Your excuses don't impress me

When you tell me you have to take your foot off to do a "shoulder buzzer" straight air on your mountain bike, this is all I'm thinking of:

Philosophy, literature, and team robot

"The trickster is an important archetype in the history of man. He is a god, yet he is not. He is the wise-fool. It is he, through his creations that destroy, points out the flaws in carefully constructed societies of man. He rebels against authority, pokes fun at the overly serious, creates convoluted schemes, that may or may not work, plays with the Laws of the Universe and is sometimes his own worst enemy. He exists to question, to cause us to question not accept things blindly. He appears when a way of thinking becomes outmoded needs to be torn down built anew. He is the Destroyer of Worlds at the same time the savior of us all."

That + laser eyes =

 

WARNING from TEAM-ROBOT

My heart died today

http://m.bikeradar.com/mtb/news/article/burgtec-enduro-stem-first-look-37372

Burgtec, the ultimate NFG fad-ignoring company that built cool shit to survive the apocalypse, today sacrificed their integrity to the Enduro gods today and made an "Enduro stem." Which in the parlance of eras past would have been known as "a 50mm stem."



Also, in a move that is equally shocking but even more devastating to their loyal fan base, Burgtec announced their already stellar pedal will no longer be made out of solid unbreakable 22mm thick dick-crushing aluminum, it will now be made out of flimsy trend-whoring weak pussy-ass 17mm thick aluminum.

We salute you, Burgtec. You had a great run.

My new goal

I've been traveling a bunch, and I can never find the time or concentration to do my homework when I'm traveling, and at this point, writing for TEAM ROBOT is more like homework than fun. So there goes one more part of my life that I previously enjoyed.  Life is tough, what with free food, travel, riding my bike all over the world, having to hike runs for pro photographers, it's a lot for one guy to handle.

And that's why Patrick has been the only one updating TEAM ROBOT.

Anyway, I finally realized what my new goal is for my racing "career." Previously, I had hoped to have a long and successful career, to grow over time as a rider and as a person, and develop over time into a consistently fast rider who could point to a finely honed knowledge of race craft and a deep understanding of what it means to be a competitor in mind, body, and soul.

But then I saw the Danny Hart 5.10 video "Hart and Soul" and the new Red Bull/Brook MacDonald self-congratulatory bro echo chamber "Born and Raised," and it hit me:

I don't have to be a consistently good rider to get a big movie deal. I just have to win one race.

By the way, Redbull TV has the most crazy long embed code in the world, and I can't figure out how to make it NOT auto play. Amateur hour.



Danny Hart wins World Champs = Five Ten movie deal.

Brook MacDonald wins one World Cup race = Red Bull movie deal.


In fact, being consistently fast actually seems to be counterproductive if you want to land the big movie deal. It's not like Red Bull didn't have another meteoric success story from a young rider to point to inside the Red Bull camp. You know, like if Red Bull had a rider who was developing into the winningest downhill rider in the history of the sport?  One who had already broken several records, who redefined the sport, and who only seemed to be getting faster year to year. One who broke a nation's piss poor record on the international stage and seems almost unbeatable when he puts his mind to it. AKA a true "champion," not just someone who won a race once. Where could they find someone like that on their roster?

No, I can't think of anyone either.

And please don't say "but Brook won Junior World Champs." First of all, he won in Canberra, which pretty much doesn't count unless you're Peaty, in which case we were all looking for an excuse to give him the medal anyway. Peaty earned that medal ten years before he ever won it in Canberra, and 2009 was more of a knighting ceremony than anything else. His name is "Sir Steve Peat," right? Realistically, if you weren't Steve Peat in Canberra, your medal should read "Sorta [women's/junior] Downhill World Champ, Kinda."

Second of all, no one really cares about junior world champs after you're 18. It's great news if you win it, but if you show up to a senior men's race the next year in a rainbow jersey you're not gonna race until you take the jersey off. And that's not even my rule, that's the UCI. It's kind of like showing up to a job interview with your spelling bee medal from the fifth grade. Sure, everyone's happy for you that you did so great as a kid, but this is the big leagues now and your kid medal doesn't mean shit anymore. You think I'm being harsh? Ruaridh Cunningham won World's in 2007, two years before Brook. Where's his "the Making of a Champ" movie deal? Exactly, no one gives a shit.

So when Red Bull says "the Making of a Champ" in referrence to Brook MacDonald, they're pretty much referring to him being a World Cup Champ. No, not a World Cup Overall Champ, Not a Worl Champion, they're referring to him being the Champion of a single World Cup round. And that's fine, I guess, but why that deserves a movie when Greg Minnaar has been winning races and World Champs and World Cup Overalls since before I went through puberty, and despite Red Bull rider Aaron Gwin's current campaign to be the best downhill racer in the history of downhill racing... it's puzzling.

I didn't watch it, but I only hope they decided to make the Brook movie so they can use lots of bulldog puns.

So yeah, basically I'm just jealous.

-Written by NW Cup Champ Charlie Sponsel

The kill list

It's crazy how close pearl jam is to the top of the kill list. They're not at the very top, but they definitely have a clear view of the top from where they are. 

Bar height + recent mtb trends + pro ho = compensating for something, probably skill

From Bob:

"fyi Matt Thompson runs TWO stem spacers. What's your problem?"

And he's right. Matty T has a bike check up on Vital right now, and the big guy has twice as many stem spacers as me. And he's running an XL frame, which in my estimation is Xtra rad. 

So I'm definitely falling behind in the cool guy "who can put their bars higher" game. On the plus side, I'm friends with Matt Thompson now on Facebook, so hopefully he can teach me his ways. I've got that going for me. 

In all seriousness though, my stem spacers are the most awesome stem spacers in the world, because mine were handmade in The Commander's garage. That's +5hp for sure. 

Plus I have spacers under my crown, so my bar height's way taller anyway. So really Bob's way off base is what I'm trying to say.

These are the things I think about on long plane flights and drives. I probably need a job or a girlfriend. Probably in that order. 

Can we just mercy kill Ellsworth already?

Ellsworth bikes look even worse than they ride, well maybe that's a little harsh they look like a broken mspaint abortion of a kids crayon drawing of a mountain bike, and they ride like an Ellsworth mountain bike from the 90's.

its like AIDS and Cancer got together via "pinkbike chat" and were all like "hey bro lets totally make a bike company" and they did, but that was 67 years ago, and they have been making the SAME god awful bike over and over again year after year.

we at TEAM-ROBOT in an unprecedented act of mercy take pity on Elsworth bikes. Allowing them to kill themselves before the robot apocalypse and save us all a lot of trouble.

The "Don" is still better than you.

outside of proving the fact that Downhillers who don't make it can just retire to "enduro", Neil kills it with this video.

Black Jeans check

the Stooges check

flat pedals check

stupid wheels check

all the elements are there for a fun little video.

Neil Donoghue - Bronson Play on Pinkbike

oh yeah and Neil is a badass on any bike.(most notebly a shitty Azonic recoil from about 2002)

all he needs now is a redbull helmet and no personality, a full season of getting his ass kicked by nameless french guys and he can be the UK's Curtis Keene.