All

Were you screaming from the rafters for the juniors to be the last one down on the hill last year or have you always been a hypocrite? I, for one, like watching bikes going down hill. I'm not particularly picky about much else.

What are you blathering about?

It cannot be overstated how huge the women getting top billing in Leogang is. I just watched Vali’s YouTube from Loudenvielle and they’ve absolutely nailed it. I hope she can stay happy and overcome what must be insane pressure to be the last rider to drop on the day. Holy shit!

I dislocated the lunate bone in my left wrist 20+ years ago, It's a horrible injury that I still deal with. Hoping Bruni's surgery is succesful and he's able to come back, wrists are gnarly because of all the working pieces in it.

Soldier Hollow nearby Deer Valley is hosting the UCI XC World Cup the same weekend as the US Open/Pro Downhill finals at Deer Valley. They are about 20 min drive apart from each other. Now..if perhaps someday Deer Valley hosted an event on the newly expanded Mayflower area they would be 10 minutes apart.

I'd love to see someone attempt a hydraulic damper/viscous coupling type thing rather than using friction in the derailleur clutch. Dunno if it could be made small/light/reliable but it would certainly improve shift quality and might not feel quite so gross through the suspension.

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...

Renthal’s DHC pedals

New lower-profile Crank Brothers DH/Trail pedals on Roger's rig?

Banshee up to something new, the shock cage looks different. Maybe a metric shock uodate?

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 was going to make a post about the core Lenz customer being a boomer suspicious of tubeless tires and dropper posts, but I thought better of it. Then I happened upon a boomer posting theirs with a rigid post. And I'm back because my soul is sour and withered.

Seems like Lenz has decided to make a 32er in the same spirit of the first 29er. When will they learn!!!

Sort of a tech rumour? Remy looks to be on an Avalanche damper in his latest video. We know Vorsprung is working on a new damper, and they had noted they’ve been testing all the other options (including Avy).

Would Strava sell you that data? I know they sell that data to Forestry England as they've whipped it out in a presentation on land access before. Strava/Garmin are logging like an appreciable % of all MTB rides.

At the risk of bringing this back to bikes I listened to the second episode of the escape collective podcast (subscriber only I'm afraid). One of the things they highlighted was that Woom bikes has been having significant growth. If you haven't heard of them it might not be surprising because they focus on (pricy) kids bikes. My son's bike is now newer than either of his parents bikes and he's not even hit his growth spurt yet... Whilst it's easy to postpone a pricy upgrade for the adults it's a little trickier when the bike just doesn't fit. I...

Fallacy or not, if our domestic manufacturing capacity is contingent on wreaking havoc in the Middle East and the global south then I want nothing to do with it. Based on the tidbits shared above, it sounds like our domestic production capacity only exists because the ruling class can’t afford to outsource defense manufacturing without the risk of it being used against them (see Westmag drones) but they’re happy to sell us out for everything else. It may support the workforce but that’s just happenstance as evidenced by them actively trying to replace human labor with AI without any plan...

The "multiplier effect" is an economic fallacy. "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed."