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whats upp errrrbody, just got back from AF super late last night. The weekend and the AngelFire 5 DH race, 2 day event was awesome! Race course 1 - Boulder Dash - one of the most popular trails at the bike park. Boulder dash is a blue rated trail that has endless tabletop jumps from top to bottom. I had a pretty clean run and ended up 6th of 27 in the open men category, 1.0 seconds away from 4th place. fitness is where I could've improved my time on this course. there were some flat areas where I could've cranked harder and stayed out of the saddle and made up more time Race Course 2 - Chillin' to Lemonade - Chillin is one of the gnarliest double black trails on the mountain. steep and very chunky, many opportunities to get caught up hard if you get comfortable, and connects to the Lemonade trail, which is a very fast and bermy blue trail. I felt super fast up top in the gnarly stuff but my rear tire slid out in one of the huge berms on upper chillin', it felt like I got on my bike again really quickly, but watching the video, it was about a 12 second mistake. the time loss dropped me down 2 spots for 8th place for the day, and 8th place overall for the event. a couple of mentions - these DH race formats are different than the local enduros. at the local enduros, they strap a timing chip on your bike and say "go do all the stages in any order and at your own pace, have fun". whereas these dh races, you have a specific number plate, specific start time, and you have to line up and watch people launch until its your turn. the nerves and anxiety leading up to your run it a hardcore mental game! check it out - also - day 1 I raced my beloved Guerrilla Gravity Megatrail 160/160 27.5, was an excellent choice for the boulder dash race course. But after me race run, I felt pretty pumped and decided to do a hot lap down World Cup DH with a group of guys there. In the front of the pack, in one of the gnarliest sections of the trail. the unthinkable happened. My Chromag BZA Carbon 800mm bar's left grip snapped off with zero warning in the middle of pinning it through a nasty rock garden! I went down pretty hard but luckily landed in about the softest part of the whole trail. missed any big rocks any everything. my reaction was mainly adrenaline and having the shit scared out of me once that grip broke away!

Glad to hear all went well (enough). When we completed our lap, it was noticeable the amount of cars that had left early. We got caught on the other side of the trail (just before the staircase) with a flat and fixed it in the rain. I was pleased with the amount of people that showed up today. I believe we had about 10-12 ppl and everyone was accounted for by the time we all left. No broken wrists this time either! Our group only did 1 lap because the precipitation made the rocks NASTY. But the first lap was all-in-all a big success. Since nobody got 2 laps in, there's a *chance* we may find another spot in the calendar to call a 2 lap pre-ride. Stay tuned.... Cheers, -CJB

Every time I locked my bike out for a climb I remembered that halfway down, mostly from the bone jarring bumps. Lockout is not worth it to me.

And moist.

Well, about 3.25 miles in I realized I forgot my saddle bag which has all my spares, tubes, and CO2 cartridges. I realized it b/c I had to stop to tighten my thru-axle lever which was loose and rattling. Well, I eventually lost it completely. I went back to my car, then back out to see if I could find it and to get more miles in close to my car in case I had a mechanical. Got about 15.5 miles in of gnarly trail and had a blast right up until it started raining. Thanks for the ride call Cody!

I have carbon bars on both my bikes. No issues.

You said dropper - you are out of the competition. We will only allow Hite Rite.

that I shim my quick release (that's right) rear axle with scissor-cut bean can lid folded spacers to keep the wheel from being too close to either seat (or chain) stay,whatever. that my five year old bald crossmarks are more exposed threads than black rubber. that the large ring on my 3x9 has roughly the same amount of teeth missing as bartman's grandma. that my dropper post cable loosely spirals around my downtube without zip-ties or any other bullshit. that one clipless pedal has been broken for over a year but I just switched to Five Tens. anyone else?

I was just gonna say how badass it is that someone said sorry and I wuz gonna respect that, Cuz. Just for this I will create a haiku in the spirit of our forever hero who died doing what he loved Mehoway. Sum times wee fuck up but it's cool to make it right never is too late

Attacking stuff might be part of the problem. One of the things that I find on really long rides is that it is not worth burning up all of your energy on trail features. I find that I can probably clear ~80% of CP on a typical ride, but on the EB I walked a lot more than I normally do. For instance, the bench climb burns up a lot of energy, and for what? I rode it until my body said no mas, then I hopped off and walked the rest of the way. Wasn't worth burning my energy there. But, I am also the idiot riding up Jester when other people walked it (for the same reason). But I just wanted to get out of the sun.

I believe there is a difference between carbon bars for XC riding and carbon bars for DH riding. And, i’ve Ridden with people who have snapped Aluminum bars. I remember Bizzaro walking his bike out of RHR after a hunk off a bridge.

From what I recall, Devinci just redesigned their frames to offer 100% carbon VS the 60/40 with aluminum rear triangle found on previous models. Another thing to consider is bigger travel/enduro bikes are more popular and the shocks they feature are now piggyback or more advanced also driving the price up.

Glad you’re ok dude. That is some scary chit. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Ahem.... Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Over torque on that dropper lever bruh?

Obvious solution - buy Renthal! Seriously dude I'm really glad you're OK. That is truly some scary shit. I did snap a carbon brake lever the other day after washing out on a sharp turn, but the only consequence was having to finish my ride with a sharp, nubby front brake lever.

Got the new drivetrain installed after some back and forth obtaining the right parts. Note to self: Shimano sells a shifter that won't bolt on to a handlebar unless you have other Shimano stuff bolted there too. Ordering the correct part the first time would result in faster conversion. Taking advantage of the air conditioning outside today I tested the 1x11 (Juan El Eban, get it?) on familiar trails and found that the range of 11-46 coupled to a 32 up front provided everything I needed to have a great time. Plus the added bonus of no longer having to keep in mind which ring I'm on. That aspect was liberating, as now I only have one shifter to deal with and felt no lost love for the parts removed. Sorry, front derailleur and shifter, you'll have to accept that it is over between us. Hands down, this is the best $180 I've spent on the bike I can recall. The fact that as we age, recall becomes suspect, further exemplifies how losing the other shifter is a win-win. The shifting is the most crisp and positive of any rear derailleur I've owned. The combo of clutched derailleur and narrow-wide ring was flawless. In addition to the front derailleur and shifter I also removed a dual step chain roller that was no longer needed. It is a very clean machine now. Also filled the left-hand shifter's vacant spot with a Knog Oi bell. An amazing low-profile dinger that fits snugly between grip and brake, almost disappearing behind the lever for the X-Fusion dropper. Gotta love a tidy set of controls.

Seth - this has a bit of a dickish tone to it but I’m going to assume you didn’t mean it that way. If we all stopped riding parts based on their ability to survive you, Jenson might go out of business. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Zeitgeist was a shitty documentary. Contrived preaching to the choir regardless if you agree with the subject matter or not. So poop torts it is.

The only thing that bothers me about carbon is buying used from an unknown source.

You guys make me feel warm and fuzzy.

Ahhh... Apology accepted.

Pick and choose your trail sections wisely and it's all good. Ride my rigid 29 to Brushy via roads/granite/dirt then roll whatever parts of brushy that my old ass feeling that day.

John, I think that's the point. You won't need to think about messing with it, the switch happens in 3 milliseconds. You won't have to think about locking it out or opening it back up (or forgetting to) anymore. I'm not really endorsing it at this point, just saying this is a big selling point of it.

I use headset spacers cut from old bent frames. I have a small 8ish mm lift block on my Shimano Shadow+ RD pinch screw to change the pull ratio so I can run a SRAM 9spd shifter on one of my bikes. I make my own tubeless valves stems by cutting them out of old tubes. I use gorilla tape for tubless instead of Stans. I used to make my own sealant too, but I got lazy. I broke a Maxle lever, so I put an allen bolt through the rivet hole and use a wrench to tighten it. I cut SS cog spacers from pvc pipe. I hammered pvc fittings into some of my handlebars to widen them 10-20mm. That's just off the top of my head for recent years... whatever works, IMO.

Talk to Morealice on Mojo. He did Brushy for a while with a CX bike as he was on spousal bike buying restriction. He used to blow by me with drop bars on Deception proper before I met him in person.

Pretty much this. Its coming and will be a welcomed improvement over fiddling with knobs but it's gonna need a little time. Magnetic suspension is the end game.

Looks great in my garage, gonna take it to Walnut tomorrow some time.

Sluggo...nice name change. I changed mine too.