark than it is bite. I'm not...

That's great to hear... Glad to hear he's doing good. Good guy..

Sherwood has plenty of bussiness right now, enough that he is turning away OE clients again.

I bought a Bird Aeris 9 last year that is originally a 160/160 or 170/160 bike, but can be 'overforked' and you can get a different rocker link to get it all the way to 180/180. I bought an additional airshaft for the Zeb and the additional rocker link to have a 160/160 and a 180/180 setup. After running it in 180/180 for the better part of half a year last year and early this year, I went back to 180/180 and don't miss aditional travel. Even worse, given the amount of riding and my capabilities (I'm not 'ridden in')...

The Banshee folks seem to be easy-to-get-a-hold-of. Send 'em an email with your questions and I bet you'll get some answers that give you a yes/no rather than an "I don't know."

For the current era of bikes where manufacturers will use the same front triangle (or full frame, just different shock) for a shorter and longer travel version, I think it makes more sense to buy the long travel version. If you're buying a 140mm travel bike that weighs the same as the 160mm travel bike, why not go 160mm. Now, if the 140mm travel bike is built from the start as 140mm, then it would absolutely be a completely different riding experience for sure

Its so true. Modern bikes of the 150-170mm variety really could do anything with one rig. Its still not ideal for xc or park days but it can be done more effectively then they have any business.