The Pinkbike Podcast: Episode 69 - The Good, Bad, and Strange Bikes We've Owned

 I’ve had lots of weird and wonderful builds over the years. However the one that really takes the cake was from around 2008; a Haro Sonix (it had a concentrically swinging chainstay around the BB) frame which I built up as a fully suspended singlespeed.

Later it had a paul comp Melvin tensioner so I could run a tripe chainring up front. Yep. It was a 3 speed dually. Totally ridiculous and hilariously impractical to ride

 Comment gold on the pinkbike podcast? I can now die in peace! #lifegoals

 Question, have you guys ever run tubular mountain bike tires and if so how do they compare to tubeless? For cyclocross tubulars are they way to go and I would never go back to racing on tubeless, so why hasn't this carried over to XC?

 I owned Trek's first FS bike, the Trek 9000. 3.5 inches of rear travel and 2.5 inches of (Showa) fork travel. The fork was pretty decent for back then. The first "shock" I had, didn't have a damper in it. It was just an elastomer stack. That one had an issue, so the 2nd "shock" had a tiny rebound screw, it was better and had more control, but... But the frame was bonded, lugged, aluminum and the US quarter sized dab of epoxy didn't hold at the BB junction and the frame separated, literally just riding along. About a half hour after riding a downhill at about 40mph. Had 2 other people I raced with, same thing happened, but they were offroad and sustained injuries. Had my frame warranteed and sold it and bought a Specialized M2, rigid, later bought a Marzocchi Z2 Bomber coil and added the "long travel kit" 65mm to a staggering 72mm!!! Still have the frame, fork, bar and stem hanging in my garage. 32,000 original miles, zero issues..

 @mikelevy have you heard about the mysterious cattle mutilations in Eastern Oregon. Definitely aliens.
www.npr.org/2019/10/08/767283820/not-one-drop-of-blood-cattle-mysteriously-mutilated-in-oregon
This is NPR not some out there conspiracy theorists.
Also, who doesn’t have pictures of themselves as a kid doing the thing they love more than anything else, and who would be your unpaid intern. Maybe you should run some tests on Kaz and see if he is an alien.

 I’ve been involved in MTB since the mid 90s, so these nostalgic bike podcasts including the RC interview are super enjoyable.
Strangest bike was a Cannondale Raven that I owned for longer than I should have. Bright green plus lefty meant it was a conversation starter. Actually a pretty competent xc trail bike for its time. Also had an RM6 with a super T around the same time for freeride duties. That RM6 had the cool factor covered, but its rear end was genuinely a steaming pile, and I bottomed that Super T out incessantly.

 I can say, without one single doubt, Fisher Joshua XO is the biggest POS I ever bought. I did not accept FS as a viable format for the decade after owning that bike...for one year.

 Nice

 Umm... where is RC Part 2? How many more weeks are you going to make us wait?!?!

 Squirrelly would-be BMXers take note: any bike with wheels larger than 22.5 inches diameter is allowed in the Cruiser group and the only other restriction I can think of is handlebars less than or equal to 762 mm (check your national rule book). If you were inspired by the awesome bike handling on display at Crankworks or want to take out of the garage that blingy dirt jumper you built to get 14 likes on Vital, check out your local track!

 My worst bike ever was my first full sus back in 98. A Gary fisher level Betty. As If the URT suspension wasn’t bad enough the rockshox Judy XLC (triple clamp 4” travel fork) with the constantly imploding damper cartridge was the icing on the cake. I was so glad when that frame broke!

 it's truly hard to think of a worse bike than the Giant MCM1 team I owned, and broke in spectacular fashion. why was it bad? well, first, it was $5000 in the mid-late 90's so like $129,000 today, and it performed about as well as a decent hardtail in it's day. It was the most godawful, Gucci POS ever built. also! when it broke, the carbon was Unidirectional and put splinters into my thigh over an inch deep.


the dream of the 90's was a f*cking nightmare, guys!

 Oryx DD66 ( AKA Desert Dueler). A steel overbuilt freeride hardtail that had a 130mm Dropoff with QR... I broke those QR axel more than 5 times, I was weighting max 100 lb. Let's not forget the Hayes MX brakes... but hey got to learn how to wheely, manuel, pedal kick, properly bunny hop ( with a close to 40 lbs bike you had to...) and almost 360 on it ( mostly 180 hehe).

 Basic question for you all: I get you aren’t racers but you ride a lot, what are you diets like? Are you sticking to a strict diet or are you eating like an 18 year old? Is it a protein and veg every night kind of plan or? Thank you

 Episode 69 nice

 @mikekazimer @mikelevy Neural Networks (you can read the Wikipedia) are a way to produce an AI that is loosely based on how your brain processes information (there are activation functions, networks sharing information through deep layers, etc). Most of the places where Neural Networks have worked really well lately tend to be on Object Recognition (like FaceID on your iPhone) and Speech Recognition. Lots of consumer interest in these areas.

As the person developing it pointed out, and he is probably using Deep Learning, is that you need a lot of data. The models tend to be very complicated (lots of parameters) and to make them perform better than the heuristics developed by human (engineers/product managers usually) developers with years of experience tuning bikes, or simpler linear models, takes a fair amount of work. Maybe he was fishing for data

The opportunity here, with an AI, would be that (regardless of which Machine Learning model you used) might be that you have a suspension setting that can change dynamically based on the terrain you are riding. My impression is that shocks have lots of built-in bandwidth to handle different types of terrain; rocky, sandy, flat, etc. So it wouldn't be obvious that you needed a wildly different setup all the during a single ride; maybe if you are a pro, I don't know...

Most of the folks that work on bikes tend to Mechanical Engineers and are naturally skeptical of models that they cannot explain, so I wouldn't expect there to be much of an open mind towards models with lots of parameters and um-predictible dynamics.

 Forced a trials frame in to an all rounder, culminating in a 100km road ride one day that basically killed me.

m.pinkbike.com/photo/950956

 What about having industry experts on to talk about stuff like suspension design and tuning, geometry, race setup, etc.? People like Chris Porter, Fabien Barrel. Maybe even skills coaches like Simon Lawton or the guy that runs Zep.

 I had a Corsair Maelstrom. High pivot with an idler before I even knew anything about bikes. It is funny to think that is what so many bikes are now these days. I got it in a trade for a truck I bought for 700 bucks. I didnt even know what size it was but thinking about it now it feels like it would be a size extra small haha. OG white brothers USD forks and a insanely squeaky idler. HTA must have been 68 degrees. It got me stoked on mountainbiking again.

 When you review a bike are you allowed to talk about reviews from other sites? I think it would be awesome to compare what you saw compared to them, potentially just doing it in the podcast?

 Mine was the Scott Neva with XT and a Judy DH. A sort of URT with a pivot in the top tube to activate the shock. Free bike from the company so that was good! Rode for a while and then stripped it and put all the parts on a polished GT LTS - big upgrade. The haro sonic was actually interesting because it was basically an FSR but with the Horst link located near the bottom bracket.

 Transition Preston fr. short travel Pedaled like shit. Went downhill faster than common sense would allow. Then I rode a evil doj for years. All over Bellingham and glacier. Whistler a few times. New bikes are so good in comparison. Engineering is cool.

 owned 2 Slingshots, at one point in the late 90s-00s my cousin Mark (a marketing exec in Michigan) bought the company and tried to give it a go…the yellow one was sweet…it did what it was supposed too and i rode a ton of steep sandy hills in southwestern MI on it. Damn it!

 I had a Cannondale F1000 hardtail complete with Headshok in a gorgeous yellow/orange. Then one day, I had to replace one of the crank-arms. That was when I found out that the ENTIRE crankset / and rings were all a single unit and the whole shebang would have to get tossed.

From then on, I've avoided Crack and Fail bikes like the plague.

 @mikelevy thanks for answering my question! Really helpful. I've been looking forward to the aliens podcast for ages - if you haven't heard it check out the end of the world with josh clark podcast, the episodes on aliens/fermi paradox/the great filter are super interesting, I think you'd get a kick from it!

 Favorite weird bike I’ve previously owned was my 2004 Banshee Morphine. Was set up singlespeed with Purple Hayes, 2.6” Arrow Racing tires, and the original Z150. Was only shuttling those years and the bike did all the things with minimal maintenance.

 Re: Slopestyle
As someone that came into biking from snowboarding (and am 38 years old...) I feel snow sports went through that 10 years ago. People got bored with the super-spinny-toomanytocount tricks and the riders that stood the test of time were those that could do a massive, but super slow and smooth backside 180 or a method.

 I had a Peugeot BMX that I took to a bmx track once as a 10 year old, but got scared. Then I rode it 100 miles across Wales to Harlech (with a no doubt very bored godfather on his touring bike as company!). Man I did a lot of skids on that bike!

 Talking about new vs old bikes and how they handled I had an interesting time running an 08 specialized pitch vs 05ish giant dh team (the one with the constantly loose moto link).

The pitch had a fox van 36 with the rc2 and a marz tst r shock. They blew the giants old boxxer team with a 5th element shock.

The pitch rode everything better except big hits,3-5' drops is where the giant would start to have it.

Interesting times for sure ...

 @mikelevy @mikekazimer F*ck, did bike shops pay better a couple years before I started, or did y'all just have better priorities? $7200 bike loan?! When you were 18?

I remember making $9800, pre-tax, one year working at a cafe and a bike shop while I was in college. Given, that shop was sort of sketch at the time... and I may not have reported all my tips at the cafe...

 I love hearing about the old bikes!
here is my short list:
1st MTB: 1986(?) Stump Jumper complete with foam grips, a Hite-Rite, a huge pump mounted under the top tube and frickin U-Brakes mounted under the chain stays. (This was in the mid-90's btw, and I think I was 10 or so)
Then I spent years on BMX bikes riding street because my local trails were (and still are) terrible.
First bike back to MTB in 2011: 2005 Specialized Hardrock Comp Disc. It had sweet flames on it. Once fell off the bike rack on the freeway and somehow survived with only a tacoed rim, a busted saddle and a bent handle bar.
First f/s in 2016: 2014 Motobecane Phantom Trail DS. tough as nails, also heavy as shit and not good at anything in particular. Spent way too much time and money looking for old higher end parts to put on it (this bike model hadn't changed since 2007 btw) Set it up to run 100mm of good enough front and back.
Current Bike: Bought used in 2019 (thank god!) 2018 Diamonback Release 3. This fine machine is the Suzuki Samurai of mountain bikes! Sure there are fancier bikes and most of them work a lot better but this off road machine surprises doubters on a regular basis.....
Future Bike: Hopefully one day I'll be on a Mojo HD5. Jeff Kendal Weed described it as the perfect bike for aging BMX'rs, sounds like a match to me!

 @mikelevy: never mind bikes but I have a request for the next podcast - products that should be made - one is a "WHISTLE DELETE" for dh videos - OMG - my wife can tell from rooms away when I'm watching DH and it's soooo damn annoying. Come on Levy you have tech skills can you do it??? @mikekazimer would agree too I'm sure.

 Coolest and worst bike I've ever owned was my first full suspension bike - 2001 GT idrive team. I was so stoked on it, but after owning it for only a few months the frame shattered along with my dreams.

 I would really enjoy hearing more about the bikes you all had. I started riding in 09 on an xc hardtail, so I missed a lot of the very kooky stuff. I enjoy hearing about the older stuff that I missed out on.

 Levy and Kaz trashing Weirwolves, me looking at my 90’s stumpy currently with Weirwolves…
They did suck. On my second ride with them I hit a tree as they wouldn’t stop, or turn.

 Seems like an episode where talking about nice bikes is more appropriate

 Nice episode.

 Question : What size chainrings do you run? Does it change with the bike and terrain? Do you pack a second or third chainring if you're going on a trip to a new place? Thanks

 2000 Kona Stinky was the worst bike I ever owned. For no real reason that makes sense I still hold a bias against Kona to this day.

 If shock compression settings can be changed using neural networks, will @mikelevy be a fan of firming up his bike’s rear end to climb? No little blue switch…

 Question:
How far back in time do you think you'd have to go in order to win a World Cup? Assuming you get to take you modern 2021 bike with you.

 Was Brian creeping in the background laughing during this podcast? I swear I could here him laughing....

 I had a Trek Y33 a long time ago. Holy shit that bike was pretty awful. As soon as you would stand up to climb the rear wheel would immediately break traction and slip.

 Also, Klein Attitude Comp with a manitou fork. Amazing. I loved that bike till it got stolen.

 Can we please see in th next field test the Forbidden Dreadnought vs the Norco Range?

 I liked this one, would love a part 2 - but with pictures please

 Yah…..since about 2000 they’ve all been pretty bad and strange….mediocre at best….oh well.

 My Keewee Cromo 8 was a beast. I still have the frame hanging oin my shed - maybe one day it will be rebuilt.

 modern XC bike vs vintage DH bike hotlap!

 @brianpark. An episode with pinkbike people talking about their history and how they came to pinkbike would be cool.

 I honestly want the Alien podcast, I am sure RC has some bizarre adventures to share.

 Thanks for this trip to the past where lots of weird and often broken bikes lived. I could relate to that so much.

 Shout out to Norco for Ride Aligned. Every manufacturer should provide such detailed setup guides.

 One of those box monocoque 01 Norco Atomik... in size small. I'm 6'3.

 69 nice

 Defo backing higher and further as the best trick going

 The Summer of 69! Wooohooo!

 Do a second part please

 I came here for the photos of the doodle bike!

 i'm gonna tag @mikekazimer too as I suspect stuff annoys him..... :-)

 two words: Klein Mantra

 What's an xbox?

 Mas amigos!