This isn’t Friday’s blog post

Shaun-
I’m not sorry we covered your gold-plated tour bus with Spooky stickers that one time. Not one bit. Someone had to show you a proper East Coast welcome with your shiny pinstriped forearms and Budweiser grin.

When I was 16 I HATED Shaun Palmer for “ruining” mountainbiking with his poor attitude, shitty fitness, perceived misogyny, and baggy pants.

I was jealous of him and Vories for bogarting all of the chicks, among other things.
I suppose I was a grade A hater, XC weenie and most definitely a Straight-Edge fascist who knew as much about having fun as I did about John Coltrane- The word Ecstatic meant nothing to me.
At the age of 30 I’m building grass Slalom tracks, drinking beer between runs and wearing the same pair of Zoo-York jeans and red hightop Half-Cabs that I bought from Dans comp in 1998 after seeing the Malcolm Fearon picture of him on the cover of Dirt#7.
These revelations make me;
1. Wistful
2. Pissed
3. Fucking Stoked
4. A poseur

Vans-
I’m pissed at you for not making the thin insoles w/ the waffle grip in CA anymore.

I bummed that your welting doesn’t hold up for shit and that the shoes you sell at Journeys are rigid unpadded fashion clogs meant for teenage girls.  Fucking teenage girls need shoes to skate in too, assholes!

I’m angry that all of a sudden my shoes got 2mm thicker.

I need/neigh want to feel every pin and pebble.  I don’t care about heel bruises or stubbing my toe.

If I did I’d buy a different shoe.  Hell, I’d pay an extra $20 for a thin shoe that was made right by Mexicans in California, welted the old way and stitched together with real suede or waxed cotton from down south.

Thanks for still sponsoring bike riding in a big way.  Thanks for buying ProTec and keeping “it real”.  Thanks for helping a bunch of bike riders make a living.  Just make me some shoes and I’ll shutup.

Mountainbikers-
I’m pissed at you for falling for all of the Palmer magic without adopting the bluster, balls and semi-veiled professionalism that saved the UK mountainbike market from Mint Sauce, anoraks and pull-out topographical maps.
America-
I’m pissed that the take-home message for young DH racers was that sock height and flat-bill angle are more important than foot-out fast and loose full-metal jackass sideways snarling action.

The extrinsic motivation behind all this drivel is a little fuzzy but as far as I can devine it’s that I love Mountainbiking more than ever and I wish that more people did too.

If it’s knobby it’s good.

Abaslon and Craig are out there shredding just as hard as Hill and Peaty. It’s all the same. Why the hell don’t we share the same culture anymore?

Over the next weeks look out for lots more  “content” from our end.

That doesn’t just mean the usual solipsistic soulsearching and exhortations for sales that border on pathetic.

We’re going places.  I think for the first time in 3 years

Follow it all here-