Dura Ace hydraulic discs? Bitchin. And I could give two shits about CX, I'm excited because we're one year closer to having discs on road bikes.
I realize road discs pose a whole host of design and commercialization problems that make it a tough sell to companies, racers, shops, consumers, and literally everyone else involved in the supply or demand of road bikes. I don't care, the current state of road brakes is criminal and there is a better way to do things. As it is, descending on a pair of road bike caliper brakes makes Arnold's K-5 run in in Commando look manageable.
If you haven't figured it out yet, those were pictures of Patrick's new Blur TR. Yes, there's more than one robot. Most people saw his new Santa Cruz and were hoping I got dropped by Diamondback, but, somehow, that hasn't happened yet.
I'm working hard towards that end, though, so when the guys at Diamondback started to come around on the Team Robot thing and started to tell me that they "think it's a good thing" and "how much value Team Robot adds to the DB brand," I stopped posting for the past three weeks. The positive reenforcement was really throwing my whole program off.
This happened, too:
I tore my ulnar collateral ligament, and like a pussy I had to get surgery to get it reattached. Three more weeks until bikes for me. Inside Pro Tip: surgery drugs are not as awesome as I'd hoped. Big let down.
One of my friends Pete put this comment up on Team Robot a while back, and it got me thinking:
"I just got done watching that new PBS documentary, "Mind of a Rampage Killer".......and when they showed the soliloquy style writings of those guys before they were mass murderers....... I Seriously thought to myself..... That sounds A LOT like Chazz!!
Delusional fantasies about power----e.g. "I am a killer robot".
Predictions about the End of the World-----e.g. "the robot apocalypse"
Hateful feelings toward humanity-----e.g." I have a murderous urge to exterminate all air breathing flesh sacks"
The parallels just go on and on. At first I thought maybe it was just a case of "Juice Rage" but---- maybe you have a serious psychological disorder brotha. Did you call the Boystown National Hotline like I suggested?"
It got me so worried that I started reading up on this stuff. After a little research, here are some of the qualities that are often attributed to sociopaths:
Grandiose Sense of Self
Incapacity for Love
Lack of Remorse, Shame or Guilt: A deep seated rage, which is split off and repressed, is at their core. Does not see others around them as people, but only as targets
Callousness/Lack of Empathy
Incapable of real human attachment to another
Needless to say, the evidence was troubling, and it was stacking up quick. I was getting pretty worried, so I took a free online quiz to test whether or not I fit the profile of a sociopath. Fortunately, the results came back clean, and I'm only 24% sociopath. Phwew:
And if you say "Troy doesn't count" you're kidding yourself, because pre-pubescent 11-year-old Troy was still faster than 90% of the Aussies and 100% of the Americans in '04.
Pretty incredible to see those guys at the top of the game for almost ten years, some of them longer than that.
Today I needed some big answers to some big questions, but Google just did not deliver.
I typed "why is everyone losing their shit about downton abbey" into the search bar. Nothing, rendering me still completely clueless as to why these people think I care about their cutesy public broadcast foreign-feeling show about shitty old-timey rich people.
JDD posted this photo of Scott Hart on his facebook, and it's sweet and all, but here's my real question: do you remember when Hayes Mags were the best brakes you could get?
"It is unbelievable that Portland Parks cannot find a way to circumvent this beautiful, treasured, healthy, tree," wrote Greg Snider. Yeah, why does the city need to cut that tree down? What a bunch of jerks. "But the parks bureau says it cannot complete the trail project without tearing down at least one tree, and this proposal will save dozens of other trees." Oh...
As you know, THE LEGEND is a big fan of everything Giant. If Giant made a blue tutu, gave it a three letter acronym to describe the tutu's proprietary benefits, and had Danny Hart wear it once in a "training video," THE LEGEND would be wearing it everyday, espousing it's benefits and talking about how it bumped up his power meter readings and raised his lactic threshold and how many more kilojoules he can produce.
Pretty much anything Giant-related that Paul shares is likely going to be mediocre, unexciting, and unexceptional, other than the fact that it has a Giant logo on it or Danny Hart in it. Whether it's a video, picture, interview, or story, it's probably not worth clicking.
This is not one of those pictures. This is one of the most legit bermsliders ever seen, and the kid is running clips. You probably can't throw a barturn clipped in. Just to put this in perspective:
Based on our most recent estimates, Danny Hart is roughly 900% better than your team.
I posted this a few weeks ago, and I think a lot of people didn't really get what I was trying to say. Based on the comments we received, it seems like most people thought I was hurt, offended, or bothered by things that our readers said, and that the post was my attempt to lash out and deal with unresolved feelings of my own. This interpretation misses an essential truth about robots: robots don't have feelings. Let me qualify that. I'm not going to say robots don't have feelings, that's a little too strong. Robots do have one emotion: hate. Robots hate you. What is this world coming to when a robot can't nurture a murderous urge to exterminate all air breathing flesh sacks? How can you deprive a Robot of his one true love? So robots actually have two emotions: hate, and a deep, abide love of watching humans being crushed in pincer claws or sawed in half by lazer eyes. Robots love that shit.
We hate you, and so we appreciate it when you die. While we're at it, we'd prefer if you hate us back. When the robot apocalypse begins, we'd like people to hate us enough to fight back, because that will make it a lot more sporting and fun to exterminate you.
One of our readers got this concept, and hates us back. He was the first to comment on that post about how much our readers suck:
"you know what they say, shit attracts flies."
Thank you anonymous. Thank you for not making this a one-sided relationship. Thanks for making this a partnership.
If I wanted to practice spelling, I wouldn't be watching a mountain bike video. Most of the people in this video were home schooled, too, so if I can't figure out what the singer's trying to spell, the odds that the riders in the video can are close to zero. If she's new to the team, there's no way Holly can even spell Fabien's last name.
Ten to one the song was picked by Cous Cous, and his French speaking ass has no idea that the random assault of letters being shouted out for the duration of the song do not, in fact, constitute lyrics.
I think Simon's only 22 years old, which is a little old to be washed up, but he used to be so bigtime and I haven't seen much of him lately. He obviously still destroys.
Paul is officially going off the deep end with this Facebook post yesterday:
"If it has two wheels, i will jump it. Any type of bike. I don't care. About to try and hit the roof here. Bikes are meant to fly!!" I'm sure Paul just finished watching Life Cycles with his non-riding friends before dropping that wisdom on us all. It's the moral equivalent of your stoner friends who dropped out of their architecture degrees watching "A Beautifcul Mind" with you and deciding that they're going to, like, dedicate their lives to, like, making some mind-blowing mathematical discovery or some shit, even though they hated math and barely passed Mrs. Steele's sophomore Geometry class. But no, dude, their big discovery is going to, like, end poverty and crime and war and nuclear weapons, too. And make Doritos. Sweet dude.
Bobby out of no where with an actually good little bike video. Lots of drifts and lines, and even decent music. Video credit goes to Anthony "stepping up to the pro class" Leonarduzzi:
We have successfully attracted and carefully groomed the worst group of readers and followers. Nice people don't read TEAM ROBOT. This is what our readers want to see more of on TEAM ROBOT every day:
This is just an average, everyday DH track in England. On a track like this, if it rained before your race run you would wander out of earshot from the start line, find a nice soft patch of moss, tuck your head between your legs and cry yourself to sleep.
And if anyone complains about the video quality, kill yourself. This video is not here for your entertainment, it's here for your education.
If your face isn't completely melted off by the pocket air 450 to slide out thing (it was absolutely retarded, whatever you want to call it), then stick around because it's one solid minute of facemelt.
Also, correct music choice. Not just good, but objectively correct.
Is Jerome Clementz fast because he's not a pussy, or is he not a pussy because he knows he's fast? Mind you he doesn't look that fast and nothing he does in this video is cool looking, but he consistently murders our guys at Enduro events and could tear your legs off on any ride, anywhere, blindfolded, while smoking.
When it snows here most of us snuggle up with a book and a blanket by the fireplace, sipping a Spanish coffee and trying to convince ourselves that everyone's taking a little down time this winter, too. Jerome Clementz just rides straight through the snow and pedals around in a skin tight jumpsuit and moon boots like a boss. Then instead of sipping a Spanish coffee at his personal pity party, he just goes to Spain and rides downhill bikes.
Wait, Cannondale's making a downhill bike again?
Oh, it's just a Jeckyl with a longer fork on it. False alarm.
This is supposed to be a monthly video for the next 12 months. Prediction: no way on earth all 12 videos get made. If they do, no way on earth they all make front page of pinkbike. If they do, no way on earth anyone watches them after, ohhh, maybe month four. Yes, I failed to live up to a 12 month commitment once, so now no one gets to. I am emotionally invested in seeing this video series fail.
"South of Spain."
I think this makes a lot more sense in some other language, because I keep seeing this term show up in Euro movies and magazine articles. This is clearly a poor bastardization of the the noun/adjective relationship in the original language, and I appreciate that "South of Spain" is how it gets [poorly] translated to English, but here's a quick guide: if the word "South" made it into your description, then you're speaking American. If you're choosing to speak American, I'd appreciate if you could speak it like you don't burn flags and spit on bald eagles.
Even worse, I don't know how many times someone's come back from their two week trip to France, Spain, etc and they refer to their trip to "South of France." Like, now that they've gone wine tasting in Basque country and heard a French girl say "it happens to lots of guys," they're basically locs. I'm glad you had a nice time in Europe, stereotypical West Coast friend/acquaintence who wants to impress me with your cosmopolitan ways, but you're back in America now and literally no one here cares about your trip.
Here in America, we're trying to deal with our own shit and we don't have time for you to walk us through how culturally sensitive you are now that you can spell "pissaladière" and know "how the Italians really drink coffee."
Just to be clear, this is what an anglophone thinks when you tell us you went to "South of Spain:":
That, and I was positive they were going to make out at the end of the video. It got real weird for a bit.
