One one hand, this is powerful visual indictment of the whole Astana/Armstrong/Contador brouhaha following this year's Toor Day Frayance. On the other, it is yet another fine image from Graham Watson. On yet another hand, it's another of those "Hey look, these totally legal vitamins are what wins the tour. Really..." ads. And on yet another hand, it's a photograph of a naked dude. The big question here, however, is this: Did First Endurance KNOW that the naked dude was in this photo, and if not, how the hell did they miss it? Culled from page 19 of the September issue of Road magazine (I really only read it for the ads.). And yes, clicking the image will make it bigger. The image that is...

Yep, it’s racing season. The Tour just wrapped up with a nice soap opera to make what was otherwise a tactical yawner kind of interesting. And all kinds of other fun shit is hitting the fan in all other levels of cycling. For instance, downhill World Cup racing resumed after the summer break with a bang, in Mont Sainte Anne, where Canadians speak French. The most consistent man in gravity, Doctor Steve Peat, racked up yet another podium, coming second to the resurgent unibrow of Sam Hill. John Lawlor, our favorite Irish videographer, shot this nice little chunk of film for us:

MT. STE. ANNE 2009, PEATY CELEBRATES 50th CAREER PODIUM from santa cruz bikes on Vimeo.

50 career podiums. Way to go, old man.

Speaking of old guys who still rip, the hair farmer sent word in from the great sunburned north. Following his and Seamuz Mcgrath’s trouncing of the BC Bike Race, Chris Sheppard went to Downieville and ended up 4th. And is now back in Canada, in his home town of Kamloops, racing the Intermontane Challenge. the race itself sounds like five days of violent ass-kickings, but Shep likes that kinda stuff. Here’s his report from the so far of it, two days in (which would be yesterday. Race reports are pretty few and far between from the folks that put the event on, however. Cue Mister Pink speech from Reservoir dogs here):

Hey y’all i’m up in the ol’ hometown of Kamloops BC for yet another chapter of bike racing.  It seems like every pedal stroke here is filled and fueled with nastalgia.  Friends from my past keep popping up as do the stories of yester-year that may have faded somewhat yet still provide many a laugh.  Not much has changed in the land of big buck hucks and fast flowy single track.  Many a character from the movie Fubar still wander the street intermingling with parents, students and the odd Harley Davidson rider.  One can spot “that guy” who lives in every blue collar town throughout North America.  You know the one?  He does hot laps of downtown making sure to lay a patch in his t-roof Camaro while listening to Whitesnake.  Rock on!  I wanna move back here.

The Intermontane is a five day stage race laid out in a clover leaf design.  To keep it simple the first two days covered mostly grassland/desert riding that is on the north side of town (read south facing or in the oven if you will).  Trails were fast, rocky and dusty with plenty of double track to split things up.  Both days we were guided across town with a neutral start before the actual competitive bike riding took place.  Did I mention that Kamloops is not only in a rain shadow but also thoroughly entrenched in Mother Nature’s clay oven?

Oven.  Yes Oven. OOOOOOOOOOOOOVVVVVVVVVVVVEEEEEEEEEEEEEENNNNNNNNNNNNN.  Its freak’n hot here!

Although today’s action saw temperatures at 98, yesterday scorched up to 103 – in an area where there are no trees.  Turned out to be a death ride for most as we climbed over 6000ft.  I broke my chain with 18 km to go and couldn’t believe how hot my chain tool was!  At that point a lead group of Jerimiah Bishop, Tinker and the German had seperated themselves by quite a chunk of time.  By the time I got close to the German with 6km left I blew up, he got lost and I started to receive the nastiest cramps from the heat gods.  Walked up the final climb then was rejoined by Sontag for a 4th place on the stage.  Lost over five minutes to Bishop and Juarez but drowned my sorrows with Budweiser and Sleeman’s honey lager.

Today was a bit cooler due to a light breeze that made the day tolerable.  One big climb and four short ones totaling 5800ft for the day’s activities.  The last 45 minutes were mostly single track that varried from scary fast, to decomposed deer traverses.  We climbed steady all day soon to be joined by Plews.  Rode by many a lake before dropping back into the blast furnace for the final 30 km.  On the first single track I attacked taking Bishop with me.  He followed while I tried to build a lead on the pursuers.  Mission accomplished at the finish line as I lost the sprint but gained enough time to take second from Tinker and put 3.5 minutes on the German.  Good times!

Tomorrow we head south of town climbing 5000ft in one shot before ripping a 45 minute slice of heaven.  Kamloops riding may not be everyone’s cup of tea but the next three days are places where I have trained for the better part of 20 years.  Not saying local knowledge means I’ll place better BUT I will have a tonne of fun. Let the good times roll….

Note correct metric (as in Canadian) use of the word “tonne” in that last sentence. That’s exactly two point two times as much fun as we get here in the U.S. Lucky bastard. Here’s the take on things after stage two from the race report on cyclingnews.com.

And that’s about all we got to say for now…

The title of this blog post was really meant to be a play on words: "More on the Tallboy." Get it? Not funny? Well, I thought it was at the time. You probably had to be there...

Anyway, we just fired out a newsletter about the beast, and about a couple upcoming demo days we have in the works. Heck, we even included geometry charts for the bike, so we really must be making one. The skinny on that can be found here

Meanwhile, we have a real-life rideable “getting close to ready for production” carbon fiber Tallboy all built up and getting worked over (the orange one in the photos is actually made from very carefully mixed chewing gum and soap, skillfully molded to look just like the real thing, but, alas, totally unrideable). After a decade of riding my own various custom built 29″ bikes, and after running through a lot of other bikes as well as our own aluminum mules in the past year, this bike is shaping up to be something pretty damn sweet. The frame is ridiculously stiff. Probably a whole lot stiffer than it needs to be. Definitely stiffer, by a long shot, than anything else I’ve ever ridden in this wheel size. For perspective, it has been testing out stiffer than our Blur XC, but not as stiff as the Blur LTc (which is about the most brick shithouse bike we make at the moment in terms of stiffness).

Stiff is good. Flex is not so good. I’m a happy camper at the moment. As it sits, we’re targeting frame weight, with shock, in the five pound ballpark. “Ballpark” because there is still some tweaking to be done in the final stages, and frames may get a little lighter. Or they may get a little heavier. Either or, 5 pounds for a 4″ travel frame is pretty dang svelte by any measure, and for a 29″ bike, is really, really svelte. Of course, being the marketing stooge, my words are not to be trusted. I’d sell swamp gas as perfume if I thought it’d help us move bikes.

But:

Here is the ride sample we have right now. Built up with nice parts, but nothing so special - thru axle fork, 1900 gram wheels, tires with tubes in them, cr-mo saddle rails, big heavy Joplin seatpost...

And here's what it weighs, size large, nothing up our sleeves. Without breaking a sweat, or too many piggy banks, you could chop two pounds off that weight. We'll have to see what we can get them down to once we really start geeking out with the parts...

It’s gonna be a fun time ahead.