Shortcutting and skidding our way to fame and failure.

Processing the French Alps - Jordan Regnier and Alexander Kangas ride Tignes/Val D' Isere from Kona Bikes on Vimeo.

I'm not usually such a grump about this stuff, or at least I used to not be.

But I gave this one a gander, because I like Kona and I like their grassroots program, and let's be honest, I just love seeing talented riders do stuff that I can't do on trails I might never see.

I've done a ton of riding in France.  And I've actually skied Val D'Isere.  Never ridden bikes there, but the skiing is phenomenal, and the landscape itself, like a high-alpine version of the moon, is breathtaking.  In the winter of 2000, I got caught in a whiteout blizzard there, skied down the mountain to get out of it, but unfortunately ended up in the wrong town.  I was a 20 minute drive from the proper lodge.  I remember the laughs from the locals at the bar, who then informed me to take the red train - which was, in fact, a bus - back to Val D'Isere.  Wonderful people.  Glorious place.

So maybe that's why seeing two bros skidding down pristine high alpine trails and actually shortcutting large sections - like, totally blowing corners and sliding through what I presume is fragile, semi-cryptobiotic soil that can barely hold itself together in the short growing season of the summer, bothered me.

Do you know anyone who rides like this?
I certainly do not.
If I rode with someone who rode like this, I'd take their bike from them.  Just awful.

Why then, are we glorifying this in digital form?  By we, I mean a pretty terrific American mountain bike brand.  Does this actually sell bikes?

Maybe I'm getting crusty in my old age (I am) but I feel like this shit is setting us back way, way more than it is putting Kona's brand forward.

From an advocacy perspective, doesn't this get used against us?  Even in a laissez-faire environment like the Alps in summer, I have to figure this hurts the effort, if there even is an effort anymore.
(In case you didn't know, Laissez-Faire is French for Bud Lite Lime.)

Digital media is the future - I get that.
Films like this are the way to reach the groms who want to buy your bike, Kona.  But would you really let one of those groms ride like this on your local loop?

Don't ask for whom the bell tolls.

It tolls for thee.


You know what was not tolling that day, back in 1985?
Mobile phones.

Not a single smartphone in that crowd, and look at them.  LOOK AT THEM.

They were ecstatic.  High on drugs, maybe, but still just really brilliantly happy.  Rocking their faces right off of their faces.

If you could have the same concert today, which you can't of course, but if you could, I guarantee you it's way more subdued.  Bizarre behavior, like people absorbing the scene by monitoring their twitter feed and seeing how the people around them are reacting to the music on social media, even though the music is RIGHT IN FRONT OF THEM.  Looking down, not up.  Awful.

Cranksgiving is right around the corner, folks.
Join together, I beg you, with your friends, family, pets, and most definitely your buddies and your 2-wheeled steed.  All that time which you will never get back.

Break away for an afternoon and ride something terrible, something you've been wanting to do for a while now but you were afraid of.  Something in the rain, or at night, or in another state that you shouldn't probably try to do - do it anyway.  Spend some quality time, phone-less, not looking down but actually in the real world, the universe itself which only exists in the six inches in front of your face.

At long last, log back in to reality, full sprint, looking up, up, up.

Sled Dog Doping

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/24/sports/iditarod-doping-dallas-seavey.html



It occurred to me that Sled Dog Doping could end up being the very last stand for clean-sport rhetoric.  The Maginot line, if you will, between making an effort to maintain competition by some semblance of fair standards and just giving up and allowing whatever is going to happen to finally happen, whatever that might be (Mad Max.)

I'm talking about drawing a line in the sand, dude, and across this line you do not cross...

It's one thing if you want to give yourself the needle.  Shitty, for sure, but your business.  I hope we catch you, and the impact - either way - is something you'll have to own on a personal level.  In a greater sense, I don't usually believe your accomplishments anyway - the sport at a professional level has devolved to that kind of universal mistrust.  I enjoy it, don't get me wrong.  But the minute you say "i've never tested positive" I know that you know that I know, and we can just sort of nod at each other and go about our business.

But some rich, White, wanna-be eskimo with a bizarre, pack-driven need for speed way up in some godforsaken corner of the arctic circle giving his dog drugs so HE can win.  FUCK THAT GUY.  This seems like too far, even for a morbidly amoral population of speed freak assholes such as ourselves.  Even Lance Armstrong, Ryder Hesjedal, maybe even Francisco Mancebo would look at this and probably say, "woah, dude.  WOAH.  That's a little much, isn't it?  Think about what you're doing."

Canine doping.  The end of the road.  Cyclists, even as morally bankrupt about this kind of shit as we are, this is where we have to draw the line.

I hope your dog bites your face.

Up, up, up.