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This was actually way fewer words than i expected after seeing your name as the last reply

Busses work very nicely for things like this, yeah. I remember riding in Meribel, doing the ridgeline traverse from over 2000 m high up and then dropping in all the way to Moutiers (500 m altitude), you'd go for an icecream, wait up to half an hour for the bus to arrive and be taken back up to Meribel, where the gondolas took you back to the top of the bikeparks. The bus ticket was included in the lift pass of course. Similarly in Alpe d'Huez, dropping all the way to the bottom of Megavalanche in Allemont, you used to...

As someone who is lucky enough to live in Vancouver, I can say that it's not just having them nearby, I think increasing transit access should be included. Now obviously I don't need busses to be shuttling me (except on Burnaby mountain... U-pass laps!) But not having a vehicle for much of my university time meant I could barely get to north shore trails. Obviously this is a niche example fraught with external factors (traffic to the north shore is bad already, transit is bad already) but I use it as my only lived example of how trail access isn't...

Regarding the questions in the third paragraph (I know it was general questins, but I figure it might spark additional debate ): -yes. Already have, since quitting racing XC in 2008 I haven't owned a carbon frame and could somewhat make the case for carbon only in road cycling (as I'm not up to speed enough to argue against it). I will every single time go for the aluminium MTB with better equipment though. No questions asked, there is not a single benefit of carbon that could sway me over. -If there was a measurable quality benefit or some other...

I’d love this too. Where I live there has been a lot of progress made at many local parks. With hopefully a lot more to be made in the next 10 years. I think the key is mtbers and parks realizing there is a way for everyone to be happy but that bikes will probably have to do the most work and make the most consolidations. But as long as bikes have access and a reasonable amount of freedom to make good trails they have no issue putting in the work. One of my goals in my local area is...

This is a big one. I have a friend with an older Fox fork that the shop said they can no longer get dust wipers for. Perfectly good fork otherwise but it will end up in the bin. Small parts from shimano and sram are almost non existent as well so if you bend your cage good luck finding a replacement even for you new AXS.

Had the Cane Creek bb with those, rusted out faster than any bb I have owned. Chris King is the best I've found so far.

Ditto, me and a buddy both got those same CC BBs with the SKF Matrix bearings, and they rusted solid in just a few months.

Okay, apparently it is an issue. But in the grand scheme of things, I'd say it's still a non-issue. A standard (not-max-fill, so caged balls) deep groove ball bearing has an axial load carrying capacity that is ~40 % of the radial load carrying capacity. Even half of that with a slotted full complement bearing will still be loads for anything we see in a bike. At the end of the day it's still the dirt that kills our bearings, not the loads themselves.