From a company like that to a company I have a lot of time for (Who happen to produce pretty much the best sprockets you'll ever need) - Tree. Posted their new straight-pull front hub before, and TheComeUp have posted up some shots of their new cassette. Techidy tech.
Hell of a lot of pretty cool stuff going on in that hub, no lie!
In "Company" news, been posting a couple of things about Mutant recently, and this is one of their team riders (Spotted on Dig):
Not testing the peg-guard out there!
Other news...
Chris Noble has put Level up online. Plenty of content by people who are pretty much the best at what they do. Check it out.
Posting this almost exclusively down to the way this guy (Poland'sColony's rider) looks exactly like Boiski?
Lastly, head over to RideUK for Ride To Glory updates. Tip of the hat to Tim for his gap-to-tooth. Progression session.
Oh, and I've got a pretty bad cold coming on, and there's been someone staying at my house who had swine flu. Drama.
I didn't really realise just how big the Fly team is, but yeah, pretty big! This is a cool edit of their whole crew riding the Worlds. Kevin K should've won the spine comp purely for dropping out the coping tyre slide thing, Taj style. I love those!
The controversial Mutant Bike company have another 'new idea' out, the peguard. Essentially, a peg with a built-in guard that appears to have a few flaws. The reasoning they give on the site such as "Hub guards are not simple to assemble and too large for its functionally" (Really? How?) and so on seems pretty debatable, and I'm fairly sure the lack of compatibility, limiting it's lifespan by having one point to grind on (Not the only peg like that, I know, but that doesn't make it good) and having a guard that could potentially bend upwards into the hub/spokes doesn't really count in it's favour either. I'm just still amazed that they're planning on releasing that frame with that seatpost setup (Apologies to the anonymous commenter who was unhappy I only listed 5 bad points with it, apparently that's not 'backing it up' enough)...
Don't get me wrong, some of their products are nice, but some of them just make no sense whatsoever.
RideUS are planning a follow-up to the awesomeness that was Insight, in the form of "Range Of Motion". To quote their release: The Concept Four riders who are well-rounded, able, and astounding on anything you put in front of them—Dennis Enarson, Tony Hamlin, Sergio Layos, and Dave Dillewaard. Take those four riders on three trips focusing on each type of riding. Trip number one, a park trip up in the Great Northwest, has already gone down. A dirt trip up in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York is going on at this very moment. And a street trip along the California coast will go down about a month from now. Now add in four more shredders on each trip that specialize, if you will, in what we’ll be riding that trip. Drew Bezanson, Simon Tabron, Darin Read, and newbie Ryan Wert went up to Oregon to ride cement. Cory Nastazio, Adam Baker, Mike “Hucker” Clark, and Luke Parslow are with us right now in the Northeast. And Aaron Ross, Garrett Reynolds, Sean Sexton, and Rob Wise will be with us in Cali.
...and this is a video from their first trails trip. Serious business!
Retribution have their Owl T's available now, and also have this Saturday Shenanigans video up. Controversial! They say they got it from an "Undisclosed location" but I'm fairly certain I know who made that...
Tony Watkinson rode for 20 minutes after the Worlds, and Mike King documented.
Morgan Wade has something to say, to quote the title of Ride's old Chase Hawk interview.
Now, when I saw that this video was to describe a frame's seat clamping system, I was skeptical prior to even clicking play. A seat clamp clamps your seat post. It generally does this through you tightening a bolt. How much more complicated than that could it be? And if your seat clamp system needs an explanatory video, maybe that tells you you should re-design it?
I should've known prior to clicking play as well that the seat in question was probably going to be slammed, meaning that whatever clamping system it required wouldn't have to be that good in any case, and so it was no surprise when it was indeed a slammed seat.
At this point, it's probably best to let you watch the video so you can get the point of it all.
Yeah, what were they thinking? I'd been told from a few people via e-mail I was being too critical on here and being a sourpuss and all that, but honestly, this isn't a unique system, and it's not even a good one. Firstly, the "Bolt your seat into your frame" idea has been around for a while. I went to Farnborough skatepark and out of the 15 or so people there, I was the only one with a normal seat-clamp. Everyone else had a bolted in post to varying degrees of sophistication and accuracy. Regardless of that though, what about people - like, for example, me - who don't have access to a vice and a power-drill? I thought the days of having to mess around using industrial tools to piece your bike together were over, but apparently not. Making someone have to drill a product to be able to run it on your frame is ridiculous.
This whole 'locked in' idea that everyone seems to get for stuff like seatposts, stems, forks and bars is also a really, really bad one. George French wrote about it at length in a Ride tech column a while back, but essentially, a bit of give in your bike is a good thing. If you fall off and your, say, stem/forks are locked together, if you hit yourself into your bars there's going to be no give. Instead of the stem twisting on the forks and giving you a bit of a cushioned impact, it's full force (Unless you bend your bars - how can that be a 'good' thing?). The same goes for your seat. I've taken a seat to the leg before, and even with a bit of give it still hurt and still tweaked my seat a bit. If it had been totally locked in, the bruised calf I got would've been a lot worse. Equally, my seat would've probably been a bit worse off too. I'm pretty sure everyone's seen a "Gonzo" Pivotal seat - it's even such a recognised problem that Eclat have named their seat that theoretically reduces the problem in it's honour - so having your seat taking the full force of any impact isn't really a great idea, is it?
Anyway, that's probably enough. For those tuning in for news 'n' stuff, that's coming up next. Apologies for the superfluous nature of this post!
