All

Forbidden also messing around with the e-bike without a motor to test out some DH stuff with Laurie. 'The bike Laurie rode during the week was an early proof-of-concept acoustic DH build using a Dreadnought E front triangle and a number of custom parts. It was built to get the gravity project moving in the real world, giving the team something to ride, change, measure, and question while putting early ideas underneath a rider who can give accurate feedback at speed.' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLJAPe6Hl3s

The only point I'd love to argue is that the lower and central weight placement makes the bike more maneuverable.. But, really that interview shows why you need to look at everything as a whole package, not just one or 2 numbers.

I've done similar procedures to brakes since forever - sram guide, shimano saint, most formulas. People have always moaned about different brakes but its just a case of knowing all the methods of making them work well. I guess people learn a certain way of working on brakes, which has worked fine up until they encounter something different like the maven and all of a sudden they struggle. I see similar things with wheel building, hubs, suspension and drive trains where they only learned one generic way to work on a part, instead of understanding how they actually function

That will be a very different experience! I had one for a short time and adored it, honestly still wish I had one now. Keen to hear what you think once you have some time on it. Pic of mine because sharing is caring. I've also come off the Optic and snagged a very flash current gen ASR locally.

A bunch of comparisons mainly looking at wheel force because that's what you really feel not the leverage curve. 160 mm bikes with different progression amounts normalized for identical sag at the wheel. Including -4%. The wheel force plot is purely looking at wheel force due to the spring. As you can see, there is a very significant difference at bottom of travel. If you were to zoom in on the sag point, you can easily see that a more progressive bike has a lower force at all points before the sag point and a higher force at all points...

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”...

I don't buy Ford because of the Michigan Supreme Court's decision in the 1919 case Dodge v. Ford Motor Company.

it is if you know where to look for it.

In Western Canada Roberts composites is good. I've used them twice; both times service was great and you can't tell there was a repair. https://robertscomposites.com/

One thing missing here is the fact that with the proliferation of composite know how, there are more people around able to safely repair a wider range of issues. Rather than pretending we are recycling carbon bikes I’d love to see more frames designed in ways that facilitate repair. Repair is verifiable in a way that recycling is not, it is cost effective for everyone concerned, and it is as close as you’ll get to good for the environment. It probably flows on to other design decisions to ensure repair is viable (like bearing placement, etc etc), but designing bikes...

Perhaps our countries aren’t so different after all