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Sierra club meets ai slop

There's some great trail names in this slide. "Zone of Fear" "Area of Influence" "Silent Scare" "Invisible Footprint"

Since the S-Works Levo is literally the most expensive mountain bike you can buy at $20k USD, two seconds of googling tells me that the MTT 420RR Turbine Superbike is the most expensive off the shelf motorcycle you can buy at $275k USD. That would be more of an apples to apples comparison. And if you're going to tell me that a $12k USD Ducati is plenty, and more bike than any of us need, I will happily make the same point about most users and a new $3000 MTB. A $12k motorcycle in 2026 is a phenomenal product that...

Absolutely, the comparison is ridiculous. It's like when people compare an $80 economy car tire to a 3CG DH Assegai for $115. They're in completely different universes of performance. The amount of maintenance I don't do on my road/gravel bike compared to my MTB continues to blow my mind. It just keeps running. It's barely higher maintenance than running shoes. And as you alluded to, I'm able to be damn competitive on group road and gravel rides on this old cyclocross bike that I bought for $400 on FB Marketplace. Sure, I've put more money into it since I got...

I have been very intrigued by their frames for awhile now but still can’t quite bite. If only I could get one with better bottle placement. Also feel free to downvote, but I would feel inclined to remove what I view to be their cringey headtube badge too. Classic it may be, but I still can’t take it seriously

Bike park rental fleet purchasing managers are licking their lips right now. All jokes aside, it's good to see Norco filling out their Range (pun intended). They've got everything from XC halo builds to entry hardtails to this new park bike, while still seeming a bit "core" with Brage and the DH team. It's refreshing compared to the appeal to Bentonville and Marin County dentists that Specialized is leaning into.

Fixed

On the Cane Creek website

One is bead blasted then anodized the other one is polished when anodized. The bead blast is going to be a much cheaper and more forgiving process. Quality polish is going to be hand work. This a price difference.

I agree that is a misleading graph, but that is still a cliff dive. 😮

It wasn't that long ago that "15 minute cities" was the latest far right snarl word/term. It didn't hit as hard in Australia but it still comes up from time to time. I work in transport planning and the hysteria around it completely baffled me. How can anyone possibly delude themselves into believing that the idea of city planning based around safety and accessibility for all transport modes and users is some kind of grand (communist?) conspiracy? A bloke I worked with on a few projects once raised Elon Musk's ire on Twitter by calling out his nonsense. It was...

Canfield jumped the gun of their own release by posting the V3 Lithium in the product section of vital ? https://www.vitalmtb.com/product/guide/frames/canfield/lithium-v3-74006

It's well-documented and understood that straight, wide residential streets are much more dangerous than narrower, curvier (within limits) streets because they encourage high-speed driving. Sadly, Americans have been sold the vision of 4- or 6-lane residential streets with no sidewalks and surrounded by groundwater-irrigated golf-courses in the middle of the desert as the epitome of the American dream/success. Couple that with the belief that cars should have primacy on those streets and bikes are toys and you end up w/ the often-lethal, always-opposed "bike infrastructure" here. (And when there inevitably is a crash and some poor biker gets smeared across...

With the global bicycle market coalescing around “mobility solutions” as the future profit center the American response that you are “afraid to ride to work” is just about all the economic insight needed to understand why this thread will soon be 150 pages long. The number of Americans I know who have held pro dh licenses but are hesitant riding a bicycle from their own homes to run an errand is staggeringly high. I mean, I get it, but I don’t have to like it. Before People For Bikes (the defacto US industry trade lobbying group) became embroiled nonstop in...

Speaking for the US only, cycling infrastructure is terrible across the country with only a few bright spots. I have commuted by bike for twenty years and have had so many near death experiences. Public transit in the US is also woefully underfunded and underdeveloped. That’s by design since the US political system has been corrupted by petroleum/auto money for nearly a century. (also add in distance and weather realities) And I could go on…

Spoken like a boomer core lord. That’s what the viral forums seem to have become though. Dario is actually a breath of fresh air in mountain bike media, same as Jason. His perspective is a welcome change from the usual safe, generic industry takes the rest of the media recycles time and time again.

Let’s reframe the debate. It’s not really about whether bikes are more or less affordable than before. It’s about how they could be made more affordable today, and whether the traditional bike industry is even structured to go that direction. Right now, the narrative is almost always performance, performance. Lighter. Stiffer. Faster. More race-proven. That’s great but “simple, fun, affordable” is rarely part of the story. The e-mobility space is interesting because it already brought unexpected players in. Who would’ve imagined Bosch or DJI becoming major forces in e-bike systems? That alone shows the door is open to newcomers with...