Captain Fastbastard Mayhem

As to the first point - I'll give you one guess as to why that is... That's right. Sponsorship and advertising revenue. That professional base is the perfect marketing tool for the manufacturers when pumping out new stuff. Kevin Evans is riding one - ooooh! It must be good! Wrong. His sponsor has requested that he ride it. End of. Yes, it looks cool while he rides it. But he's a friggin pro - of course it's gonna look good while he rides it! As for the mags, it's their duty to test things for us. It just so happens that us Saffas are entranced by all things 9er at the moment. Therefore, the manufacturers and mag retailers are trying to piggyback on that, after they made the pros look good riding the things. Marketing, mate. My opinion - keep your bike until this whole debate of 6'er vs 9'er vs 7.5'er has been settled. Then decide.

Makes sense, Cap. Copyright protection rules, blah blah blah. And I know all about randomization. I practice it daily. Messes with peoples' minds, that **** does!

When being towed by a 997 Turbo as opposed to a Beetle, yes.

So you've already tried the olive oil/mayonnaise & rosemary mixture then?

Reason I say that - you've got a perfectly good bike and the only reason you're thinking of upgrading is that a mate of yours is telling you that his bike is the mutts nuts. I'm going to go out on a limb here, but I presume that you have no problems with your current bike, and in fact are perfectly happy with it. Look at it like this. Yes - the 29 will roll easier over the bumps. Yes, it will most probably be a more forgiving ride in the long run. But you will learn more about bike handling and technique through the (regrettably saying this) "harshness" of the 6'er. It will teach you more about line choice & positioning than the 9er. And - you don't have to shell out an extra 10 to 15k for the "privilege" of getting a bike with bigger, easier rolling wheels!

That's my understanding as well. Unless you have a 3rd party application that piggy-backs on your browser (a plug-in) that is designed to capture items that are written to your cache, you're outta luck. Essentially, Opera has its own cache-capture tool. Which is how Cap is able to get the vids!

short answer - no.

one q - high roller or muddy mary?

yeah FW - blonde girl ftw! Those okes at the side didn't even MOVE! Looked at her, looked at the jump, and a WTF moment ensued! :clap:

win indeed. I like scab-picking. no slating seen though mate. If you look at the 1st pic of Hill, that's exactly what I was describing....

that's what you get from thinking twice and trying to bail out! Her "balls" weren't big enough!

too true... although, read my post about slamming the arse down. Needed to do that then, but then I was probably on the cusp - not on the side knobs, not on the centre. So I had to do something...

shot caerus!

AWWWWWW FK! Copyright claiming bastid! I wanted to watch that!

Bring your XC bike, mate. I don't wanna feel like a loner on my XC... Pleeeeez!

ooooooh! Just the way! Although he's weighting the saddle from the INSIDE! Even more over the centre than we're talking about, but way to ram an off-camber!

IN. Got myself some new tubeless seals, so the back is back on. Last ride before Debben. Lekker. Last ride before I get the DHI. Even more awesome!

Boobies what?! ;) Yeah. Exactly like that. Saved me on that off camber corner coming down the fire road from Mamba (just below the ruin, before the fire road from the bottom of Bridle Path hooks up with it) Was hitting it at approx 40kph and all of a sudden the rear reckoned WHOOOPSIE!!! Front remained on track, but I just unclipped, brushed the floor and rammed my arse onto the saddle then straight back off again. Hardtail FTW - straight transfer to the ground! Instant pump! I was still running my skinny IRC Mythos XC 1.95's back then. Tons of grip, but skinny as phuck.

my thoughts iggzackerly!!!

me. last ride I can get in before flying up to DBN. Wish I could take my bike with to soak up the vibes in Giba, but alas, I have a hectic schedule. No riding time... *sniff*

MH - I like the foot out, rest your outside leg on the saddle option... that way you still have some sort of pressure on the saddle, but can move around a bit faster... And you still have the outside pedal weighted up...

Carbon is EXTREMELY strong when exposed to lateral forces, ie: When force is applied in the proper plane, and not directly on to the smallest area ( I know what I mean to say, but can't dumb it down) think of F1 cars that are extremely strong as well as flexible, but when they crash they crumple. Or a laminated glass structure, which is also extremely strong when someone bumps into it, but will shatter if a glass bottle drops on any of the edges. So the bars are designed to absorb pretty much anything in terms ov movement up, down and sideways, with the major stress points being at the outer edge of the headset area (hence the need for more support there) but they are not designed to take a knock on the face of the bars. Same principle...

You're lucky you sold it for a low initial fee. They normally take possession of it forcibly, hide it in an inpenetrable (even by Superman) lead kist, and never let you access it.

I do agree with you about the torque-wrench though. That's like taking an M1 Abrahams to a paintball session. Fun as heck, but Just Plain Overkill.

Ach, Coppi. Spanner, monkey wrench, vicegrips, they all do the same thing. Grip the mofo! Seriously though - get yourself a spanner set if you don't already have one. You're bound to need it in the future!