Slack Randoms: A High Pivot, Integrated Shock Scott Gambler Concept, Stick Shift Transmission & More
We use Slack as our workplace communication tool at Pinkbike and we have a #randoms channel which we use to share an assortment of videos and stories from all corners of the cycling world and beyond... We thought a couple of the moments from the past week were too good not to share with a wider audience, so here are some of the highlights.
Ubike's Weird and Wonderful Bike Concepts
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No, these aren't leaked renders of a new Scott Gambler but concept bikes dreamed up in the head of Cesar Gonzalez, a Communication student from Spain studying in Rotterdam.
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Cesar runs the Ubike Instagram that allows followers to submit their dream bikes which he then turns into semi-reality, completely free of charge. The 19-year-old has been designing bikes since he was 14, when he drew a Ghost Kato FS on his phone in a doctor's waiting room, and now uses those skills to help him gain some technical skills and learn about the Instagram algorithm for his degree.
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Cesar acknowledges that most of these designs probably wouldn't work if they were ever made into real bikes but instead he wants to foster a creative community who are just happy to let their minds run wild. For this reason, he also doesn't charge for his designs. He says, "I don't want this to be a business, but a community. That means that I don't want to sell my designs to the community, but to offer them a tool with which we can all share and visualize bicycles that could never be real. I also think that money at the end of the day is just another incentive, but after doing all this for pure passion, having fun in the process, gaining experience and reaching the most important brands in the industry, I don't think I need money to feel motivated to keep doing it." However, Cesar says he carefully tailors his posts to reach the right people and is hoping he could one day take the skills he learned into an industry job.
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For more designs and to find out how to submit your own design for Cesar to create, head to @Ubike.Designs.
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Stick Shift
Here's a great find from Dave Rome at Cycling Tips. One of CT's forum members, known as Inoue, has converted his shifter to resemble stick shift gears or, as we call them outside of North America, car gears. Based on a similar component to that used for the analog joystick in a Sony Playstation controller, Inoue has successfully made this mini H-pattern shifter work with both Shimano Di2 and SRAM eTap derailleurs.
For something a bit more old school, Inoue also made some electronic downtube shifters:
Head to Cycling Tips for more information on Inoue's creations.
MTB on a Waterslide
From streets to summits, we've seen mountain bikes ridden in lots of places but rarely in a waterpark before. Check out this trippy run from Aurielien Fontenoy down a waterslide.
Watch Auriel's full vlog here.
The 10-year-old MTBer advocating for equality
10-year-old Bel Capie has made headlines in New Zealand for trying to make mountain biking a more equal sport. Stuff.co.nz reports that Bel regularly gets mistaken for a boy when she's riding, which is annoying as she tends to beat them. She said, “It means people assume girls aren't very good at this stuff. That it’s a boys sport. At races, if they haven’t been seeded, they just put the boys in front and that’s frustrating because I have to overtake all of them.”
Bel has recently given talks to her class about gender equality and participated in women's riding events. She said, "No matter how much you've been told you can't do or be what you want because of your gender, always continue with the belief that what you want to achieve is possible."
Read more on Bel's story, here.
Ubike's Weird and Wonderful Bike Concepts
No, these aren't leaked renders of a new Scott Gambler but concept bikes dreamed up in the head of Cesar Gonzalez, a Communication student from Spain studying in Rotterdam.
The integrated shock Gambler was one of Cesar's own creations but he also creates user-submitted designs.
Cesar runs the Ubike Instagram that allows followers to submit their dream bikes which he then turns into semi-reality, completely free of charge. The 19-year-old has been designing bikes since he was 14, when he drew a Ghost Kato FS on his phone in a doctor's waiting room, and now uses those skills to help him gain some technical skills and learn about the Instagram algorithm for his degree.
Cesar also designs custom colourways
Cesar acknowledges that most of these designs probably wouldn't work if they were ever made into real bikes but instead he wants to foster a creative community who are just happy to let their minds run wild. For this reason, he also doesn't charge for his designs. He says, "I don't want this to be a business, but a community. That means that I don't want to sell my designs to the community, but to offer them a tool with which we can all share and visualize bicycles that could never be real. I also think that money at the end of the day is just another incentive, but after doing all this for pure passion, having fun in the process, gaining experience and reaching the most important brands in the industry, I don't think I need money to feel motivated to keep doing it." However, Cesar says he carefully tailors his posts to reach the right people and is hoping he could one day take the skills he learned into an industry job.
The designs aren't necessarily meant to be functional to encourage creativity.
For more designs and to find out how to submit your own design for Cesar to create, head to @Ubike.Designs.
Stick Shift
Here's a great find from Dave Rome at Cycling Tips. One of CT's forum members, known as Inoue, has converted his shifter to resemble stick shift gears or, as we call them outside of North America, car gears. Based on a similar component to that used for the analog joystick in a Sony Playstation controller, Inoue has successfully made this mini H-pattern shifter work with both Shimano Di2 and SRAM eTap derailleurs.
For something a bit more old school, Inoue also made some electronic downtube shifters:
Head to Cycling Tips for more information on Inoue's creations.
MTB on a Waterslide
From streets to summits, we've seen mountain bikes ridden in lots of places but rarely in a waterpark before. Check out this trippy run from Aurielien Fontenoy down a waterslide.
Watch Auriel's full vlog here.
The 10-year-old MTBer advocating for equality
10-year-old Bel Capie has made headlines in New Zealand for trying to make mountain biking a more equal sport. Stuff.co.nz reports that Bel regularly gets mistaken for a boy when she's riding, which is annoying as she tends to beat them. She said, “It means people assume girls aren't very good at this stuff. That it’s a boys sport. At races, if they haven’t been seeded, they just put the boys in front and that’s frustrating because I have to overtake all of them.”
Bel has recently given talks to her class about gender equality and participated in women's riding events. She said, "No matter how much you've been told you can't do or be what you want because of your gender, always continue with the belief that what you want to achieve is possible."
Read more on Bel's story, here.
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15? Maybe. 20. That's a good time to start diving into the political landscape based on all the experiences you've had and context you've gathered. But 10 is not a good age to be worrying about complex concepts such as gender inequality. All the 10 year old kids I see at skateparks or out surfing are just having fun, not worrying about the amount of penis-clad human beings waiting for the next wave -_-
I’d also love to see all of these activists do a world tour of all the countries in the world that don’t hold western values to see what gender inequality really looks like.
also, please explain where Sowell dismisses human rights. I will wait...
do I have you read correctly here?
The best thing you can do for a human is teach them how to value themselves, how to ignore toxicity in the world because there will never be no toxicity (in the form of words of course, not physical abuse), and how to move forward after negative experiences.
I think just because we are painting her as on the right side of history, does not justify the parents signing her up for a lifetime of social justice. That's a HEAVY task for any human. And it should be one you make under your full cognition and adult reasoning. Ideally post-teen experience. (to put it in simplistic terms, I know many abnormal teens who got through school just by cruisin along and not painting targets on their back. and we all know people who were outspoken and passionate and it ended up to their detriment in one way or another).
It's really just the age that bothers me. Mostly because I think of all the stupid things adults told me as a child. And I've effectively had to spend time erasing indoctrination that I do not welcome in my adult cognition... And as far as I'm concerned that's just less time and space for me to effectively develop who I truly want to be.
I'd keep these type of topics off the table until high school, because that's when it suddenly all rushes in with sexuality, preparing for post-HS education/work, lots of changing of friends groups and personalities, and ultimately a LOT of struggles. High School is a great time to LEARN about these concepts. College (age) is a great time to enact on the beliefs you developed as a teen. Pre teen years simply isn't. Should never be.
But yeah, on the point of the difference between 10 and 15 years old, it's massive. And I would be LESS inclined to moan about the parents if it was a 15 year old, and have ZERO inclination to have a moan about it if it was an adult aged individual. Like... Literally they can still do all this stuff! IF they want... But just wait 5-10 years. It's realistically not all that different from raising a 10 year old to be a Qanon believer or a Scientologist or pushing them to play hockey at an elite level when they're maybe on the fence about it. I will never relativize the indoctrination of children in these more subjective contexts. 10 year olds should be learning fundamentals and let's be honest most kids don't really grasp the fundamentals of emotional control, mutual respect, working with others and understanding their point of view, until the late teen years depending on their home life. Our prefrontal cortex is scientifically said to not be fully developed until around age 25! And it seems pretty obvious that's the case when people think of the emotional difference between a 20 year old and a 30 year old.
So they are just structuring things off of the world class events. And there's no easy solution. If you flip the gender roles for practice/seeing... Then it biased against women. If you want to seed people by time for TT or qualis... You have no data to seed with. World Cup has the benefit of being able to seed from last year and then wild cards or juniors entering elite will have to go first/be seeded last.
In a perfect world... We would handle this a bit more like surfing. Which has FEMALE ONLY events and they typically run on their own time schedule and aren't affected by the mens event which is separate. And if you want something close to fairness, that's it right there. BUT... Where's the problem? In the promotion. That could be detrimental to the women's events, as they draw less eyes and advertisers and money. And MTB racers across the board are underpaid for the talent they exude. Our sport just isn't on the level of football or hockey. It's a bit like MMA, to be honest. You get paid pretty shit from the organizer themselves... It's all about your self promotion through endorsements and your personal brand.
So the real question to female athletes would be... Do you want fairness if it means a separate event? (assuming its logistically possible for teams, which it probly isnt as large adjustments would have to be made) Or do they want the seemingly inevitable lack of fairness of dual gender events? Because again... You can't seed by gender, it's biased. To avoid bias you can seed by speed... But some of the worst men still beat the womens times. So again, you're really getting maybe 10-15 women in A practice. And that's at a WORLD CUP level... Not some beer league XC/enduro races at the local lift access
Gender bias will always exist. Because genders do things differently.
One of the best ways to make event schedules fair is to have separate events for genders.
However, the reason that will never happen is due to advertising/logistics/money.
Basketball is massive, of course, and that allows it to have a WNBA... Even though I can't imagine what fraction of money that organization generates compared to the NBA.
When you scale things down to MTB's level of money/advertising, it would be a serious detriment to women's riding and events. It's better that they ride the same events same time as the men and be a part of the overall media and advertising of world cup events.
And then we don't have to have cringe comment sections as drawn out and poorly thought out as this one.
It's a win-win. (Well aside from advertisers/companies, which is why it won't happen.)
Good to know where Ghost get their frame designs from.
It's virtue signaling about someone else's virtue signaling... inception.
She's not being excluded from races or treated differently. She's being assumed to be a boy because she's performing well in an activity that's, surprise, dominated by boys. Being a "tom boy" doing boy shit and getting mistaken for a boy isn't inequality. Now, if they were telling her she wasn't allowed to race because she's not a boy, she'd have a point, but that's not the case.
So yes, it's just virtue signaling bullshit because she's got liberal loons influencing her to think a harmless mistake in gender assumption is really some nefarious systemic inequality... and that's a shitty thing to put on a 10 year-old who should just be enjoying riding her bike.
According to the article she's literally being forced to start races behind slower riders based on sex instead of performance.
"being a "tom boy" doing boy shit"
She's riding a bike. Riding a bike is not "boy shit". 99% (number straight outta my arse but you get the point) western kids her age ride bicycles regardless of gender. "Tom boy" haha dude, you're 43, not 83
"if they were telling her she wasn't allowed to race"
Argumentum ad absurdum at its finest. Even if she was indeed not allowed, you would find an even more absurd point to move the goal posts to. We both know that.
Tell me more about how common sense, personal freedom, market freedom and democracy are signs of a mental disorder.
It should only require a little thinking.
And yes, 10 year old mountain bike racing or bike racing in general is very much "boy shit." In general, cycling is male dominated in terms of participation, and more specifically, competitive cycling participation is even more male dominant, and to drill down even further, competitive mountain biking is even more predominantly male.
Saying if she was being disallowed from racing isn't an argumentum ad absurdum, let alone "at its finest"... it's an example of what actual inequality would look like and if she were being disallowed, unlike you I wouldn't make strawman arguments to defend my point, I'd acknowledge that inequality as inequality.
Come on lil guy, you're 36 not 16... time to start using your brain.
I have zero intention of going round in circles with you. I've made my point once and that's enough. If you want to repeat the same crap another 10 times be my guest. Happy trolling.
A girl is racing, with boys, and doing well, while people watching the racing are applauding her performance and telling her dad how good she's doing... but mistakenly assuming she's a he because most of the competitors are he's and not she's. There's nothing about that objectively representative of inequality.
Complaining about that being an equality issue or attempt to discourage girls from participating isn't a "call for thoughtful consideration" by any objective measure, it's nothing more than a kid who's been indoctrinated into believing that she's being treated inequally looking for issues where there are none. As I already said, that's a shit burden to put on a little kid regardless of gender. The only people who are really treating her differently because she's a girl are her parents or teachers or whomever is putting this shit in her head.
Seriously, that modern bullshit just should pass by without our - normal people - attention, that's all..
The reality is that depending upon where you are, 2-5x more men ride than women, and that gap only grows in terms of mountain biking vs cycling as a whole, and then grows even more for racing as opposed to just riding.
Who you ride with doesn't change that and recognizing it doesn't mean I'm 90, it only means I'm old enough to have been educated in the era of facts meaning more than feelings.
Hey now, not all of us millennials have learning disabilities, some of us understand, and also know that are small bubble doesn’t reflect the world as a whole.
When I use to work in a bike shop I’d say about 75% of the riders coming through the doors were women, does that mean 75% of cyclist in my area are women, no it means the same thing it’s always meant, women do most of the shopping in a house hold.
Just like the "Bro-zone" article, it's those on your side of the 'argument' who are partaking in the virtue-signalling circle jerk.
Weird way to tell us all that you're triggered but can't make a point in defense of your emotive nonsense but ok... you do you champ.
You're 0-2 lil buddy, but by all means carry on.
Under a bike that looks suspiciously like the Grim Donut!
If you check out the ubike instragram he shows the submission that he renders and you can tell they are drawings by like middle schoolers.
www.pinkbike.com/photo/21756671
And to the tolerance princesses out there:
There are only two genders.
Men and woman are extremely different.
Men are usually physically stronger than women.
However, both genders are equal.
I’m don’t think biologicals males should be able to compete against biological females.
Its a photoshopped Scott Spark.
The pivot is at the same place- its not a high pivot bike but has an idler?
The original XC shock from the Spark can't fit in there, let alone a DH stroke piggyback coilover shock.
I wonder if this sort of voyeutistic stimulation will ever get old?
Folks need to do things, watching others is not fit for the mind and body.