Watch this Joey case a 20 ft double 5 times and get a pat on the back for it

Nice sunglasses. "Oh they're prescription."

Seatpost height hall of shame

Thanks to the elder Furbee for linking to this classic Lars and Bars hall of shame photo.

Also Eric Porter has the slammed seatpost of shame in his recent bike check on Vital.

Bonus hall of shame points for Porter for clamping his dropper post by the stanchion.

A lot of people in the comments didn't like my suggestion that having your dropper seatpost slammed *probably* means your bike is poorly set up or poorly fitted for you. I suspect that's because a lot of people have their bike poorly set up or poorly fitted and they don't like hearing about it.

The complaints all came in one of these three flavors:


1. My frame fits perfectly, bro. How do you know my post isn't at exactly the right height when the dropper is slammed?

How do I know it doesn't fit perfectly? Because it doesn't. Seat height is a tricky thing, and it's a game of millimeters. Pro road and XC guys sometimes obsess over seat height down to thousandths of an inch. Obviously long travel full suspension bikes don't require or allow that level of precision because the geometry changes as the bike cycles through travel, but dialing in seat height is still awful finicky.  Perfect seat height is really hard to find, and even when you find it, it can still change due to a myriad of factors. Sometimes you run the same seat height forever only to discover that your body has changed, necessitating a change in seat height. Sometimes you change your sag or compression settings on your rear shock, and that throws off your seat height. Sometimes you realize that you just had the wrong seat height in the first place because you're an idiot. Personally, I struggle with that last one a lot.

In all of those scenarios, you might want to change your seat height. If your seatpost was already slammed, you can't move it down. What I'm saying is: that sucks.




2. Anonymous asked "So if I want to put a 150mm drop Reverb on a frame where the original 125mm had over an inch clearance above collar I should buy a smaller frame?"

I can't believe I have to spell this out, but here's some quick math to help you out, Anonymous:


  More than an inch
- an inch
------------------------
More than zero inches


So, no, you shouldn't need to buy a new frame, and sorry, this article clearly had nothing to do with you and your non-problem. If you have more than an inch of post showing with a 125mm dropper, and you put a 150mm dropper on there with the same dimensions and run the same seat height (aka 1 inch longer), you will still have seatpost showing above the collar. That would be the sort of situation where you might say:

"Wow, that seatpost barely fits, didn't I get lucky? Judging by the fact that I still have some room to adjust, I am confident that I made the right decision for this bike, my riding needs, and my body dimensions. Boy I'm glad I made a smart decision." 



This would be in contrast to the alternative position that I highlighted in my recent blog post "Seatpost height," which goes something like this:

"When I attempt to put my seat at the correct position for proper leg extension, it leaves me no room for adjustment and fine tuning. Judging by the fact that I have no room for even minor adjustments, clearly this frame and seatpost combination is not correct for my riding needs and body dimensions. Bummer."


Now if you have less than an inch of post showing and you want to upgrade to a 150mm dropper, you're screwed. Either you have to settle for the wrong seat height, you have to buy a different frame or if you're really sketchy maybe face down your seattube until it's short enough, or you have to just deal with your 125mm post. What I'm saying is: that sucks.




3. I have a long torso, and if I buy the frame with the right reach length I have to run my post as low as it will go.

That would either mean your frame doesn't fit you, or you're running a bigger dropper post than you can get away with, or both. AKA the whole point of the article.

• If you have to run a bike with a toptube that's too short in order to get proper leg extension, that bike doesn't fit you.
• Conversely, if you have to run a bike where you can't get proper leg extension in order to get the proper top tube length, that bike doesn't fit you.
• Germans love David Hasselhoff.
• And Richie Schley.

Either way, that's a poorly fitting bike for your body dimensions. And the point of the article is that I can see from a mile away that your bike doesn't fit you when I look at your stupid dropper post that's slammed in the stupid seattube. What I'm saying is: that sucks.



Go to a mountain bike demo, any mountain bike demo, and watch the guys working the van try to size people on modern mountain bikes with dropper posts. There's not a single day that goes by where some tall gangly bastard says "I can't get this dropper post high enough for proper leg extension, I'm running it above the minimum insertion line" or some tiny dwarf midget says "I can't get this dropper post low enough for proper leg extension, it's slammed and it's still not low enough." That's true if it's a Santa Cruz demo, an Ibis demo, a Diamondback demo, or a Specialized demo.

There is simply not a sufficient range of adjustment for modern mountain bikes with dropper posts. Sure, before dropper posts every once in a blue moon some tall guy needed a 400mm Thomson post so he could put his seat in the sky, but more often than not that was to eek out proper seat height on a frame that was too small in the first place. In contrast, I've never seen a shop run out of room to adjust a seat low enough on a frame that fit in every other dimension. This is a new problem since the advent of dropper posts, and it's a common problem. Is that even arguable?

What I'm saying is: that sucks.



It's like when I see 5'5" women like Emily Batty on 29er's with massively negative rise stems: that bike doesn't really fit you. It's a problem.

Watch how many hits this article gets on google now because it has a picture of Emily Batty.

http://instagram.com/p/tYxFwUum81/

Ohlins making a 40 cartridge for Gas2Flat

Breaking news brought to you by Adam Brayton's growing social media empire.

Pairing the above photo with this photo from Steve Jones' Instagram of an Ohlins cartridge ramjammed into a Fox 34, does this mean they're really going to release a fork?

I don't know, but one of the members of TEAM ROBOT has been on an Ohlins shock all season and is pretty impressed. And the ROBOTS that are not easily impressed.

Me personally, I'm still a Fox4Life kind of bro, but at this point there are only two real options for suspension anyway: Fox and Rockshox. You can make a good argument for either one, and by now both brands are clearly offering top level performance, but anything else is unrideable. Like if this were a Pepsi vs. Coke argument, the guy who runs in and argues the merits of RC Cola is the same guy who rides a Manitou in 2014.

"In my humble opinion, I think RC has a smoother finish..." blah blah, kill yourself.

In light of Ohlins increasing threat to break into the mountain bike fork universe, here's a ROBOT breakdown of the front suspension universe as it stands in 2014.

DVO: 

Clearly unrideable. Are you serious right now? Next question.

X-Fusion:

Seems to be doing alright for Bernard with another banner year.

I've heard good things about X-Fusion from riders who I respect, but I've also seen a lot of these go back for major service problems after one or two rides. The main sticking point for me is that their downhill fork in 2014 still runs on springs made of metal. Pretty weak. Air spring tech has come a long way, and it's pretty hard to argue for a coil on the front of your bike. At this point when companies don't offer DH air springs it seems like less of a performance-based decision, and more like a "it was really hard to do an air spring well so we just stuck with the coil for this model year" kind of reason.

Another easy choice.

If you had to choose between two springs that were equally supple off the top and both offered consistent performance, but one of them weighed a pound less and had a progressive spring curve to keep you from dying when stuff gets real, it's a no brainer choice. In 2014 and 2015 that's the choice that Rockshox and Fox offer. The 2015 air sprung 40 and air sprung Boxxer are both clearly better in every respect than their coil sprung variants, the only reason not to choose the air spring version is money.

Also, stuff like this sets your brand image back a couple years or decades:

Custom made for Camaro guys everywhere.

Manitou: 

Mike Levy seems to like the new Manitou stuff, but he also runs Kenda tires. Unrideable.

I have no personal experience with any of the modern Manitou products, but that's sort of like when you go digging around in some bands history and you're like "hey I've never heard any of these songs." So you start listening to all these songs you've never heard, and even though you keep an open mind for the first couple, four songs in you realize they all suck. If you've never heard those songs, there's probably a good reason. It's not like all the people who were into that band conspired against you to hide all their best material. The reason you haven't heard all those songs is probably because they suck.

SR Suntour:

Morlando making the new Suntour stuff look good.

Honorable mention here. Being in the upper echelon of super pros, SR Suntour is obviously unrideable for me, but for the average consumer Suntour might be a real contender. The pricepoints they're hitting with the features they offer are no joke. That said, they're playing catchup and still have a big confidence deficit, and their marketing strategy is not doing them any favors. Garrett Buehler's a great guy and RAMPAGE!!! is rad, but I feel like his suspension requirements roughly break down to:

1. Goes up and down.

2. Doesn't kill me.

"I'm real happy for you Garrett, and imma let you finish, but you need a high profile race team that's winning races if you want consumers to take your suspension components seriously. Seriously."

BOS: 

Those Riding Addiction guys are doing alright on this stuff, and everybody who rides it raves about how good it is. Also if you ask half of Pinkbike, they'll tell you that Remi Thirion won Andorra because he was riding BOS suspension, so ignore the collective wisdom of Pinkbike readers at your own peril.

If you live in France, BOS is totally rideable. Kind of weird that they don't have a closed damper system, but it seems to be working so whatever.

On the other hand if you live outside of France and you have to mail stuff back and forth to all ends of the earth for service and wait weeks and weeks to ride your bike? Unrideable. Also, remember that buying French products means that you're supporting socialism, which is basically the same as spitting on an eagle while peeing on the flag, so think about that next time you toss an Orangina or Mini Babybel's in the shopping cart.

If you're buying this stuff you might as well set fire to the Constitution.

Marzocchi:

Markus Pekoll's had multiple banner years riding for the big red M, but his forks and shocks get the gucci treatment from this Pedro guy that's apparently pretty smart. If you're some off the street jamoke buying aftermarket, who knows what the performance gap is between what Markus rides and what you can buy? That gap can be HUGE when we're talking about suspension internals.

Maybe the new stuff really is great. I keep hearing good things about their new stuff, but I've seen and heard that same pitch about Marzocchi so many times."No dude, I know what you're saying, but the new stuff is good." I'm not sure I can get burned again. It's like that friend that keeps coming out of rehab and saying they're better now. If I'm going to believe that you've changed, I need to see more than words:

Seatpost height

If the collar on your dropper post is slammed against the seatpost clamp, I'm going to assume you're either on the wrong size frame or you have no idea how to find proper seat height.

Liberal use of the word "bump"

New Poll

Ruth wanted me to ask.

A message to all ROBOTS

Beep beep boop.

//end transmission://

This is Peaty

The simple fact that I watch these 20 minute web videos all the way through is evidence of their inherent goodness. I can't even sit through the first minute of most web videos.

Joe Bowman: killing it.

This is the most IMBA thing you'll see all week

These are the people who are making your new "downhill" trail.

The producers of this video clip edited out the part where Fatbike guy qualifies the bobsled comparison, "except for the part where you have one tenth the excitement, speed, vertical drop, and none of the fall line sections that you'd expect on an olympic bobsled track."



In a related story, I won a bike race on a 29er this weekend.

More on that later.