Mark W

Was that from your nuts "on account" payment?

I've seen people barspin Ali's Hex, maaaay have seen James Barton barspin his? If you wear big shoes and have your feet far forwards on the pedals I guess you may run into problems, but realistically that'll be the same on most street trials bikes. If it ever ended up being a big problem you could go for some shorter cranks, or just learn to be a bit more on the balls of your feet on your pedals.

If you mean the Jitsie 108.9s, they seem good The springs are upgraded compared to the older generic 108.9 freewheels so they appear to be durable. The 72-click ones are decent too, although will obviously offer a bit less performance in comparison.

Pretty much the same as it was for the 24 tour, haha. Upgraded to a 70D as my main camera now, and just run it all through Premiere Pro CS6. John just posted up the phone angle (also better than my angle...) of the ender move - this was absolutely nuts to see in person. He got a puncture first try, then just stomped it second try. I don't think he even did a straight 3 tap on the rail first. Properly next level... Funnily enough @Tony Harrison, the whole time I was filming I had some constructive criticism that I'd attributed to you from the Inspired in Barca video in my head. Turns out it wasn't from you after all, but you were with me in spirit

Ali sent himself (partially) and his bike (fully) down a gap between some of those big sea defence block things, and hurt his leg in the process. Happened just as he was getting into the swing of things too. Not that there's ever a good time to nearly fall down a 20ft drop onto jagged concrete blocks, but that certainly wasn't it Bonus info: That pivot to fakie nose roll down that ledge happened after we'd filmed the line of Thom doing the drop to 180 off the skip/bin line. John had been hanging out filming the second angle for me, and by the time the line got pulled we were all pretty done for the day. Was getting dark and cold, and nobody was really in the mood to ride. On the way back we happened to go past that spot so we had a look at stuff. John called out that line, and I expected it'd be one we'd go back to. Instead, he said that he would rather just get it done. No warm up, just went to front on the rail a few times. Seemingly the worst part about it for him was having to take his jacket and hoody off as he wanted all his clips to feature that Sick Series T, so he had to go down to single layer in some pretty brisk conditions. He took those crashes in the video, then basically smashed the actual line out first go. John is really, really good.

In mid November, I got to spend a week (technically 6 days...) pointing a camera at Ali Clarkson, Duncan Shaw, John Langlois and Thom Triboulat, to showcase the new Inspired 2020 range. Those guys can ride bikes.

Star on the side of his head to one up his son and piss off his wife.

This is well worth a watch.

Pretty much. The RB Tractor hub wasn't great, the Shimano hubs that had that system didn't seem great, and pretty much all the others I've seen since then haven't been particularly well reviewed either. They just seem to be the thing that hub companies do when they know they can't compete with a standard 'ratchet and pawls' combo, and can't work out a way around the King ring drive patent. It's a cool concept, but when your primary focus is a reliable drivetrain they don't seem to be the way to go.

Bearings dying seemed more common when the Pro 4 was first released, but I've seen a few that have had pawls that have shit the bed, then gone through the ratchet and made a mess of it. They've been decent with warrantying them, but it's still not ideal it's happening in the first place.

They released the Elites 6 years ago They're not really as well known in the trials world though to be fair - a few people have used them on here and on OTN, but they're super, super expensive (£450~ for the rear, a ludicrous £160~ for the front) so there's not much point in fairness. Hope seem to have gone a bit off the boil in recent years in terms of quality/QC, but for price they're way ahead of Profile, King and I9.

The Profile Elite MTB Single Speed hub is 135mm spaced, and looks decent, but a Hope would be my choice too.

That's what I meant really - if you didn't have any reason to suspect it was cracked until you took the rim tape off, it suggest it's not impacting performance so it should be fine to keep using realistically. The inner wall is just there to provide a bit more stiffness/rigidity, so I can't imagine how you'd ever have your rim fail catastrophically from it being cracked there. Because of that you don't need to have any worries about going for a move and suddenly having your rear wheel explode due to those cracks, if that makes sense. Both my Spike rims and my Stiffy rims developed cracks around the spokes holes on the outer wall of the rim, and even with them they've just kept going. It's not ideal, but it doesn't seem to be causing any problems so I'm not planning on replacing them until they 'properly' break. Even then that's only likely to manifest itself in a spoke pulling through the rim.

I've got some old Spank Spike rims (not the Race 33) that cracked like that well over a year ago and are still working fine. Is yours doing anything untoward to make you notice they were cracked, or was it just something you happened to find? Assuming it's something you spotted just because you happened to look under your rim tape, I'd just keep using it as it is.

Zing. The vlog version is up now for those with some spare f**ks to give:

The 70D.

A 550D and a 70D.

As well as shooting the video of him, I took some photos while Ali was down. Here are a couple - you can find more here.

There was no edit. smh Ali did a bit of a write up about it for Pinkbike, which also features some photos I shot: https://www.pinkbike.com/news/video-classic-street-trials-riding-with-ali-clarkson.html

Ali and I had a week earlier in September where we got to film some clips in Cardiff and Bristol. Here they are...

#justrichfornethings

Which rear hub are you using?

If that - they're fairly few and far between these days. In fairness to Ali, 'proper' comps like that make almost all riders look bad as it's always super awkward stuff that never gets picked up on camera. Shipley is also way more 'fiddly' to ride than it looks in clips too. It looks like it's all smooth, rolling, easy to ride stuff, but the reality is that the ground is quite bumpy and undulating (which you can't see through the grass). That said, it could just be that Ali's a has-been now

Nice work Dave! That's not a bad prize... Sweet riding too. Some commitment in there! For that Dylan Stark clip, there's so much history with El Toro and in particular what happened at the time that kind of adds to that clip. It's a ridiculous move, think it's one where a GoPro clip isn't necessarily doing it justice - unlike Dave's clip where being able to get a near riders eye view of that trail really shows how nuts it is.

Don't think I've seen that with the newer style one. Good effort though, that must have been some hit! If it's just the edges of the chain pins catching it, they'll wear through it pretty quickly so you shouldn't have any long-term problems with it. Not ideal obviously, but people used to have to do similar with Middleburn bashrings that used to catch a lot more, and they clear their own path easily enough.