You will now find this because I'd much rather talk about a big sketchy drop 20 years ago on a small sketchy bike than talk about the 'death of cycling'
Are We Witnessing the Death of Self-Powered Cycling?
- Thread starter Jm_
- Start date
god dammit
really shouldn't have posted that pic. I was about to spanser you
dude that landing looks brutal
really shouldn't have posted that pic. I was about to spanser you
dude that landing looks brutal
And drop my Avy, T.H.E. and Sobe sponsorships? I think not.god dammit
really shouldn't have posted that pic. I was about to spanser you
dude that landing looks brutal
that was neither the first nor last time crabjoe did something big while surrounded by a circle of dudesgod dammit
really shouldn't have posted that pic. I was about to spanser you
dude that landing looks brutal
did you ride that out? I see no landing. I see brush and a tree.
On a more serious note.....
All these years, trends, wheel sizes, standards and watts later....that era of riding is still to this day the most fun I've ever had on a bike. Could be because I was a kid and had fuck all else to worry about. But friendships with pretty much all of my closest friends to this day formed then. I had the most fun/"progressing" as a rider. I learned how to build/fix bikes. It was all about spending as much time with as many buddies as you could riding new places, trying new shit and having a blast. DH races and weekend trips with getting kicked out of hotels/restaurants/towns was the norm. No one gave a fuck what you were riding, what you were wearing, how many times you threw up on a ride or how many go arounds/walk arounds you had to take on a ride. It was just all about riding and having fun, something that hasn't really happened since in my opinion, and part of why I fell out of love with it for a few years. I'm back into it now and am having a blast, but there's just a lot of shit missing.
\oldmanrant,getoffmylawn
All these years, trends, wheel sizes, standards and watts later....that era of riding is still to this day the most fun I've ever had on a bike. Could be because I was a kid and had fuck all else to worry about. But friendships with pretty much all of my closest friends to this day formed then. I had the most fun/"progressing" as a rider. I learned how to build/fix bikes. It was all about spending as much time with as many buddies as you could riding new places, trying new shit and having a blast. DH races and weekend trips with getting kicked out of hotels/restaurants/towns was the norm. No one gave a fuck what you were riding, what you were wearing, how many times you threw up on a ride or how many go arounds/walk arounds you had to take on a ride. It was just all about riding and having fun, something that hasn't really happened since in my opinion, and part of why I fell out of love with it for a few years. I'm back into it now and am having a blast, but there's just a lot of shit missing.
\oldmanrant,getoffmylawn
Should have clarified, that pic isn't of me. I don't think pics of me hitting it in my cargo shorts and Fox sweatshirt exist anymore. But yeah, rode it out. The landing is exactly what you think it is, pretty typical for east coast, especially late 90s/early 00s flat hux days.
As a fun aside, I watched Wade Simmons refuse to do it, granted he was on a Switch with Z150 or similar.
a lot of it was definitely that it overlapped the carefree late teens / 20's.
we got thrown out of a hotel at the US open one year because reasons i can't remember because of beer.
we had some trails on private land in college, we knew the owner. total free reign. i remember propane tanks exploding and bags of gasoline being thrown into a bonfire.
Yea, US Open trips were one of the main things that came to mind. 15-20 of us would all rent 2-3 condos and have a fucking blast for 3 days straight. Best was one buddy doing a donut in his Charger straight into the forks of a forklift, straight into the cabin. How my friend sitting in the passenger seat didn't lose a leg is amazing.
Also one year Sanjay and a couple other dudes (Griz or something?) crashed with us because they had nowhere to stay, and it was some of the most hilarious fun I've ever been a part of.
i remember going to diabloween once and it was an absolute shit show.
one year there was a race at platty the 4th of july. i showed up with 2 duffel bags full of fireworks. nothing but firecrackers, roman candles, and bottle rockets.
Pretty sure I got my first concussion during a collegiate race at Platty. @Adventurous @Inclag told me to have a couple beers and sleep it off (mid-day), like good friends do.
all the awesome riding is much harder to convey than easily summarized shenanigans.
the craziest thing toshi did in college was 2 types of kare pan at the same time
this is a rambling thread under a provocative subject, but fuck it: i'll give my .02 from my perspective.
i didn't ride ebikes very much, and during the development of the latest SC Heckler, I did a few trips with people I work with and try them out. Early rides were basically shuttle replacement: full boosting up hills we'd normally shuttle and running out of juice at some point. Then came some variation - doing routes that are just too damn painful to pedal. I'd done those routes once on pedal bikes, but swore off it. Those we highlighted in the SBTS video in early 2020.
After having an ebike as part of the garage quiver at home, I started using it as the "I've got 45 min, i'm going to bang out a few laps" style riding. Linking up with some other ebiking neighbors (moto guys who had quit riding pedal bikes, but got back into trail riding due to e) and they showed me a bunch of local shit I never even considered riding bc it wasn't fun on a pedal bike - but it was fun/challenging/new on ebikes. And the pace was fast, up flat down. Managing your own battery and self so you could hang for a 2+ hour ride with no stopping. If everyone is together, there's no rest stops. I got respect for fully pinning it and how this opened up some routes.
Then new routes with some tech uphills so I wasn't doing the same "climbing trails" in the local route, but did the classic descents, but linked it up with new weird ways back up that would suck on pedal bikes so we never rode that way, and cleaning the climb was great and I was sweating profusely at the top.
I have buddy ebikes in the garage, so I showed others and we had some good fun on the new toys.
And then it normalized. There are times I like doing my pedal bike days - both short travel and longer travel. I have ebike days, either bc i'm tired from pedaling or to ride with other buddies who only ride e. I was doing a bit of roadtripping last week with norcal riding and I brought a Bullit (e) and Tallboy and had rides and places and buddies to ride with on both. And it was rad.
e bikes come w/ more hassles, chargers batteries range anxiety etc. But they are fun as shit and the rides are different. I ride the same zone a lot, so variation in bike yields a variation in route (or at least time/speed). But I've settled in on a 70/30 pedal/e frequency. I'm shocked myself, I thought I'd just become a lazy prick and never pedal again. But it didnt happen. And yeah, theres a bunch of people still figuring them out and buying them etc etc. But I can honestly say how I see it today as a mountain biker who runs a mountain bike company and I've got 8 bikes in the garage and access to whatever I want to ride: both are awesome. I see coexistence. Unless theres a bluetooth speaker involved. That triggers my inner bellingham hiker.
Your results may vary, but this has been my experience over the last 24 months
i didn't ride ebikes very much, and during the development of the latest SC Heckler, I did a few trips with people I work with and try them out. Early rides were basically shuttle replacement: full boosting up hills we'd normally shuttle and running out of juice at some point. Then came some variation - doing routes that are just too damn painful to pedal. I'd done those routes once on pedal bikes, but swore off it. Those we highlighted in the SBTS video in early 2020.
After having an ebike as part of the garage quiver at home, I started using it as the "I've got 45 min, i'm going to bang out a few laps" style riding. Linking up with some other ebiking neighbors (moto guys who had quit riding pedal bikes, but got back into trail riding due to e) and they showed me a bunch of local shit I never even considered riding bc it wasn't fun on a pedal bike - but it was fun/challenging/new on ebikes. And the pace was fast, up flat down. Managing your own battery and self so you could hang for a 2+ hour ride with no stopping. If everyone is together, there's no rest stops. I got respect for fully pinning it and how this opened up some routes.
Then new routes with some tech uphills so I wasn't doing the same "climbing trails" in the local route, but did the classic descents, but linked it up with new weird ways back up that would suck on pedal bikes so we never rode that way, and cleaning the climb was great and I was sweating profusely at the top.
I have buddy ebikes in the garage, so I showed others and we had some good fun on the new toys.
And then it normalized. There are times I like doing my pedal bike days - both short travel and longer travel. I have ebike days, either bc i'm tired from pedaling or to ride with other buddies who only ride e. I was doing a bit of roadtripping last week with norcal riding and I brought a Bullit (e) and Tallboy and had rides and places and buddies to ride with on both. And it was rad.
e bikes come w/ more hassles, chargers batteries range anxiety etc. But they are fun as shit and the rides are different. I ride the same zone a lot, so variation in bike yields a variation in route (or at least time/speed). But I've settled in on a 70/30 pedal/e frequency. I'm shocked myself, I thought I'd just become a lazy prick and never pedal again. But it didnt happen. And yeah, theres a bunch of people still figuring them out and buying them etc etc. But I can honestly say how I see it today as a mountain biker who runs a mountain bike company and I've got 8 bikes in the garage and access to whatever I want to ride: both are awesome. I see coexistence. Unless theres a bluetooth speaker involved. That triggers my inner bellingham hiker.
Your results may vary, but this has been my experience over the last 24 months
now explain the absurd prices for them. 5 figures, why.
Could you clarify? Do you mean pedal, e, or both...
Pretty good TBF. although at 47lb and being a small mine isn't a monster truck like so many are.
Boost and trail in the right gear can actually be used to pedal kick the bike in a similar vein to a trials move.
And don't forget that an Eeb holds more momentum.
Same reasons 5 figure roadbikes has always been a thing.
The motor/battery and controller parts of an Emtb come to around £2k ($2.7k). if you remove that amount from the RRP of most Emtb's you'll find it's pretty much in line with the RRP of a normal bike of the same spec and frame material from the same brand.
Hahaha! I remember the Charger into the fork truck very well. Those trips were the best.
You forgot the part about all the green rolling in from this “new market segment”... and the environmental hit that producing thousands/millions of batteries inflicts.
Enjoy your shiny new thing.
I generally ride them on a dirt jump/4X hardtail. But I've also ridden them on my BMX. neither of those options make anything particularly challenging. Especially after 15 fucking years. I don't really ride my enduro or DH bikes from the door.
what is uttery stupid is not realising how much more descending you can do on an Ebike.What I think is utterly stupid are people that complain about having no time to ride and then load their ebike into a car to drive for 30 mins to trails to then ride a quick loop. You could have been on any kind of bike riding for a hour+ longer.
And not realising everyone has different priorities.
Just over half an hours drive from me is an area with 900ft climbs and litterally hundreds of EWS level enduro trails. In ONE hour I can climb 3600ft and take in 4 different technical descents.
Even for a fit rider that same 10mile ride on a normal bike would take about 2.5 hours or to put it another way if the rider only had an hour to spare they'd be lucky to get HALF the descending in from that one hour of driving time. THAT actually is a game changer if you're short of time.
This used to be a downhill forum.
Sometimes I'll actually take my Emtb AND my normal Enduro bike and ride them back to back. (eg. Emtb in the morning Enduro in the afternoon or vice versa) You're sounding like the sort of judgemental prick who'd assume they were somehow "better" while being passed on a climb by a friendly guy out happily riding his Emtb who'll still going to be out riding when you've finished your ride and already driven home. Kinda ironic, huh?
Not that it matters a fuck how or why other folk ride their bikes. motor or not.
I still maintain regular bike prices were driven up both to subsidize the ebike segment and to make them look less expensive when compared to their traditional siblings. I understand motor/battery manufacturers would sell their products to the bike brands with a heavy discount for a couple seasons to easen their introduction to the market, but still the price differences between a regular bike and an equiparable equipped ebike have certainly been decreasing in the last year.
That decreaed price difference and the greenwashing* @dump mentioned are the main selling arguments I'm hearing down here (i.e. "you're getting the battery and motor almost for free, what's to lose in it?") in favor of ebikes.
* Seriously? how could something sporting electronics, not easily recyclable batteries and other stuff be "greener" than a regular bike???
When?
£10k roadbikes were a thing 15 years back (10 years before anyone had made a decent Emtb)
What?
I can imagine companies advocating them to be greener/healthier than sitting in a deisel burning box of metal. But where in fucktardnation is advocating an Ebike is greener than a normal bike?
I'm doing an apples to apples thing here, talking about mountain bikes vs mountain ebikes, not road bikes. I'm well aware the road bike market dwarfes our niche and how crazy their prices could get.
I must explain myself here, which shows I didn't write it clear enough in the first place: As you say, ebikes are marketed as a greener transportation alternative to say, internal combustion eniged vehicles. Some buyers are using that argument as an excuse to be dickheads on the trails, on board of their mopeds. As with any bad rep situation, they drive a lot more attention than let's say you, running your ebike with all the proper trail etiquette.
Now, trying to steer the thread back on topic, as I posted a couple pages ago -and as you @Gary and previously @joeg pointed out- I'm not seeing regular bikes going down any time soon. Not for the seasoned bikers at least. People coming from the moto world might feel much more at home on ebikes than on regular bikes, but most of the anecdotal data poured in this thread shows they're just another alternative -but not the main one- for a lot of riders.
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Well said. Also, some humans will do what humans tend to do, which is to try to indoctrinate others into things they get enrichment and enjoyment from.
Well @kidwoo is all set now with his moped
www.vitalmtb.com
Class 1 E-Bikes Officially Designated on 35 Miles of Dirt Trails in Truckee
TRUCKEE, Calif. (April 8, 2021) - The Tahoe National Forest recently approved the East Zone Connectivity Project, a landmark decision that opens 35 miles of existing non-motorized trails to Class 1 E-bikes in and near Truckee, California. This is the first time E-bikes have achieved an official...
For most of us, the definition of riding without protection has certainly changed.
This application for e-bikes certainly has merit. Point taken. Well, as long as you aren't that guy climbing back up those same downhill trails cause it's just so much easier now.
Yea, but didn't he do the spine that day?
I don't believe you've done that. Yet. Lemme know when you wanna try and I'll be sure to bring a plastic bag to collect your teeth in.
i just like to poke fun of ebikes because I find it endlessly funny that, like clockwork, plenty of you rush to their defense like this:
I don't 
It was more impressive before the roll out was built up as much as it is now. I'll do it for you snookums. In fact let's make that our next ride destination.
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