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An absolutely brutal read to slog through. Sorry! What I meant to say was that the subject matter of Orbea's deep dive failed to fully resonate with the intended audience, yielding a suboptimal reading experience, and failing to deliver a holistic win-win for big-picture strategic partners in the greater bike industry ecosystem.

PB to scroll, Vital to read

I love that it's Neko Mulally doing this. Nobody else would get out alive.

But, but, they fill the hole in the middle...is totally not the same thing!

This is going to grind some gears... taken from Lewis IG Story.

my 2 cents after spending some time on the bike is that I really want to spend more time on the bike. A couple anecdotes here: I was surprised at how well it pedalled and the lack of heft that I was expecting after looking at it. After giving it back for a month I had to film on it with no time to get familiar again. First trail was a rapid North Van classic that I have ridden a bunch and I was immediately sending it. It was extremely poppy while still being planted, able to pull for all...

Just spent 10 minutes reading about freehub preferences… Not sure if I can explain to a regular person how much entertainment value this holds for me🍿

Thank you all for the interest in our bikes and in our distribution / sales model. To give you a bit of context, we’re currently a team of 9 people at RAAW, based in Germany, and we ship worldwide directly from here. The US has actually grown into our biggest market after Germany, which is pretty wild considering that every RAAW in the US has been shipped individually from Germany. Our goal is, of course, to make the ordering process and ownership experience as easy as possible. Having stock in the US would be ideal, but that comes with a...

I bought an EXe when they first came out and bought a second battery at the same time. Back then, you could purchase a second battery for a couple hundred dollars more than the range extender. They weren't really anticipating people doing this. You had to separately buy all the brackets to attach to the battery to attach it to the frame. I think the pricing spread has moved substantially. If you ride places where it's common to cruise back by the trailhead during the ride, this setup is amazing. I also picked up a power station on black Friday...

I think one of the largest "We're not in Kansas anymore" moments I had when I began working for a component manufacturer after years in bikes shops was when I had the insignificance of aftermarket sales explained to me. Don't get me wrong, every brand worth their salt is going to support aftermarket product bc why leave money on the table, but OE sales are king in the bike industry and ultimately OE sales drives every design decision. SRAM gets to push the convenience of full SRAM spec by limiting cross compatibility. For brands like Canyon, Specialized, etc., who are...

To be fair, the bicycle industry shares a TON of common parts. We are pretty spoiled with that. In a lot of other wheeled industries, there are not the compatibility opportunities that we have. In motorcycles, typically bars and tires are some of the only commonly compatible parts. To take forks from one dirt bike and put them on another often requires changing wheels or wheel spacers, crowns, brake calipers, and the stem. We just swap it over and are annoyed we have to remove a crown race. We question a brand for using a less common standard or a...

The F1 comparisons don't really make any sense beyond the fact that both are the pointy end of things. Unlike on pavement, ABS does not necessarily reduce stopping distance on loose surfaces. It can actually increase stopping distance in many scenarios. I honestly believe running ABS in a DH race would be detrimental more than anything. Trophy trucks would probably be a better analogy in this regard.

I wrote this on Pinkbike but will crosspost here to as I firmly believe ABS should not be involved in WCDH. I'm all for innovation in DH and I am absolutely fine with electronics in suspension but I strongly believe that ABS has no place in competitive DH. Braking ability and threshold braking are massively important skill that do separate riders. Having a system that would theoretically allow a rider to just full pull brake but not lock the wheels would be a huge advantage on most tracks and certainly would for low grip tracks or conditions. Formula One as...

Hmm. Do I get to decide when it’s a sustained steep or recovery is necessary? Cuz I spent like an hour yesterday desperately clicking my gravel bike’s shifter in search of an even lower gear. I’m old, been drinking too much beer and eating Trader Joe’s peanut butter cups, and now I gotta deal with the knowledge that I have suboptimal gearing? Eff it

I wouldn't be surprised if a 32" rear wheeled bike would need an ochain (or an idler enabled "high pivot" design) at much lower travel numbers than what we are used to. Antisquat is a function of pivot height vs. rear axle and chain growth. The more AS you get from the pivot height, the less you need from the chain itself. As we moved from 26" wheels towards 29" wheels, the effective pivot height was dropping as the main pivot still needs to be in the vicinity of the BB for everything to work more or less normally. The...

Been through this many times, as always, you are welcome to come to our neck of the woods and show that you don't need anything less than a 32T ring 🙂

Looks like Laurie to me.

it's almost as much as your megatower.