One look at that first pic is all it took for me to turn in disbelief, a second look to laugh hysterically, and a third look to put an imprint of my keyboard on my face, from dropping my head on it, from the apparent loss of brain cells. Now to watch the vid, just cause I'm curious and want to laugh at their reactions.

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There are other videos of road bike backflips and trials riding. Fairwheel Bikes has a trials riding one, on off the shelf ultralight carbon road bikes and wheels. Forgot where I saw the other backflip, but it was done on asphalt and a skate quarter pipe ramp, which I find much more respectable than this, due to the lack of room for error and the more severe penalty if things don't go through cleanly. Still, I have to say this is the first time I've seen it done in *style*.

Kind of lazy to copy the article word for word from the official description and also get the link to the extended version broken.

That's my SF100 in his ad. Creepy.

"So, like the bikes designed to squat using floating brakes, or linkage suspension designs, so does the Zerode" Reference? I know the benefits of having a bike with pro-brake squat, but brake jack is another story. The Zerode has brake jack. It apparently hasn't changed since it's prototype stage. 185% - 135% brake anti-squat in its proto days and about the same running its current form through the same linkage analysis program. Most well designed modern bikes are 100% or less (over 100% is pro-anti squat and under 100% is pro-squat). http://linkagedesign.blogspot.com/2010/11/zerode-prototype.html

And I passed up a Kali Avatar the fit me extremely well, for a helmet that cost $100+ less, the Urge Down-O-Matic. Urge was much lighter, much more low profile, and felt a bit stiffer, but wasn't DOT or SNELL cert'd. I wonder if that was a good choice, after reading this. To say the least, I know the visor offers some absorption--I had a ~20 mph faceplant, that tore one side of it off, and I got away with just a face full of dirt and sand.

I didn't totally understand the derailleur cage phrasing, but I do know what happens if you spec a SRAM medium cage derailleur with a 2x10 setup. With a chain that had its length adjusted with the big x big + 2 link method, the SRAM med cage RD doen't provide enough tension when in the small chainring up front and the smallest 4-5 cogs, and you end up with all shorts of shifting problems if you somehow end up in that gearing. When in doubt, go long cage. It's what a vast majority of complete bikes ship with. I think SRAM med cage was designed for 1x10 or maybe micro geared double+bash (ex. 24/32/bash + 11-32). I learned my lesson the hard way. I heard/read people mentioning that med cage provides better tension, with chain drops being one thing that was noticeable reduced, which I really wanted to address, and wrongly assumed that it'd work with my 11-36 and 28/42 setup on my FS trail bike.

I thought Aaron Gwin on his ASR5 looked amazing in that Yeti video, but this one is impressive as well. Are they using 100mm forks as well, or are my eyes deceiving me, making me think that they're using longer travel forks? I see people doing drops at Mammoth Mtn on short travel bikes. I may or may not have done them on my Superfly 100. If I did, I'm sure Mr. Fisher wouldn't be so happy that his bike is being used for such, especially when the time comes to explain the crack(s) in the frame.

Fort William World Cup DH. This bike, pref under some young super fast and reckless pro rider, as opposed to a tall sprinter type. Lets see its actions/results speak for itself.

If that impresses you, check out the True Precision Stealth hubs. Infinite points, instant engagement, and silent coasting. i9 certainly impresses with their quality, considering their material selection (super hard high-grade steel freehub internals) and the advanced machinery required to work it, but they're not exactly the pinnacles of engineering design. Their machinery basically allows them to make better stuff than the competition, albeit on a smaller production scale.