Welcome to this week’s roundup! I reviewed 60 videos this week to give you the best of them. It seems there are a few video producers that put their vids up on Wednesday. Our first video from Dave at River City is an example- it went up while I was finishing this post. It’s my favorite of the week, showing an early-80s Ritchey mountain bike. Those bars look like BMX bars, though less adjustable, and the fork looks very similar to a road fork. Of course, most forks are straight now, I guess.
This Scott Spark bike advert isn’t terribly notable, except the first minute has really cool camera angles. I’d guess it was CGI but I think it’s all ‘natural’. (also from Scott: groovy music and gravel in Australia, great dirt riding in a moist British Columbia)
E-Bikes. Mountain biking. Is it faster than a standard bike? (yes, on climbs)
Our local friends Russ and Laura at PathLessPedaled went to Lodi, California and put up a short and simple video series on Youtube. It appears to have been entirely shot and edited on an iPhone. Each episode is about a minute long. My biggest complaint is that means about half of each video is the intro/outro. The first video is below, here’s the rest of the series.
A friend has a proper titanium-lugs-and-carbon-fiber Serotta. This is the next generation of that form, 3D printing the lugs. It feels like the future.
A lot of people have seen the hoboat that used to be anchored near Hawthorne Bridge. A local drone operator has been buzzing over the boat, showing that they have a bunch of bikes stashed. That makes the drone operator believe the bikes are part of a bike chop shop. It doesn’t seem like much of a stretch to believe that. Naturally, it led to (possibly) shooting at the drone. What else did you expect?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWakHWJtURo
Yeti Cycles is another one of those classic mountain bike brands. John Parker is sufficiently odd for this to be an entertaining video. (uh, some colorful language)
Travel Oregon put up some pretty videos. They are little glimpses using a lot of drone footage. Here’s Clear Lake:
This is the Table Rocks. (what’s the voiceover saying?)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXvnhpD-kTY
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Pro racing
Look at Sagan’s shiny bike.
I’m past my self-imposed spoiler window, so I have a couple of videos from the womens Aviva Tour. The first are the highlights from Stage 2, which was wet. It was an intersting highlights package, but the absolute best is the sweet little moment of humanity around 9:40. I don’t know, I thought that was neat.
We also have the full race recap from UCI:
And inCycle’s recap:
GCN asked Tiffany Cromwell to show her “pro rider’s kit”. It’s the bag that goes in the mechanic’s car. I don’t know if they picked her specifically because her bag is .. unique .. or if it was random that it was so entertaining.
Finally, there was a great profile on the great Marianne Vos.
Tour de France
It’s that time already! I’m splitting this from the above section and will avoid spoiling a stage until it’s been 7 days.
The guy who puts up ‘how the race was won’ has a preview of TDF. I highly recommend it. It’s also interesting to see what he looks like.
And GCN’s preview. They go through the stages, sprints, climbs, and so on.
Honorable Mentions
Honorable mentions, Dura-Ace edition: the next generation of Dura-Ace was announced today, GCN posted the presser and a ‘first look’. Also DCRainmaker has a first-look blog entry (this will have the most information).
Honorable mentions, Travel Oregon edition: Oregon Trail Interpretive Center, VR of Southern Oregon Coast, VR of Hellgate Canyon, VR of Smith Rock State Park.
This week’s honorable mentions, standard edition: (none!)
Inclusion criteria: If I’ve missed something, post it in the comments! I prefer videos published in the last week or so. Note if there’s a specific point in a long video that is worth highlighting. Also note if there is colorful language. I will delay videos containing pro racing spoilers by 7 days.
– Ted Timmons, @tedder42
Thanks for reading.
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My MTB in the late 80s was pretty similar. Trickle down technology, I guess, because it certainly wasn’t a Ritchey. Same type of handlebars though, with very basic thumb shifters like that, which were not indexed on my bike. I loved being able to adjust the shifting by feel, and I rode the heck out of the bike.
When that bike died and I had to get a new one, they all had rapidfire shifters, which I hated because I was a poor college student and I had no idea how to tune my derailleur myself. So the shifting was terrible, always hopping in & out of gears on its own. And….I gave up biking for many years. Sorry, I guess that was a sad story.
I get it. I still have some NIB Suntor thumb shifters. They can be set up as either indexed or friction. I have some Mavic under bar thumb shifters that were index “suggested” but mostly friction. I did eventually switch to indexed. I’m still holding on to a NIB XTR Rapid Rise rear derailleur, only because the rapid rise technology was (IMO) far superior to anything else. Course I don’t have the shifter or cassettes to make it work, but it’ll stay comfortably in my parts drawer. Just in case.
Both my mt. bike and my fat bike have, of course, indexed shifters and they work perfectly.
FWIW a Rapid Rise rear derailleur will work just fine with friction shifters; my main road bike is a touring bike with Dia Compe downtube shifters and a Deore Rapid Rise rear derailleur. Rapid Rise was kind of a “back to the future” product–Shimano of 2000 = Simplex of 1957.
Ooh, this bike gear geek thanks you for the Shimano vids! I could have used a Shadow-inspired rear derailleur last week when I picked up a rock while shifting at the aptly-named Rock Creek (in Mosier where the road was torn up after the train derailment) and tore the wheel tab off my beloved Masi Evo frame (not to mention obliterating the cage of my Ultegra Di2 RD, and having to hitch-hike back to Hood River walking barefoot in the pouring cold rain). Incidentally, I bought a long-cage mechanical Ultegra RD and swapped the cage onto the Di2, so my CX bike will now inherit electronic shifting with an 11-32 cassette instead of the 11-28 that the RD-6770 limits you to.
And Shimano finally listened to ME (not the pros like they say in the video 😉 and normalized the ergonomics between the mechanical and hydraulic shifters – yay! I can now run a hydraulic front disc brake on a non-disc frame and not feel lobsided due to the oversized left hood.
Incidentally, I recently rebuilt our Santana tandem with XTR Di2 and 3×11 drivetrain with the 11-40 cassette… yeah, you can serve dinner on that thing. Anyway, say what you will about Shimano building incompatibilities in and forcing you into perpetual upgrades, but that electronic MTB rear derailleur is a freaking work of art!
There’s got to be a 12-step program somewhere for addicts like me.
The ergo thing is cool- yay for electronics leaving space for things like that.
I’m really delighted with my SRAM eTap. I’ll try not to destroy it like you did 🙂
Regarding eBikes – At what point does an eBike stop being an electric assist bicycle and become an electric motorcycle thus being off limits to many trails and bike lanes? Has that line been drawn? If not, where should it be drawn?
801.258 “Electric assisted bicycle.”
“Electric assisted bicycle” means a vehicle
that:
(1) Is designed to be operated on the
ground on wheels;
(2) Has a seat or saddle for use of the
rider;
(3) Is designed to travel with not more
than three wheels in contact with the
ground;
(4) Has both fully operative pedals for
human propulsion and an electric motor; and
(5) Is equipped with an electric motor
that:
(a) Has a power output of not more than
1,000 watts; and
(b) Is incapable of propelling the vehicle
at a speed of greater than 20 miles per hour
on level ground. [1997 c.400 §2; 1999 c.59 §233]
From Oregon Vehicle Code (PDF): http://www.oregon.gov/ODOT/DMV/docs/vcb/vcb801.pdf
As someone who wants to see more motorcycles and fewer cars, who cares?
I believe the boat is way north of Hawthorne, either by UofP or the slough.
“used to be anchored near Hawthorne Bridge” 🙂
Sam, the line’s been drawn pretty clearly when it comes to on-road use: electric assist must be limited to 20mph, and I believe there’s a wattage limit too (maybe 1000 at the federal level, though I think some states have a 500W or 750W limits).
I think trails are a gray area. Most land managers haven’t ruled on it, but I think we’ll see most jurisdictions banning e-bikes on dirt trails. I’m all for e-bikes on pavement, but I don’t think they belong on mountain bike trails. If you can’t ride under your own power, you don’t belong there.
On the other hand, I think I’d rather see e-bikes riding up the return roads than trucks shuttling riders up the hill.
My first reaction was to agree with you.
After thinking about it though. I don’t see why people with money should be prioritized over people with friends. In the end, it’s largely the same thing, but electric bikes are mostly restricted to the those with money to spend, on top of the car that most everyone drove to the trailhead.
Some of us never shuttle.
That Table Rocks video is hilarious. Premium meat dot com? I wonder if Travel Oregon knows…
I need to know where 3D lugs are getting printed at non-insane prices. The quotes for printing my fork crown accessory mount design in metal were insane.
Wait a few years. 3D printing in metal is still a very new technology, and thus is expensive. I also would be hesitant to trust it for such a critical frame feature, as it lacks the grain structure of forged metal parts.