Libikerdad

When you spend $140 on goggles when the $25 pairs work just fine; you want people to know you spent $140, hence the logos

I don't know. If you are travelling to ride somewhere such as sentiers du moulin where the majority of the riding involves big climbs and you only have a week or so to ride the area and ebike makes a huge amount of sense. If you are doing a ride after work in your local spot and it's not gravity trails than a mtb makes sense but an ebike is still fun. I ride my regular mtbs locally but if I'm traveling and I want to get the most riding for my money and ebike is definitely the way to go

I'm of the same mind. Brakes are not the place to be counting grams

Ebikes are awesome. Go to quebec and try to ride some of the trails there without an ebike and tell me how many runs you get. No matter what fitness level you have if the terrain is gravity oriented and there is no lift or shuttle you are simply getting more runs with an ebike

I have used both and I have found that I prefer the canfield brother crampons (convex) to any other flat pedal I have tried. I have tried the stamps, nukeproof horizon, one up composites (which are great for the price), diety Tmacs, and a few others.

Same. Have my V1 set up with a mezzer at 140 travel, a push 11-6, hayes dominion a4 brakes, and continental dh tires (for summer use, use maxxis exo in winter) and the bike can ride anything from rolling terrain to technical double black trails at mountain creek bike park. This is pretty much the bike to have if you could only have one bike

2.5k miles out of a cassette

@Superboost: I'm usually around 2k miles 200k ft elevation, so not that far off from you. I use t9 but have used finish line and others in the past. I'm getting about 2.5miles out of a xt cassette but have yet had to replace a front chain ring. Wondering if it's a difference in the type of aluminum used. Asked a bunch of riding buddies and they pretty much said the same. One guy I ride with is an absolute monster (has tacod cassettes) and said he used to go through the Chinese rings quite a bit but hasn't had to replace a single AB of 5dev one yet

@RonSauce: just looked at strava, I have over 3500 miles on my current ring and it is barely showing any wear

@Superboost: do you lube your chain often? On my current bike I have about 3k miles and I'm still on the same absolute black oval I built it with. I'm not the heaviest rider at 165lbs but maybe you are doing crazy mileage or maybe there is a certain power threshold that I'm just not hitting at my weight and power level (I would think at my weight I'm above average in that regards) because I'm definitely not seeing that kind of wear on any of my geared bikes or my singlespeed.