BRRAAAAAAPPPPP

Kevin Windham. Isn't he, like, a thousand years old by now? Monster dash for cash, 2011.

Studying your enemy

After carefully studying the humans, we have concluded that their bodies are frail and weak.

More procrastinating

TEAM ROBOT APPROVED: The bungee cord is for all the tail you'll be picking up on this sweet rig.

Your team





Little bikes. Opposite threes and a table to turndown. Gnarly and tech. This definitely doesn't suck.

METAL MONDAY! (at 3 am)

your team listens to the soundtrack from three minute gaps ....
ALL HAIL TEAM-ROBOT!
ALL HAIL! ALL HAIL! ALL HAIL!
Bow before your masters!

Things you can't do

There are people who can do all of the things listed below. Statistically speaking, you're probably not one of them.


Things you can't do #1: Scrub.



Above: Ian Morrison, one of four or five riders who can actually scrub, going down with the ship at Whistler

Below: a Venn Diagram reiterating that you are probably not one of those four or five riders

Things you can't do #2: Nose manual.



Above: an actual nose manual

Below: your nose manual

Things you can't do #3: Build "the sickest jumps ever." You probably you can't ride them, either.



Above: The sickest jumps ever

Below: "The sickest jumps ever"

Your team

Things you can't do #4: Break those cuffs.

OUR CONDOLENCES! from TEAM ROBOT

A message to your team.

robots don't have mothers.

-pfunk

Stuff that doesn't suck

This

Sucks so bad. Jon from Diamondback sent me this, expecting I would have something hilarious to say on Team Robot. I've got nothing; It's reached a level of badness that renders even my most powerful weapons useless.


See how far you can make it through. Here's the leader's board right now:

Kyle Thomas: 30 seconds
Charlie Sponsel: 1 minute 20 seconds
Billy Lewis: 1:38
My dad: 2:35

Due to the upchuck reflex, make sure you have a trash can or fairly expendable hat nearby before you hit play.



To get that bad taste out of your mouth, I'll leave you with something that doesn't suck:

No, that sucks, too.

ETT: the freeride flick

Possible captions:

"I'm slow, but I have a downhill bike and I want to look like I know how to ride it. If I just throw my bike around wildly it will look like I'm riding a really tough trail. I think I'm the first person to ever do this."

"Hey guys, check it out! I saw this move on every Matt Miles/Silvia video, every Steve Romanuik movie segment ever and on about 95% of the Coastal Crew edits."

"If I could do this in midair I would actually look cool."


In case you were wondering, the term "freeride flick" does not refer to a video about freeriding, unless you're the sort of d-bag that would refer to a film as a "flick." If you are that sort of d-bag, you have come to this website in error. This is a picture of Matt Miles performing a freeride flick. It is also largely indistinguishable from the photo above:

"My front and rear tires can't agree what direction we're supposed to be going."

Team robot race winning tactic #194: convince your competition that freeride flicking is the fastest way through a turn.





FACT: A little bit of Alex Rankin's soul dies every time someone does a Freeride flick.

Freeride flicks came into vogue around 2006, pioneered by Canadian freeriders who had to compete for movie spots with downhill racers that actually knew how to ride their bikes. By late 2007 Rankin's soul could not handle the abuse any longer, and he retired from filming the World Cup to rest and recuperate at his home in England. In 2009 the Coastal Crew formed. By early 2010 Alex Rankin was a full blown Ginger. His soul had been trampled and spat on, and ultimately it disappeared.

Alex Rankin, circa 2010. Over the past five years his soul was crushed and killed, and by 2009 he was a full blown ginger; a hollow shell of the once great filmmaker we all knew. RIP.

A REMINDER! from TEAM ROBOT

Seek and Destroy

A typical ride on my XC bike. The Commander mounted up his GoPro underneath my visor, so it's about as close to robotvision as you can get without wiring directly into the CPU. Once I got to the bottom I turned the helmet cam off, raised my seatpost, and pedaled back up. Moral of the story: your team sucks.

Other cool helmet cams: suspension action from Phil's custom steel gearbox bike, the Earth Raper. So not only do you, your team, and your trails all suck, but your friends also suck compared to Team Robot. You should probably just end your pathetic human existence now and save us robots the electricity.

Reason #72a that I haven't posted on Team Robot in a while

I've been performing high level biology research.

Reason #513 why I haven't posted on Team Robot in a while

You suck.

Empirically speaking, within the academic literature this position is widely agreed upon. In case there are any skeptics, I've prepared a helpful pie chart that takes an otherwise complex, boring, wordy academic theory and puts it in simple, easy to understand terms:

As you can see in the chart, I concede that I do suck. You just suck a lot more.

Reason #372 that I haven't posted on Team Robot in a while

I'm dead.

Things that are totally stock

That head angle.

The Rennie

I don't get it. I listened to the whole thing and I still didn't hear you say when you're coming back to World Cup racing.




Fun Fact:

In 2004, The Rennie produced 2080 watts in a power test at the Australian Institute of Science. He was offered a position racing track bikes but declined as he wanted to stay on the World Cup downhill circuit "and keep pummeling shit." This fun fact is available to you in the "Nathan Rennie Talks 2012" video, along with other fun Rennie trivia. We only include this tidbit because, due to our highly sophisticated robot algorithms, we predict that your puny human attention span would never allow you to watch an 18 minute video on youtube.

We know that you won't watch the whole Rennie video, because Team Robot has been doing extensive testing. Team Robot created several test videos to determine human subject's ability to endure long videos on the internet. Here are some of the sample videos and the results from these experiments:




Justin Bieber 800% slower: experiment failed. Subjects showed a total inability to sit through the long video. Most subjects strangled themselves with articles of their own clothing within several minutes, which was roughly how long it took them to figure out how to strangle themselves with their own clothing.





Zelda level "walkthrough:" experiment was a mixed success. Almost all subjects demonstrated a complete unwillingness to endure this video, and chose to hit the "instant death" button provided in the viewing room. However, some subjects reported a high level of interest in the video's content, and after the conclusion of the video inquired as to whether we had more "Zelda walkthroughs" for them to watch. These subjects were promptly eliminated.

Atherton GT team Launch

GT Atherton team launch video: experiment failed. Subjects fell asleep after watching Gee and Dan hit the same Pine Valley jump for the fourth time in a row. When subjects woke up, they unaminously agreed that the video was too long and boring. They also inquired as to why the film maker chose to film at Pine Valley and other Socal spots that have been filmed a hundred times and are totally played out. We did not have any good answers to the subjects questions, so the subjects were eliminated.





Trololo 50 hours: experiment failed. Subjects complained of overly euphoric sensations, and died within several minutes of irrepressible optimism and stokedness.





Kony 2012: experiment was runaway success. Subjects not only watched the video, but also emailed it to their friends, conversed openly about the video around watercoolers, painted the name of the video on the side of their Volkswagon Beetles and Jeep Wranglers, and also "shared" and "liked" the video with other humans on a crude human surveillance network called "facebook." Subjects reported an overwhelming sense of moral superiority and "awareness of global issues and shit" after watching the video. We created the video to appeal to American subject's sense of white privilege, guilt, and sense of moral obligation, but we carefully tailored it to not interfere with these same subject's desire to stay firmly planted in their armchairs. While our algorithms predicted some limited success for the video among disaffected college students, it's enormous and widespread success across mainstream culture and among adults who we computed would have had some level of the human attribute called "common sense" caught us totally by surprise.






Back on topic: 2080 watts represents an above average capacity for generating electricity for robot power cells. The Rennie has also demonstrated an above average capacity for crushing everything in sight, a value which robots also value:





Compared against most puny humans, The Rennie is what our robot statistical methods would call an "outlier."

Your team