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In my business making ski trail grooming equipment we have to comply with an act called the Buy American Act because we sell to the Forest Service a lot. It's like the Berry Amendment but it details purchasing guidelines for federal agencies or organizations using federal money that aren't the military. Congress has a challenge to write a laws that are broad enough to have impact while being specific enough to influence business practices. At the same time my business is strongly influenced by the Buy American Act when the verbiage of the law seems focused on larger projects like...

Domestic manufacturing/sourcing has been been a requirement (for some products, at least) in DoD procurement since the Berry Amendment of 1941.

I have a friend who works high up at one of the big five Defense firms and he said his firm is under increasing pressure from the DOD for all of their products, components, required maintenance parts and supplies, and the rest of the supply chain to come from within the US, so as not to be dependent on or beholden to foreign manufacturing, especially in regards to potential geopolitical adversaries. To be clear, they aren't able to meet 100% of their needs entirely within the US, but the planes he was talking about featured a shockingly high proportion of...

Would make sense to fill Jill's spot for a US woman rider

I noticed that Aletha Ostgaard was in Schladming at the Red Bull camp thing. And then went to Erzburg too. Where as her canyon teammates (except Kiefer) went to Andorra and Italy. So my hunch is a Red Bull helmet for Aletha soon?

Something from bosch dropping on june 18th. Rumour and no idea what it could be Rumours- new sx and another saying they bought fazua and still another said gearbox

I’ve been mountain biking since I was a teenager in the 90s and the marketing material has never been as sober as it is right now and the products have literally never been higher quality. Thirty years ago you’d drop a huge stack of cash on 1.9” tires made out of QC-rejected pencil erasers and hay, they’d be hard as coffin nails and look leprous after three rides (several flats per ride), and the marketing material would be all like “God himself couldn’t make rubber stickier; this rubber is so sticky it’s gray; you can ride on the damn wall”...

That "XC tire" conversation from customers and from a shop employee makes me want to walk into the ocean.

It seems kind of crazy right? People seemingly go to a tech site to complain... that there's new tech? Or that the fanciest, newest shit is... expensive? It seems to me a lot of the complaining is around cost, which I get, but I sometimes worry that the negativity can be to such an extent that it can slow progress. For instance I rode the Fox Podium, and came away super impressed. It seemed pretty clear to me that their explanation about friction reduction made sense, was real, and that the performance was clearly next-gen. Like everyone is going to...

No, but color me curious.

In the 2000's we all took our trail bikes to Nationals. Not because we thought we'd ride them. But because we ran uncut brake lines on them & could rob them of parts in a must have scenario. Still can't believe bikes do something that stupid.

I was saying this exact thing to a buddy last weekend that I used to race with years ago. It was common practice to keep a spare rear brake set up and swap it if needed mid practice or before a race run in minutes.

I miss external cable routing so much. Remember swapping rear brakes at a race in five minutes or less? Thank you, Norco. Hopefully others will follow.

I like that my Stumpy EVO could be 2 or 3 different bikes if I wanted it to. But I also keep the Float X, and Grip X 36 just to simplify the setup a bit because that high-speed/low-speed rebound isn't going to shave any seconds. The answer is for riders to stop fiddle-f**king with clickers and stop reading marketing-driven mtb media dissections of minuscule, fractional gains of some particular part. It seems, in fact, that certain cough--wireless--cough components seem to be marching us in the opposite performance direction of mass-centralization, unsprung mass, and system weight.

I'll tell you one thing it is, way cheaper to buy in Canada! $2800 CAD vs. $2999 USD, that's close to $1000 difference!

It’s a vertical shock alignment similar to the old Diamondback Knucklebox design (mentioned above) or a Propain. Nothing to patent. It’s just a Utah County based company thinking it needs overdo marketing as they’re prone to do. Utah is the land of perceived aesthetics.

It's not similar to a Mondraker at all. Mondraker uses a short-dual-link design with the shock compressed between both links. Ari's new design is a Horst-link platform with a rocker link that compresses the shock from one end only.

Better question is why is it worth hiding anything

Why is it worth hiding a knucklebox