Brigham_Rupp profile

Fun to hear everyone's stories about their pedals. I've been riding for 25 years and have never clipped in even once so I have no idea what I'm missing. Everyone I ride with clips in, and they are a pretty strong group of riders (I'd say top ten percent in terms of pace up and downhill according to the all-knowing Strava). I came to MTB as a teenager from street BMX and skateboarding, and was initially drawn to dirt jump/freeride/DH so that's probably part of why I never cared to clip in. But at this point I regularly do 2-4000 foot climbs and haven't ever noticed any overall advantage they have over me from clipping in.

My favorite thing about flats? Being able to grab a soda at the gas station after a ride without sounding like I'm walking around in tap shoes!

Haven't tried a different backsweep yet. Will have to check that out.

Great review. I've been curious about these. My fingers are fairly fine, but my wrists get a little cranky. Thank these would potentially have any effect? I'm on a Sentinel with a carbon bar.

Am I crazy thinking that after 30 years of riding bikes, a good pinch with my fingers is sufficient for checking tire pressure? Have I been missing out on significant performance advantages by not sticking to carefully determined, exact pressures? Thanks to the nature of tubeless, I expect I’ll always have to add air, I always do, and I always fill to  the same pressure on the iffy gauge of my Park pump. Doesn’t really matter how accurate the gauge is as long as it’s consistent. I’d  pay 150 bucks if this thing maintained my pressure, not just indicated it.

I try hard not to call the United States "America," because to me it feels dismissive of others in North and South America and reinforces an exceptionalism we tend to have in the States. At the same time, I wonder why people native to either continent are so anxious to be called by a name originating with an Italian merchant explorer. If anything I would expect them to be bothered by being called Americans in the first place. Thoughts? 

Just thinking out loud now: this is one of my serious struggles with some of these movements in modern society. If we're looking for reasons to be offended, we will surely find them and from some angle every name, every statement, every action can be seen as problematic for someone somewhere. Where is the end of this road? How far do we go to avoid offending, and is there a point at which we say "sorry, you'll just have to cope?" I don't know. I do know in my personal life I will never be able to prevent all possible offenses by those around me, but I can choose not to take offense, and to me that's a very powerful fact.

Good treatment Dave. Thanks. One thought as to why some people might be so bothered: 

It's easy to compare this to a neighbor asking you to turn your music down, and in this specific case I tend to agree: A marginalized group of people asked a company to stop using a word and it's not a big deal for the company to be kind and stop using it. Hard to say there's any harm done to everyone else. With that perspective it becomes easy to dismiss all the pushback as irrational and obtuse (i.e. the Pinkbike comment section), but this angle overlooks what seems to be a broader phenomenon:

I think what we're seeing in the PB comments section is a group of people struggling with society going through a significant shift in culture, morality, and systems of social control. For example, the story about Yeti is one in a long string of incidents that some see as an increasing shift towards a culture of victimhood. (see this scholarly article for food for thought on the topic.) These shifts have occurred throughout history and come with conflict and struggle. The conflict occurs over the rise and decline of competing values, the "rightness" and "wrongness" of which are not always so cut and dry as we'd like to pretend, but instead exist on a continuum where certain values are given higher regard in society than others. 

I'm still trying to decide where I stand in relation to some of these values: Free speech vs. avoiding offense, patriotism vs. globalism, justice vs. mercy, individualism vs. community, capitalism vs. socialism.  While we try to help our societies change for the better, we see people on all sides writing off those with contrary views as obvious fools while we tend to see ourselves as enlightened. I just hope we can be patient with each other and not too cavalier when someone else gives more weight to one virtue when we are inclined to favor another.

Solid review, and pretty much exactly what I expected to hear. Definitely want one of these in the garage next to the Sentinel.

Now that’s what an XC bike made to have fun should look like. Love it.

Great vid. But 50% riding up? Unless you’re a really fast or descend very slowly... it’s more like 85% up for me!

I’m using the IXS Flows and have been loving them so far.