thekaiser

@strangemeadowlark: Yeah, in VT, the default is that land can be traveled upon, and the responsibility is on the landowner to post their land "no trespassing" at very specific intervals around the perimeter, and the signs need to have the dates updated regularly, in order to restrict access. Many other states are the reverse, where the default is that you may not trespass on private property without express landowner permission.

This new crop of chain dampers are also thought to reduce the effect of chain flail yanking on the cranks, and hence your feet, so it's more than just preventing the noise of the chain slap on the chainstay. I don't think the Ochain devices that everyone seems to like would improve the chain slap situation at all, but apparently they feel great at the feet. This device is somewhere in the middle and could improve both chain slap noise and flail feedback at the cranks.

It doesn't achieve your "reduced inertia for small bumps" goal, but there is a guy on the Vital forum who has shown a homemade fork design that uses a conventional telescopic Fox fork, mounted to a sort of Girven style linkage with a second shock absorber at the top, so each system has different tuning potential and different axle paths. You might want to check it out, just for fun.

I'm actually largely in agreement with you, but playing devils advocate, what you're saying is true for a fixed distance, but not a fixed time. I'm going to round the numbers here for ease of discussion but this climb takes approximately 36min on a regular bike, 18min on ebike eco-mode, and 9min on a higher power mode. He didn't include a regular bike in the test but stated that figure and other commenters who ride there have verified this. Assuming a fixed heart rate on all bikes, when compared to the regular bike he will have burned about 1/2 the calories on the ebike in eco mode, and about 1/4 the calories when on the ebike in a higher power mode, because he is putting out the same effort, but for a proportionally shorter time (because the bike motor is helping to complete the climb faster). To your point, that does equal an easier ride, because the work interval will only be 1/2 or 1/4 the amount of time as on the regular bike. But the ebike would allow him to do many more laps in a given amount of time. If we discard descending time (it is trivially small compared to climbing time and isn't relevant to our work performed discussion) then the ebike rider on eco mode could do 2 laps in the amount of time it takes to do 1 on a regular bike, and the ebike rider on a higher setting could do 4 laps in that same amount of time. That would make the total minutes of effort and calories burned approximately equal across all 3 scenarios, with the main difference being that the ebike rider got more descending. I suppose you could argue that the shorter work intervals on the ebike would be still be easier, because he's getting a rest period between each climb, but in terms of calorie output and time in a given hart rate zone, doing 36min of climbing at 150ish BPM will be equivalent regardless of if it is achieved over 1 slow lap, 2 faster laps, or 4 super fast laps.

@southshorepirate: There are a lot of variables in that situation with your buddy, but to your point about cadence and gear choice, each motor system will have a RPM range at which it operates more efficiently. Generally that is in the 75-100rpm cadence range, but again, it varies depending on the motor design, with some doing better at the extremes and even beyond that range. You can find some pretty in-depth charts that cover that info and more, such as torque and power curves on the Velomotion motor test articles. In terms of wear and tear on the motor, higher cadence and lower torque are also generally better, so your style seems advantageous for a few different reasons.

@kfccoleslaw: I could see that being the case. In a forward tumbling fall (bending), it's more possible to tuck and roll to distribute the forces, but coming straight in (compression) there's not much you can do. The other terrible scenario is the dreaded "scorpion" fall, where the neck is bent back, but those seem to be pretty uncommon in MTB (I see videos of them more in skateboarding and BMX) and even though they look terrible in terms of bending the body in a very unnatural way, I'm unsure how often they result in spinal injuries. Either way, glad you're OK!

In the picture of Gracey in the right column above, she's wearing long sleeves down to the wrist, and you can see the outline of elbow pads under the jersey.

@kfccoleslaw: That looks like a pretty nice brace, but doesn't it give up 1/2 the protection in order to not restrict movement.? It emphasizes that it reduces "compression" forces only, so basically going head first into the ground like a lawn dart, but it doesn't protect from forces trying to bend the neck forward or backward excessively. Do we know what percentage of serious neck injuries are from "compression" vs. bending? If compression is the vast majority, then this could be a great tradeoff, but if it is half or less, then the tradeoff doesn't look so good.

@Struggleteam: Several of the brace brands changed the designs to give the collar bone more breathing room, so that concern seems to be less of an issue now. The vision one I could see being a problem. Not sure how much leeway there is between the head and neck angles used to look ahead on steep terrain, and the head and neck angles where injury can occur. I would have figured with the more upright body position of MX (and the new high-rise bar upright "MX style" DH riding positions that some riders are using) the field of vision restriction would be less of an issue.

@tgr9: If I recall correctly, Revel is in a similar situation to Kona, where the original owners sold the company to a Private Equity firm during the Covid bike bubble for a ton of money, and then the Private Equity firm (combined with the bursting of the Covid bubble) drove the company into bankruptcy. Then the original owners were able to buy the company back out of bankruptcy, but presumably are in a much better financial situation now as they have the spoils of the original sale, combined with being freed of the debts due to the 2nd owners bankruptcy. Assuming I am on track with that assessment, that should actually put them in a pretty awesome position to make business choices based on their long term goals and interests, rather than just trying to pay the basic bills each month.