Minikeum

Ever tried riding downhill using only one single brake? That is on a trail, not the road. Give it a shot, you might be surprised at which brake is the most useful/safer one. Bent a rear rotor a couple years back. Removed it, and tried to go back down to the car with only the front brake. I quickly switched the front rotor to the back. Front wheel was constantly locking and sliding, granted that was in Spain: quite dusty and lose terrain. Point is: rear rotor is the one controlling your speed, and is much more used than the front one, in mtb application.

Sucks for probikeshop. Basically every extra penny I had went to them when I started working

Put yourself in the shoes of the organizers. They’ve got lots of responsibilities on their shoulders. They know the place, dirt conditions, track conditions, better than any of the keyboard warriors out there. And probably better than the juniors as well. It’s a bit like when a captain decide to cancel a flight due to adverse conditions. He’s probably making a lot of people angry, but ultimately, he’s making the right choice. Better to have a bunch of angry people than an incident, or an accident.

@bashhard: love it

There is a big market to replace all the Fox X2 and DHX2

BOS Idylle 39 SC

A bit of scale: 10 cubic meter of air going through a wind mill at 80 km/h gives you about as much energy as 3mL of oil. 1g of uranium gives you as much energy as roughly 1 ton of oil, or 2.5 tons of coal. Modern wind mill power is typically 4 to 5 MW (one single nuclear reactor is generally 1GW, and there are often more than one reactor in a single power plant). There are some bigger and smaller wind mills, but onshore wind mills are around that. This rated power typically occurs with winds around 40km/h. However, power of a wind mill increases with the cube of the wind velocity. That is, at 20km/h wind velocity, the wind mill produces 8 times less power than at 40km/h. Under 10km/h of wind, even if spinning, the windmill doesn’t generate power. Finally, because renewables power is “unreliable” (you get only power during sunny or windy days), it increases the operating cost of all the other plants (nuclear, but also coal and natural gas) because they can’t run at their nominal load all the time. Don’t tell me about energy storage. It will not be available in time (if ever) in the massive scales we would need to run 100% on renewables.

@ottifant: one reason nuclear energy is expensive is because of the cost of money. A power plant is a huge initial investment, and low operating costs relative to the energy produced. Build a power plants with low interests rates, and its overall cost won’t actually be that high. EROI of nuclear is around 50. EROI of wind mills is 10 to 20 (drops if you include storage). Solar panels is at 5. Coal and natural gas around 30.

@Chuckolicious: I’m glad the US is investing in this technology and I wish Europe did too. France had a plan but they ditched it. China also has something in development which, if done properly, is great news since they are the factory of the world.