Seems that Chris Duncan had something in his turkey yesterday and went to spam-town on the bulletin boards at mtbr.com. Amazing the amount of hostility that a pretty innocuous video clip can generate:

Not sure what people are getting ticked off about, but there must have been a lot of people stuck at home with nothing better to do yesterday, because the views of an old Chris Duncan post on this blog went through the roof, and we even got some nice “Now I will never buy one of your bikes” email. I just want to know why the hell Chris hasn’t built up a frame that was given to him about a year ago. And why he inserted almost subliminally brief clips of Bikerfox into his video. Perhaps he and Bikerfox are working together on something “big.” Perhaps they are the same person. Perhaps he is going to gift that frame he never built up to Bikerfox. How awesome would that be?

Still, it generated a bit of work this morning, which I don’t really want to do because we’re closed for the weekend. I think, instead, that I would rather be getting rid of the turkey and riding my bike. So, rather than spend a chunk of time worrying about the damage that Chris Duncan might be doing to our alleged reputation, I think I’ll just post up some random beauty that has nothing whatsoever to do with bikes, so that I can then head out and ride mine. Deal? Good. First, then, how to open a bottle of wine:

Next, in case you were ever wondering what was inside all those Japanese monsters that you have never heard of, this site has a pretty good explanation.

If you ever needed proof that the internet exists to define the word “schadenfreude,” this site is about as heart warming as it gets.

If you feel like destroying some time, click here, then load the demo and have the outside world vanish for a bit. Makes all them other point and click flash games seem a little ho-hum. I kept expecting Ron Perlman to jump out and speak French to me…

And finally, because it’s that time of the year:

I used to have a sweater EXACTLY like Charlie Brown’s. Just sayin’…

Somewhere between Santa Cruz and San Francisco this weekend, things got pretty damn hairball. For those that are counting, that there is our product manager, Josh Kissner, evidently trying to cope with the monkey on his back, literally, doing it right on one of the only Santa Cruz tandems in existence. Linking to this video should in no way be construed as endorsement to go try this yourself at home, nor is it an open invitation to flood us with emails asking where you can buy one of them tandems for yourself. Unless of course there are several hundred emails, and each one comes with a paypal transfer of a few thousand dollars, and nobody is in any hurry to see that rootin’ tootin’ new tandem. Then we might talk.

Southward, somewhere between Santa Cruz and Aptos, a Tallboy took in some shade on Saturday.

I might be going crazy, but this bike is really beginning to grow on me. As of Friday, thanks to a new pair of Schwalbe Racing Ralph 2.25 tires, the bike dropped a half pound and now sits at 25.5 pounds exactly, with pedals. Note – aside from the wheels – no silly light parts. Tubes in tires, XT cranks, XT derrs, XT cassette, metal brake levers, sub-ultra-fancy seatpost, cromo saddle rails.  There’s easy room to gape the wallet out some more and hack another pound off the bike. Maybe more. Yes, the wheels and tires are spoiling me. I was already in love with the wheels, but the addition of the tires have levered this bike into the sweet spot. That, plus four days in a row of perfect riding conditions, and I’m now a happy big wheel freak. Seriously, I’ve gone from being one of the “Well, they work in some places but not in others, and they handle kinda funny” big wheel see-saw apologists into a “You can have my Tallboy when you claw it from my cold dead hands” evangelists. I am stoked, or as stoked as I tend to get without actually beginning to act drunk. Having said that, I just checked the price on them wheels and tires. Ouch! I think that they might be worth more than my last dirt bike entirely.

And right about the time I was rhapsodizing about how sweet big wheels can be for clumsy old ‘tards like myself, a coupla young kids who wave our flag were going very big and being caught all sweet and slo-mo by none other than the Mighty Spomer.

AT’s Showdown Slowdown – More Mountain Bike Videos

Thanks and props go out to young Logan Peat and Jamie Goldman for making our bikes look as good as they do. Now if only they’d kick down with some of their talent so the rest of us wouldn’t look so clumsy…

And onweird with the week we go!