The New Boredom

Jimmy (of Push) and Tammy (of IMBA) held a little bbq/jump jam at their house this last weekend and a ton of riders showed up to session their humble little back yard of ample fun. I went up their with Steve Wentz (who will be posting a top 5’s here soon) and brought along a couple cameras. The 16mm film never was taken out but the digital stills were under one condition- no standard riding shots. There were some other photo people there taking care of that anyways.

One thing I always like is checking out people’s concentration faces. Here Andy shows how well he can manual by tweaking it out a bit and keeping his face so darn cool and neutral:

This is Luke, the last shots I have of him are in a tux at Nate Adams’s’s’s wedding. I like it when my autofocus craps out this bad:

Nick’s puppy is still really soft and adorable.

The neighbors were there grilling and enjoying the sights of crazy kids these days jumping bikes.

It’s cold outside and I am stealing internets from my neighbors outside. Time to go order a pizza.

Beefs. I have some.

For right now I have some beefs with the way the bike industry is handling product years right now. I dont understand the need to get people so giddy excited about next year’s stuff so early. What happened to saving up your new goodies for Interbike and blowing everyone away with it there? The kind of people who dork out super hard over next year’s stuff would be just as excited in October about next year’s stuff and they get in April. The internet and the spread of press releases these days means that about forty seconds after a company pitches a new idea for next year’s product, it’s everywhere. Forums, magazine websites, blogs, you name it- it’s everywhere before the release is done attaching to the first batch of emails. This immediacy has got to be exciting for companies but I think they are failing to see one key side effect of the speedy web PRs and that’s the nano-second attention span of the readers. Press releases are often boring hum drum anyways but I dont know a single person that makes it past the first paragraph of one anymore. Judgement is passed at the blink of an eye (I would know, we can smell our own). You know from a 30 second sample on iTunes that you want or hate a song. By the end of the second sentence of a press release, we already know if the hype should be propagated or dismissed.

So all that hype you built up for your 09 stuff in the first half of 08 has long since faded away by August. How do companies counter this- by releasing the actual 09 product in August. So by this rate we should be seeing 2013 forks/whatever in about twenty minutes. If all you are changing is the color of your product then what is the harm is having people ride the shit out of their old colors and then buying new colors in maybe november or december, or god forbid, actually in 09. If you’re actually changing the functionality and design of a product then  what’s the harm in getting it dialed through a couple extra months of real world testing and releasing it… in 09?

It’s just silly to be that half way through the 08 race season, people (regular joes) were riding 2009 parts.

I guess I’m just bitching about semantics- call it 2008.5 or wait for 2009 to call it 09 product. You cant play catch up with the pace of web press releases and you will never satiate the appetite of the web savy customer. But you can force them to slow the hell down and take a couple breaths… it might do us all some good.

Second beef- the people visiting the same stupid post about fixies months later from Busted Spoke… if you have gripes with me and my opinions, send them to me. I would like to discuss them with you.

MSA is awesome. They always treat the media people well, the after party never fails to produce some good stories, the track is long and difficult and awesome… the whole thing is good- except for the fact that it takes about 42-48 hours to drive there from Colorado. This year though I was out on the east coast anyways and went from Vermont up to Bromont for a couple days and then on to St Anne.

A few days earlier I got to tag along with Ben Reid and Brendan Fairlcough to Bromont where they were shooting some footage for Clay’s BTT video. Ben is super nice and I really like the fact that he has his Just Reid “team” going. That was the first time that I had seen Brendan ride in persno and I pretty much crapped my pants. He’s so aggressive and smooth. He’s going to have a long and bright future in racing. I’m betting he wins a WC next season, he was already a couple turns away from doing it at Schladming this year.

Dan Atherton rode practice in his jersey and jeans and I thought that was awesome. Jason Codding was racing that year too and he’s awesome. He’ll be a doctor soon and that’s why you havent seen him around lately. I guess med school is hard and stuff, takes up some time. John Kirkaldie passed some dude and that wa the second time that season that I got a shot of him doing that mid-run. He is rad and I miss him around the race series.

anyways, enough of my jive, here is a video:

I’m working on an article right now about my recent trip to Whistler. It’s been a slow going start and I have scrapped and started the whole thing over now probably 15 times. It will get done eventually and if no one picks it up, the thing will be posted here. But I havent done anything on here in a few days so here are some photos from the trip that are a little preview.

Sunset in Idaho... maybe.

Bugs. Lots of them.

In Whistler, coasting the 20" home for the day.

I really like that last photo. I wish it weren’t so fishguy… but I still like it.

I dont really know French but I think that means more of Justice.

So here is more of Justice.

And the Top Three Things Justice Did During Their Set List:

1- Pointed up.

2- Pushed buttons (I suspect play/pause mostly)

3- Pointed at Crowd

Honorary 4th thing- Smoked a whole pack of cigs in their artificially shortened set while doing the top three things.