Mark W

Oh yeah, totally - I know my bike is a lot more capable of what I am. Rode with that Ali Clarkson guy on an almost identical setup for long enough to know for sure, haha. That isn't what The Industry wants you to think though. You'll definitely be 13.57% faster on Strava and 69% cooler on Instagram if you get that sweet new wheel size standard.

I rode a hire 29er at Bike Park Wales and it definitely felt like a big old beast, but the way it picked up speed was nuts. If you're more a fan of XC/efficiency I can see why they'd be appealing, but for fun/dicking around, less so. That said, Matt Roe doesn't seem to be letting it hold him back... Guess if you're used to slinging a motocross bike around it'll still feel pretty chuckable

Haha, pretty sure the TB guys will be ordering from Ash at that price in future...

The bandwidth on the Tr1al rotors isn't really ideal for the Hope trials brakes. You will be better off with a Trial Zone V2 rotor realistically. If you've got an old hub, you may find that the hub disc tabs won't be perfectly flat any more. Over a period of time they do tend to wear, and you can find that the rotor becomes a little more 'bowl' shaped. This isn't ideal, but if you have a clean adjustable spanner or similar you can gently tweak the rotor back to true relative to the caliper. If you're using the old pads, they will have worn to the profile of the old rotor so with a new rotor will tend to feel a little mushy until they bed into the new surface. Generally with most disc related stuff time is often the greatest healer as when new they tend to take a little time to settle down. You can speed things up a bit by pouring clean, cold water over the rotor/caliper and ride around on flat ground pulsing the brake on and off. You're not trying to get it hot - the water and the pad material will essentially create a kind of paste that just helps scrub things in a bit faster and gets them bedded in faster. If you get it hot, you run the risk of glazing the pads so don't try and cheat and speed the process up by bombing some hills For what it's worth, I ran a Shimano rotor (similar bandwidth to the Tr1al) with a Hope brake for quite a long time, and the only thing I found was that over time the pistons in the brake started sitting at a bit of an angle. The part that pushed under the rotor edge would just sit a little further out than the top half of the piston, so it gradually made the brake a bit more sluggish as it wasn't able to push out and retract smoothly.

If that's a welded stem rather than a forged stem (hard to tell from the photos), they've got quite a tall steerer clamp area so that'll rob you of some steerer real estate. Forged stems like the BBB ones have relatively small steerer clamps - if you're worried about how much steerer contact there is, may be worth a pop. As long as the top of the steerer is in the region (ideally not below the middle of) the top steerer clamp bolt you should be fine. EDIT: Just found the full size button. That's a welded stem.

+1 for "Riding for ages, still get that" - also 33, also not super confident or at the level I used to be. I find that some days I hate riding in front of or near people, but other days I don't really find it's that big an issue and can block them out. On days where I feel a bit more averse to being around people, as Flipp said I just tend to work around that and find somewhere else to go. Most places will have some random little bits and pieces to play on, so just keep an eye out and you'll probably stumble upon something. Can appreciate if you're tight on time then it won't necessarily offer you the best bang for your buck as going to a known spot will, but you never know what you might find. It's also more productive than sitting at a spot but not doing anything due to not liking the situation there. I do a bit of bouldering, and often get the same thing in climbing centres as well. When I'm trying something hard and can barely string two moves together because I haven't got the right sequence, sometimes having anyone else nearby is a real problem and I find it hard to even get on the wall. Other days it just doesn't seem to phase me. The only thing I've really found that helps me get through it is just to keep reminding myself that people generally don't care. Everyone's wrapped up in what they're doing for the most part, especially if they're just walking through a town centre for example, and they're just not that interested in what anyone else might be doing. If it's a group of kids being dicks then they'll probably be a bit more inclined to say something, but just feel it out when you're there. If you have a move in mind you want to try, just give it a go - even if it's the worse case scenario and you mess it up and someone says something to you, you can just cruise out of there and go somewhere else. The 'risk' side of it is pretty minimal, but it's easy to build it up in your head. As before, everyone's in their own little bubble for the most part, so seeing a random stranger send a sidehop to chainstay won't be a lasting memory for them. I totally get that it's hard to keep that in mind and act on it (I fail to do it myself often enough), but ultimately it is all just in your head at the end of the day. Just read the situation (e.g. if there's some old people walking past, they'll have a tendency to be a bit sour about you riding, so probably worth waiting until they've gone) and go from there.

Yep, Hope Mono Trial If you're looking for lever spares, it's a Hope Mini 2007 lever. If you're looking for caliper spares, it's just a Mono Trial caliper.

Especially considering a can of satin black spray paint would have handled that business easily. Ah well... That's the thing - Benito can definitely ride a bike well, but if you don't really have an idea of what you want a video to be it just ends up like that. Just because you filmed it, you don't have to use it... That said, from the amount of adverts they put on that video, having it longer was probably intentional.

Climbing is a little different though as they're trying to combine so many different styles of competitions into one thing, whereas there's only really one form of competitiive trials, especially as the Olympics are aligned with the UCI. That seems to be where most of the problem is in climbing as it unfairly advantages all the Russian nerds who spend all their time speed climbing, whereas most of the rest of the world don't care about speed. If they just did a separate medal for each discipline I think it would all have washed over by now. The way trials and climbing are the same though is that if you don't want to compete it doesn't really affect you. If someone prefers going out into the woods and climbing some random boulders, the inclusion of climbing into the Olympics doesn't really change anything. It's the same with trials - if you prefer just going out and riding street/some rocks somewhere, random machinations of 'governing bodies' doesn't really have an impact on things.

Not all heroes wear capes. Thanks Dave. That video is quite something.

Being confusing doesn't seem to stop certain track cycling disciplines getting a lot of viewers during the Olympics/Commonwealths/World Champs, so I'm not sure it's much different? As a spectacle the UCI have been improving them too. The last Worlds coming down to the last move of the last section being a case in point. I'm not a huge fan of the "bunch of shit dropped in a car park" vibe some of the World Cups have had, but when they've been done well (e.g. in France and Spain), the newer purpose built comp sections look really cool. From what I heard at the AGM, the big issue BC used to have with trials is that everything they did was geared towards progression to the Olympics, and with trials not being an Olympic sport they didn't care. HSBC took over as title sponsors and wanted to gear things more towards inclusivity and getting more people riding, so trials can be more of a 'thing' now. It's consistently brought various rainbow jerseys back to the UK when other disciplines have tried and failed (despite extensive funding), or been tainted by on-going doping allegations. The tide may be turning, but we'll see.

You can either go back to the 90's or forward in time to 2023: https://www.britishcycling.org.uk/about/article/20190208-about-bc-news-Scotland-to-host-inaugural-UCI-Cycling-World-Championships-in-2023-0

Believe that depends how much you're being offered to ride for Maestro Project 60.

It's not online any more. Is G his social media manager?

Sorry to hear that dude - glad you've made it through it though! Hope you stay healthy

Star on the side of the head, right? Life size portrait of Mike Beck's face, on your face?

Still do-able though, it seems:

That was a cool video! Really nice feel to it. The manual 180 at 1:31 was a good surprise, nicely done Good riding from everyone though. Is Ricky riding a 22"?

Judging from some of my friend's posts on FB, it seems a few of them have left it fairly last minute - I think that's probably why they're so much slower now. There's a lot of people who are trying to file their returns now so it'll always slow things down. Kind of the same deal that getting a new passport at some times is way quicker than others. Definitely an anachronistic system though, do agree that their processes are fairly dated. I get that they want the extra security measures and stuff, but still...

I've got e-mails mentioning it repeatedly from him. Direct quote from an e-mail over a year ago: "Here’s one example that’s an important topic for me: My first Trials bike was the original Element and since 2015 I’ve been riding the silver Fourplay. They’re both great bikes and I’ve always recommended them to people asking. However, I’m only 1.70m tall. And I more and more feel like the Fourplay is too big for me and the riding I want to do. [some stuff removed]... If you ever decide to make a 20" bike for adults that’s a true hybrid between Street BMX and Trials bike - I’d be happy to be your test dummy." We've also had other riders message about them too. Guys like Yuki Kishi also show that there's a gap in there between riders who are too big for a 20", but are a bit on the small side for the 24". At TartyBikes we often had issues with working out the right size for kids too, where basically a 20" with a long stem wasn't quite right, but a 24" with a 70mm stem wasn't ideal either. The 22" fits that gap really well, because that's exactly what it's designed to do. As a side note, Flipp's currently running 22" wheels on his Alias. People talk about the quick turnover of riders in street trials who get inspired by seeing videos, get a bike, find it's hard then quit - having this 'stepping stone' size means more riders riding bikes that are better fitted to them, rather than having to ride bikes that aren't that make learning trials harder. How is that a bad thing? Your point about Caisso is about as valid as you saying Max didn't think his Fourplay felt too big. Back in the day everyone was doing street on 26" bikes, so does that mean people shouldn't have bothered with 24"? While I imagine most of the sales of 22" Flows have been for younger riders, I know of a few older riders who have bought them because they want that in between size as well. I don't really get how that's different to 26" to 24"?

Also with Bulb, also had no problems, also made some money from that code

Yeah, BG told us that as a dispute was opened we didn't have to pay our bill, although they kept sending those reminders... Pack of f**ks.

I run the same setup with Jitsie/Trialtech pads and they have no pad knock. MT5 pads on the rear, MT2/4/6/8/whatever-even-number-you-like pads up front. The MT5 pads on the rear will be your biggest improvement by far - it looks from the photos like you're running the MT7-style pads? If so, they seem to have a lot more movement than the 5's.

We had a 9 month long saga with British Gas doing exactly the same thing. We phoned them within a week of moving in and gave them the final readings for everything, but the person at British Gas f**ked up entering them (somehow...), and subsequently nobody would enter them right either. It's insane how difficult it is to just get a company to enter a couple of short numbers, especially as your new supplier will be agreeing to supply from that point anyway so it's not like they're being billed for less than they actually supplied anyway. Them not being able to enter our final bill readings meant we couldn't 'properly' start with our new supplier, so we were being dicked around with estimated readings from our new supplier for nearly a year. It took British Gas months to sort their shit out, then randomly sent us a bill 6 months later with some new numbers they've plucked out of thin air. Those big energy companies can f**k the entire way off. I feel your pain...

If they're anything like the 24" version, then I guess optimistically you could describe the compound as 'extremely durable'.