Source: Anthill Films

On Thursday, May 24th at 12:00pm PST Anthill Films will broadcast the online premiere of Strength in Numbers live on RedBull.com/bike. This is going to be a unique global event in the world of mountain biking: Watch the film simultaneously with tens of thousands of people from every corner of the mountain bike world through the interactive, live online premiere–for free.

If you haven’t made it out to one of the Strength in Numbers premieres, watch it online. After being played at over 50 stops on the global premiere tour, Strength in Numbers will be aired for free on http://www.RedBull.com/bike at 12:00pm PST.

The online premiere reflects exactly the concept behind Strength in Numbers: a bike movie that is about how all sides of the mountain bike world are connected should be accessible to all mountain bikers! And this is what will make the online premiere such a unique event: Knowing that the global bike community will be sharing the same experience at the same time. Moreover there will be chance to chat with other fans as well as some of the movie’s riders and filmmakers.

Live online premiere show time by time zone:
PST (Los Angeles) – 12:00pm
EST (New York) – 3:00pm
GMT (London) – 8:00pm
CET (Berlin) – 9:00pm

Mind blowing cinematography, great tricks, amazing trips, proverbial to the end of the world, unexpected riding locations, athletic descents…all comprise Strength in Numbers. The movie is a visually expressive documentation of different mountain-bike communities combined with meaningful storytelling from athletes all over the globe.

he premier will be hosted at RedBull.com/bike and live.redbull.tv/events/35/strength_in_numbers/

For more news, behind-the-scene-stories, facts and figures check out: redbull.com/en/bike/events/1331574465164/strength-in-numbers-online-premiere

If you can’t make the online premiere, still be sure tune into RedBull.com/bike on the 24th, because the film will be available to watch for a limited time.

After May 24th, there will be many ways to see the film: Screening events are still happening in cities worldwide and Strength in Numbers will be released on DVD+BluRay and iTunes globally on May 25th.

For more detailed information visit: www.anthillfilms.com/strengthinnumbers.

World Cup racing takes Devinci Global Racing rider Steve Smith far afield. He has been to Chile, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand and has crisscrossed Europe from boot to mullet. While abroad, Smith constantly hears about, and misses, all the amazing riding at home, in British Columbia. Early in the 2012 season during Devinci Global Racing team discussions, he mentioned B.C.’s epic terrain, trying to sneak in some riding time here during the season.

The month-long break in the World Cup schedule was the perfect time for Smith to get reacquainted with his home trails.

Springtime in Pemberton is the time, as Tacky “hero dirt” is out and ready to be hit before it expires and the desert-like conditions take over in the summer.

Photo: Ian Morrison

With Whistler bike park opening on the Canadian May long weekend, local shredder and Devinci ambassador, Ian Morrison, was looking to sharpen his skills—preparing for the upcoming Wednesday beer-league races. Morrison is known as the “Scrub Master.” He finished sixth in the 2011 Crankworx Air DH, A-line event, solidifying his reputation. At home, he’s a style-driven rider focused on beer-league race scene domination. When Morrison was asked to do some early-season riding with Smith, it was on.

Check out the Devinci Facebook page, here, for a special outtake video.

By Seb Kemp

I stumbled across the hashtag #rulesoftwitter this week (remember our discussion of hashtags or #s from #NOTT16?), and it got me thinking: Is there really rules for Twitter? Surely there are some formal regulations laid down by the meta beasts in the servers but the more interesting rules are the ones laid out by users. The more informal practices, protocols and conventions that form the customs and codes of conduct of the #AverageJoe.

I thought it would be a good chance to assess a few twitterers and their tweets using the rules found on #rulesoftwitter.

A great little thread of tweets appeared these week when @StevePeat and @brendog_1 called out @DannyHart1 for getting in some early practice for last weekends BDS (British Downhill Series) race in Fort William.

Things got a little heated. So what #rulesoftwitter could we apply to these?

Something else that is stirring the pot is this bloody ridiculous 650b palaver. Thankfully, @mbrmagazine are out to see the difference, and as they point out there isn’t much to see.

@viclucasphoto makes the point that this isn’t entirely fair match up but I think anyone still willing to bet that 650b is the “best of both worlds” deserves to cart around more weight on their wheels and have rotten apples thrown at them.

6mm or whatever the outside diameter difference is. Is it worth it?

I think that anyone who “stood up against 29ers” and is now heralding 650b as the real deal is a right prat and there is one #ruleoftwitter that applies to them…

Likewise with Strava. I have friends, close friends I trusted, who have become Stravettes. I’m sad now. Some say it is a social phenomenon but I think it is a shame.

Even @stikmanglaspell, often the last bastion of reality, has been sucked in by its charms.

Much like the old “if you don’t talk about digging on Twitter and Facebook did it really happen?”

But I suppose, again, the rule of letting it wash and unfollowing applies. It’s a free world, isn’t that right random twitterist?

Sometimes people tweet some great things – links, photos, or words of wisdom – and it can be tempting to take the contents of that tweet and share it as your own. Not cool, is it @bugattibeez?

For example, I saw this tweet by @AlanDavisPhoto last week, and it would have been easy to steal the link and spread the word of it, making it seem like I am some clever, artful, on-the-pulse-chap. But no.

But in the end the biggest #ruleoftwitter is this one.

I’ll leave you with this video:

By Vernon Felton

We live in a Strava-enabled age that leaves no doubt as to who amongst us has scored the fastest hot lap of the local city dump, the quickest sprint from Wal-Mart to the nearest 7-Eleven, or the best time on the gnarliest section of the local downhill. Technology has made it clear that some of us are a whole lot faster (or slower) than others.

POC, the Swedish manufacturer of helmets and body armor, unveiled today a new competition aimed at identifying the fastest riders in the Eastern Sates and Mountain Stapes Cup races. The contest is called “the POC Speed Zone Award” and the basic spiel is straightforward: POC staff will use radar guns to clock the speed of amateur racers as they barrel through designated POC Speed Zone areas during each MSC and ESC contest.

If you’re the lucky guy or girl to register the top speed at each race, POC will hand over the shwag—and this isn’t the usual sticker-and-a-pair-of-socks variety of loot. POC will be handing out prizes that include their VPD 2.0 body armor, full face Cortex Flow and enduro Trabec helmets, goggles or apparel. Two very fast riders (one male, the other female) will be rewarded at each race.

What’s more, the rider with the single fastest recorded POC Speed Zone result at the end of the season will take home the grand prize POC package including body armor, gloves, helmet and apparel.

Think you’re fast? Show up at either an Eastern States or Mountain States event and show what you got.

No pros allowed—they already get paid to be fast. This is for the rest of us.

Shimano M530 Pedal
$65
bike.shimano.com

I was about half way to the airport and already running a little bit late when I realized that I had forgotten my pedals. I even left them next to my helmet and clip-less shoes, both of which I remembered, the night before so I would not forget them, but I somehow managed. I was headed to Brevard, North Carolina, to spend the better part of a month testing bikes and components for the Bible of Bike Tests. At least it was just my M985, XTR Trail pedals that I forgot, and not all of my family’s Christmas gifts this trip (oops). Nevertheless, I arrived in Brevard without pedals, and we were already scheduled to ride the following day.

Thankfully we had to be meet up with one of our local trail guides at The Hub bike shop before the ride, and I was able to pick up some similar-looking, less-expensive replacements for my XTRs: the Shimano M530. And when I say less expensive, I mean a lot less expensive. The $65 M530 pedals are roughly $200 cheaper, and only 60-or-so grams heavier (Shimano claims they weigh 455 grams), than the XTR model.

I hammered these pedals through the rain, mud and rocks during the Bible of Bike Tests, and didn’t stop riding them when I got back either. These have been one of my primary pairs pedals for a little over half a year now and they’ve held up well.

Clipping in and out of the M530s was perhaps a little clunkier with a slightly rougher action compared to my XTRs, but once in they felt equally secure. A little oil on the springs and moving parts smoothened the action right up on these pedals.

I smashed these pedals on countless rocks, and while they have a few good gouges and scratches on them, they are no worse for the wear performance wise. I’ve also noticed that they tend to get a touch of surface rust on them after get wet and neglected. By now, I’m sure that I’ve have spent many more miles on the M503s than on my XTRs, and surprisingly feel like they have less slop in the bearings at the axle, and are still spinning smoothly after careless exposure to rain, mud, clay, dust, dirt and rocks.

These pedals are by no means as refined or as sexy as the XTR offering, but they are a contender performance wise, and are an excellent choice for a rider on a budget looking to get a new set of pedals.

Source: Whistler Mountain Bike Park

Opening day at the Whistler Mountain Bike Park is just days away and the anticipation to ride is at an all time high. After a long and very snowy winter in Whistler, the first tastes of summer are finally hitting the tongue as warm weather moves in and the first Giant Glory bikes arrive. With Trail Crew putting in countless hours digging, raking, packing and repacking, the first drop down A-Line will seem like summer never left. But it did, and now it’s back.

Things can get real Animal Planet around the office at times—particularly when a bike like this Yeti rolls through the front door. Six inches of travel, 26 pounds fully built, bomber construction, geometry dialed for aggressive riding…despite the fact that most of us here are indisputably Beta males, when a model with those proportions saunters through the office in need of a test rider, suddenly everyone gets real Alpha male. There’s grunting. There’s shoving. There’s spraying of urine to mark territories. We devolve quickly.

Being in possession of pencil-thick arms and a fondness for crochet and cat shows, a guy like me has only one option when it comes to scoring the right to mount Yeti’s newest super bike—cheat.

When I heard Yeti had one, I had them ship it straight to my house. Send it to the office? To hell with that—I’d never pry it out of the clutches of my stronger, smarter, muskier co-workers.

Here I am unwrapping the new Yeti, fervently praying that my co-workers never realize that I am in possession of the bike.

Of course, now the other guys know I have the carbon Yeti, so I guess I better start doing push-ups and going to monster truck rallies, or whatever it is that raises your testosterone. I’m sure I’ll wake up tomorrow and find one of the other editors urinating on my doorstep and bellowing for the bike.

In the meantime, here are my initial thoughts after a few rides on the Yeti.

HITTING THE HILLS

I’m blessed (or cursed) by a preponderance of large mountains. Any ride I’m going to do starts at sea level and gets steep real fast. So far, the SB66c is proving one of the better climbers in the all-mountain genre. The heart and soul of the bike is its “Switch” suspension design. In a nutshell, David Earle (the guy who designed the first Santa Cruz Blur and Nomad, and who know co-owns the design group, Sotto) created this suspension design with the same Holy Grail goals shared by most mountain bike engineers: he wanted it to pedal efficiency, boast excellent bump compliance and not have the suspension buggered with by braking forces.

At first glance the Yeti looks like a linkage-driven single pivot bike, but it’s actually a dual-link system. The Switch technology uses an eccentric that acts as a miniature link in its own right. What’s more that eccentric link constantly repositions the lower pivot as the bike cycles through its suspension.

Why does that last bit matter?

Because the eccentric essentially optimizes the amount of chaingrowth at different points in the bike’s travel. Initially, the eccentric moves rearward, creating enough chain growth to provide anti-squat and combat monkey-motion. As the bike moves deeper into its travel, the eccentric switches direction (hence the name), which keeps chain growth at a reasonable level, therein preventing that horrible backward tugging on the pedals that you feel on some bikes that exhibit too much chain growth.

So back to the main point here: the Yeti climbs really well.

I’m running the recommended 25 percent sag and, aside from fireroad climbs, I’m operating the RP23 with as little ProPedal as possible. The bike still scoots forward (the lack of heft helps here as well), but also boasts phenomenal grip on roots and rocks.

THE GOING DOWN PART

We’ve covered this bike’s aluminum brethren in the past and if you’ve read those reviews, you might remember that the SB geometry is well dialed for descents. This carbon version sports the same numbers: 67-degree head angle, 17.1-inch chainstays, 45.2-inch wheelbase and a bottom bracket that’s perched 13.4 inches off the dirt. If you want to slacken the head angle a bit more, you can slap on something like a 36 or Lyrik; doing so will bring the head angle to 66.3 degrees.

Of course, all the spec-sheet mumbo jumbo can be just that. Geometry alone does not dictate ride quality. There are a hell of a lot of variables that influence how a bike behaves, including frame rigidity, component selection and, of course, proper suspension set up.

All those disclaimers aside, this bike rips on the descents. It reminds me, in fact, a lot of a more efficient-pedaling Specialized Enduro. It’s playful, fun to pop off of little jumps and yet completely capable when tossed into terrain that seems over-the-top for a bike this light and quick-footed.

The “SB” in the bike’s title stands for “Super Bike” and while I initially rolled my eyes at that bit of marketing, I have to admit that those initials are not too far off the mark.

It’s still too early yet to go out and buy roses and a box of chocolates for this bike—things that I don’t like about it may crop up in the future—but so far, I’m wishing I had enough money to buy one. In a few months I’ll have to pick my favorite bike of the year, and it’s looking like it’ll be a three-way death match between this Yeti, Cannondale’s Jekyll and Santa Cruz’s Tallboy LT.