Mark W

That was cool You monster that bike around! For some reason it looks really short/small? In some of those clips it almost looked like you were on a 24" or something (especially in the Portsmouth clips around 45secs in) - most people tend to make those Crewkerz look kind of barge-y but you look like you fit it really well. Ender clip was really nice too.

A-haaaaaa - Stan told me that I had to see the clutch blipper when I was up last but I didn't get a chance. I now see why. Nice work!

What gear ratio are you actually using on it? I ride a 24" and run 22:16 which is loosely equivalent to 22:17/18 on a 26. It's a 4.5 mile trip into town on my bike to ride the spots here, and on the way there's a speed trap that shows you your speed. Just riding along normally I'm usually doing between 12-15mph. Unless you've got a pair of Der Kaisers on your Hex there's no reason it should be much slower than that, so the "I just end up walking" thing doesn't make much sense to me... The Pashley won't be much different to your Hex apart from being a bit worse for trials and probably worse for street sort of stuff too. Longer back end, slacker head angle, lower BB - most bikes have moved away from that geo because it generally isn't as good. Equally, unless you're running different gearing getting around and stuff won't change much either unless you're hoping to run gears? Out of interest, what bar and stem did you use on your Hex, and what kind of bar angle were you running? The reason I ask is that most street trials bikes are really sensitive to bar/stem setup, and particularly bar angle. I've seen quite a lot of people go for a more old school style low, long stem on their Hex and that just doesn't really work with the BB height on them, and it'll contribute to it feeling bad for bunnyhops and having that "Weight over the front" vibe. That's why you'll generally see people using a 25-35° stem and some high rise bars on Inspired bikes as it counteracts the BB height to an extent and means your weight position is a bit more neutral.

Kind of, but Instagram doesn't have the same kind of monetisation options as other platforms so just having shitloads of followers doesn't lead to stacks of cash necessarily. The only way I can really see you doing it is by being paid to re-post/share people's stuff, but if you're offering that service essentially for free to some, I can't imagine other people would necessarily want to pay for it, especially as it's not like generic re-posting accounts are in short supply. With "VIRAL BIKE PAGE" having more conspicuous links to Mike in their bio, and in post captions, I'd have thought that would be less likely too as your own brand/message is being diluted...

I've never actually known a person behind one of the generic reposting pages on Instagram, so as you appear to be behind "VIRAL BIKE PAGE" Mike - what's the actual plan with that? Just in the sense that what's your end game for it? I assume the plan is to make money through it somehow in the end, but that style of page has always thrown me a bit as I can't really see how that would work.

Bearing in mind 2 drivers got investigated and reprimanded for ignoring blue flags maybe they were just being extra strict with it? It was a fairly high profile incident to boot.

It's a tricky one though - that move was pretty Vettel-esque from his recent attempts at 'overtaking' people. Can see why Max wouldn't have thought Ocon would have still been there as people had generally backed out of moves like that (e.g. Bottas/Ricciardo), but mirrors/giving more room would have been a safer bet. Ocon could probably have just held off and used the next DRS zone too seeing as the Force Indias are pretty rapid in a straight line. Benefits of hindsight/armchair expert-ing...

Those were good times, even if the reason behind it was the total opposite. The principle of those rides clearly worked though - using DJ's passing as a way to bring people together and remember his life in a fun way. Always got there in such weird ways too. Not having a car back then and people seemingly being really happy to go well out of their way to pick people up led to some interesting times. Pre-SM SM/Mods/Admin group car sharing, being picked up by Rich Pearson from a random train station car park, Tom Chilvers de-touring through London...

It's technically Friday's riding, but same difference. Headed over to Rush and had a quick session with Ian Johnstone:

Just came to post that - tardy to the party. That rail ride by Sean Ricany about half way through - holy moly. So good. Some great clips in there from everyone to be fair!

Someone on FB said Hong Kong worked for them.

People were reporting being able to watch it using a VPN, think you'll just have to select one of the non-blocked countries.

All of Inspired's range of bikes, all in one place... https://issuu.com/inspiredbicycles/docs/inspired_range_en_7870b6c2c1b70b

Thunderbolts don't fit, so that's a no-go. If you want a bashring you'd realistically need to stick to cranks with a micro-drive boss too (e.g. the Inspired cranks) as there aren't really any other bashrings available unless you go for a BMX sprocket with bolt-on guard. They're a minimum of 25t though, I don't think you can get away with much more than 22t on that frame.

The drag is just a result of them being good, basically - the thing that makes them have good, precise, solid engagements also leads to the extra drag. With that style of freewheel it won't go away when they've bedded in. It's usually a little less in the normal 108.9 freewheels which should be a better compromise for you. When I was at TartyBikes we'd get cycle speedway guys ordering freewheels, and they'd usually opt for the 108.9s because they had much less drag than the 135-click freewheels. Is your freewheel on your cranks or your rear hub? If you're using FFW, a rear freehub will feel like it has less drag, primarily due to the chain not having to always rotate when you're riding like it does with a FFW system. I switched from a rear freewheel to a freehub and it did feel like it had less drag too so it should help out overall. I know what you mean about the precision thing, but that's a good thing to need to get used to in a way. Having the quicker engagement will help you more times than it will hinder you, so it's worth that 'problem', if that makes sense.

Nic used to use Photoshop to edit the weddings she'd shot, but has subsequently started working for an outsourcing editing company who primarily use Lightroom - she's a total convert now, and it seems that it really does help with improving workflow. She's said she'll show me the ropes as and when I need it (at the moment I'm only dealing with a handful of images at a time so I'm happy to just smash them about in PS), so we shall see... In related news, I bought a new body - wild carded it and went for the 70D. Glad I did! Really nice to use so far, even though over a decade of "Buttons are on the left" on the camera body is having to be trained out of me. The touch screen massively wins, even if it feels a little weird to use at first. I was changing the AF type yesterday when we were out on a walk and I was trying to remember what wheel/button I needed to press, then realised I could just touch the setting I wanted on the LCD. Bueno. The price for a 'Good' 70D wasn't much more than an 'Excellent' 60D, and as with everything I've got from MPB their 'Good' is more than good enough for me.

Totally get where you're coming from, and it seems like there's been multiple dick moves on the go. Wasn't suggesting that you just needed to take it on the chin or anything, in case it came across that way!

Potentially, but as there were at least 2 other rides going on with 5 people it suggests it might have just been down to something else specific to this ride/weekend? All I mean is I don't think one ride is a necessarily representative of a whole country. It is sucky that you ended up getting there to be greeted with that though Jamie (and the posts on FB too).

Nike 6.0 ended years ago - the BMX team migrated to the 'SB' team a while back. Their 6.0 shoes looking like neon moon boots and most of their riders opting for the SB line probably didn't help sales...

People who work at shops that I've spoken to, and distros I've seen chatting about it, have generally said things are pretty slow. That said, when you look at how companies like Sick Bicycles are able to get Indiegogo funding in less than a day for an incredibly niche frame, it's not all bad. Shops that are more on it with social media (who are also the sort of people likely to go on a podcast to chat about stuff) will do better than those that aren't, just because that's the nature of the beast these days. Customers are lazier than they've ever been in terms of actually going to websites to learn about stuff, so if you've got a more reactive social media presence you'll be able to at least try and convert those stragglers into sales. Evans are in that weird no-mans-land (it's 2018, no-persons-land...) where they aren't big enough to be a Wiggle/CRC, but they're too big to really be as nimble as independents - especially with the way they have to deal with a head office/stocking manager types. Sucks to be them, and also sucks to work for them now that Sports Direct own them. They're not historically the best company to work for... It's also interesting that Nike have said they're ending their BMX team completely now as of tomorrow. Not long ago there were several big shoe companies with pro BMX teams, as well as 3-4 rider-owned shoe companies that were pretty big too. All those rider-owned companies folded after operating for a good few years, and all the 'big' brands are out now too apart from Nike. Seems a few of the bigger known rider-owned BMX brands have had to strip back their distro networks and just go direct now to make ends meet.

They've got some prime locations for their stores (I used to work in the Evans opposite Waterloo Station in London - it doesn't really get much better than that for targeting the commuter crowd), but then others are pretty random. Their Cardiff store has a huge footprint but it's almost completely hidden from view as the entrance is down an access ramp, and it's situated underneath an NCP carpark. I've been in a couple of times to buy bits and bobs I've needed ASAP but it's never looked particularly busy in there, yet it's got a huge amount of stock. Was a similar deal with the one I went to in Bristol with Ben, except the guys working that shift in Bristol were generally f**kwits... The in-store experience has never seemed that good to me, and the online side is eclipsed by CRC/Wiggle, so it's not overly surprising that things aren't great for them. Seems like that's true across a lot of The Industry though.

Videos like this always make me think of trials riders claims about bike control/balance... So much good stuff in it. Nicely put together too.

More companies entering the shipping game, all in a race to the bottom pricing wise. Customer service/not being totally dogshit is one of the first things to go. Hermes do seem to be particularly bad though.

As far as I know he hasn't been out for a while. He added 'having a baby' to the list of things getting between him and that Hex...

Locktite 638 sounds like it should work, we usually use Locktite 270.