Block Bikes

After first hearing about MTB free ride pioneer, Josh Bender, a couple days ago, this seemed like a good clip to go with for today's Sunday morning post. There are a lot of crazy things you can do on bicycles. Check the world speed record posts a couple weeks ago, to see some of the craziest. But one of my personal favorite types of riding to watch... these days is Red Bull Rampage footage. It all starts with a huge chunk of rock and dirt, out in the middle of nowhere, like the back country of Utah. Then they let that chunk of rock and dirt erode for about 100 million years, into a steep, crumbly, ridge-lined, chute filled, huge drop blessed, ... Here's another crazy video that popped up on YouTube, since I've been looking all kinds of bike riding for this blog. I never heard of Josh Bender until last night, when this clip showed up in my feed. I've watched pieces of the Red Bull Rampage, quite a bit them, lately. That's the event where the top crazy downhill free ride mountain bikers are invited to show up at some big, burly butte somewhere in the desert. Utah seems to be the main place. The riders and their teams figure out different lines from the top of the mountain, and have a couple weeks (I think) to dig out the lines, build jumps, and fortify the landings to some huge drops. Then ... This is Andrew, Block Bikes shop rider, Lancaster local, and a young guy who likes to have fun on wheels, and sometimes off wheels. I met him when Rich Bartlett, the Block Bikes owner, took me along up to Woodward West about a month ago. Andrew came with us, to session all the good stuff at Woodward for a long evening. Rich and I didn't know it, but Andrew was on a mission that night, he wanted to land a solid backflip into the foam pit. It was buggin' him, it was stressin' him out. His first one got kinda stuck upside down and didn't go well. But he got it together, took a deep breath, and hucked one all the way around. Progression. ...Read More