Most people assume that the initials SCB stand for Santa Cruz Bicycles. What they don’t know is that the initials are really shorthand code for an end of the month all hands on deck phenomenon known as Shitloads of Cardboard Boxes. Kinda cool to see all those boxes get emptied out, turned into bicycles, then broken down and sent off to recycleland. But sweet jaysus, when the build crews are going full tilt sometimes the pile can get outta hand in a hurry… The good news here is that this means a whole lotta bikes are rolling out the door right about now.

Meanwhile, Arakawa-san is on about day six of the usual byzantine mess known as the catalog photo shoot. Roskopp’ll kill me for posting a pic of this Syndicate colored v-10, because it has “the wrong color fork.” We don’t have any of “the right color fork” in stock and aren’t likely to see any soon unless the RockShox fairy drops some goodness on us, so in the meantime we gotta do what we gotta do. Time, strangely enough, does not stand still.

Meanwhile, the Wonder Twins have been out decimating the countryside in fine style, and are sprinting home, just in time for Ariel to go get some European vacation, and for us to steal the van and head up to Downieville. It’s not like they haven’t been having a damn good time along the way though:

Someone who shall remain nameless poached this photo of Abby having too much fun at the Ashland SuperD race from Kenny Burt's facebook page. Since Kenny probably took the shot, but we're not too sure, we would like to credit the photo to him. But if someone else took the shot, we apologize...

Speaking of having too much fun, we have to go back to work now. Forrest is probably napping over in the sail loft… But in the interests of too much fun, we leave you with this shot of our product manager, nose to the grindstone in Whistler last week:

Spomer, industry mole to the stars, captured this pic of Josh and Nick punching the clock. Truth be told, they busted ass all week, and the news of the carbon V-10 is blasted all over the media. If I knew I was gonna be spending several evenings from 8 until midnight riding trail in pitch dark into a massive strobe flash for the whims of a real good photographer, I'd be ordering some stiff ones at lunch too. We'll save those photos for later, but they are gonna be worth it. Some damn fine images came out of that week...

The above video is a poached screen-capture of Mark Webber’s absolutely spectacular and amazing crash at the Formula One GP of Valencia this past weekend. Since the powers that be controlling how Formula One broadcasts are handled tend to have a dim view of rebroadcasts, even when taken by pointing a camera at a TV screen, this may or may not be viewable for very long. However, there are scads of TV screen caps of this wreck on youtube at the moment (in case the embed above gets yanked…), because it is too awesome not to be seen over and over again. It should be noted at this point that Webber emerged from this crash unscathed. Now watch it again.

What does this have to do with bikes? Well, for contrarian fun, one could use this crash and Webber’s subsequent uninjured state (check out that slow-mo bit as he goes upside down then lands upside down just before the camera gets ground into the tarmac) as a ringing endorsement of the ability of carbon fiber to withstand truly massive amounts of damage, when designed properly. However, watching as the air is filled with carbon fiber confetti from both Webber’s and Kovaleinen’s cars, the carbon haters of the world could point to the debris and scream out, “See! Lookit how fragile that shit is!” Yeah, we know, cars are not bikes and vice versa. Now go watch some of the video footage again. Pretty. Damn. Impressive.

Aside from that, it should be noted that Webber actually rides bikes, and has some nice titanium souvenirs as part of that life:

Image poached from News of the World. Click the pic for the full story

Dude is hard, pure and simple. And can wreck with the best of them when it comes to wadding up real expensive carbon fiber race cars. Argue your carbon fiber pro/con love/hate to the end of time, we’re just stoked he walked way intact. That, and we can’t help but be awed by the imagery:

Shaky bad video screen grab courtesy of the BBC, apparently

Meanwhile, back in the world of bikes, Dust-Star At Tahoe hosted a round of the Pro-GRT this weekend, and the Syndicate boys showed up during the four-week long hole in the World Cup Schedule to trash Roskopp’s house and do some bike racing. Evidently it went well:

Minnaar with the big check, Peaty with the perfectly placed photo-bomb thumb. Don't spend it all in one place, guys...

The race winning happened in spite of training methods that at best could be described as “questionable”:

Now, it is painful to have to say this about the Current World Cup leader (bike) and reigning World Champion (skates), but come on, guys, where is your dignity?

And the fact that the winning took place on those bikes made out of the same jive material as that hokey F1 car that fell to pieces earlier in this post:

Click this pic to get Syndicate Den Mother Kathy's report on the event, as well as to see even more incriminating photos of why people should not rollerskate. Photo credit for all Dust-Star images given to Den Mother Kathy...