manco

@pbfan08: @pbfan08: haha, I'm Outside now [see what I did there] and, hey, wait... is that you under that rock?

@PatMAE: That's called a false analogy folks. The parallels you're making are clearly conflating prerequisites with expertise. As a former professional athlete [incl extreme sport] the similarities between an individual training to navigate technical and dangerous terrain while surveying and calculating the risks before executing a run compared to training to beat another person to a pulp in a cage are nonexistent. The fact that they both do physical training to be highly fit is no more similarity than a fitness class at the gym has to MMA. I appreciate that you [and others] disagree but your opinion is just that, an opinion.

@bodhibruh: I ride a mtb and am fine if folks wanna ride an e-mtb. That said I think your statement, "E‑MTB's are actively growing the sport" is more acuratly stated as, "E‑MTB's are actively changing the sport". Remains to be seen just how positive or negative a picture that is, and while I ride technical trails that include jumps and drops, I think the weighted focus on jump lines, DH, free riding, etc. has had a greater negative affect on the sport than e-mtb's. My regional IMBA [sorbamidtn.org] group spends the largest % of everyones $ on building (and maintaining) jumps lines while few new [other] trails are built and nearly all maintenance is relegated to volunteer work. And yes, most of the jump line crew in Nashville, TN now ride e-bikes. The world is never static and Mtb'ing will change whether I like it or not. Just enjoy what & where you ride!

@PatMAE: training to beat someone to a bloody pulp has two things in common with training to skillfully navigate one's bike up/down challenging trails in the wild: 1/ Nothing 2/ Nothing.

@drlancefreeride: this is what a "maga'n" would say. genuine curiosity... more like living under a rock [w/ the other fascist folks].

so you're actually not about "function over form". you're statement is the opposite of function over form. What model Trek, Specialized, Santa Cruz do you ride?

Drawing ever closer to the forebear of visionary mountain bike geometry: Mondraker, Nicholai, Pole. They'll all get there when enough time has passed to steal it and call it their own.

The tired narrative that "I can ride three times as much vert as you can w/ my ebike" is a worn out trope. I love to mtb (flats, climb, descend) all of it. I have no need to "cover more vert". I just wanna ride for fun & fitness and enjoy the outdoors, friends and the challenge of doing it under my own power. If you wanna ebike, have at it but I'll wait till it's a necessity for me to ride.

I'm always surprised by so many riders still falling on conventions like "amount of suspension travel", "Reach", "Wheelbase", "overall weight", etc. dictating what the bike is suited to be used for. There are plenty of bikes with long travel, long reach, etc that are exceptional all-mtn bikes that work very well everywhere. They may not be XC race bikes but with forward thinking geometry these old standards are moot points. I really appreciate some of the smaller brands pushing & proving these old norms are truly obsolete.

Love to read some comments from people who have actually spent time riding an EXT Shock. Been riding them for 5 years now and they're really exceptional products.