This is titled Ghetto shop tour #2 for a reason, that is what it is and the first one was even worse so enjoy the show!
This is where the magic happens and we are pretty proud of what we have achieved over the many years of working our buts off to get to this point. The icing on the cake was taking front cover of American Machinist not anything that will sky rocket Straitline’s sales through the roof but the CNC dorks can sure have a good read!
Ryan showed us his video he made with Baxter of Fernwood Media while we were down in Vegas and this is the end result!
Ryan is rocking a set of our red Straitline Pedals in the video, a much needed tool if you have ever dropped into a long gnarly interior line like that! Everything looks mellow on film until you sit on top of the chute, this is when grippy wide platforms are heaven sent as you hold on!
Enough about Ryan, me time. Here is a retro shot of me dropping into a line near my hometown of Summerland B.C.! I shot it on Video and you swear that a kid could do it on a Trike. Nothing beats your own eyes to appreciate a line and that line Ryan attempts on Helmet camera is fricken gnarly fast!
This was my playground for the fall, then I’d migrate to Victoria first snowfall to ride street.
And big, huge thanks to Baxter for hooking me up with my product shots that I desperately needed to meet catalogue deadlines.
Baxter shows up, sets up, shoots leaves and I tell everyone that I did it after hours!
I am going to be using our main blog to sound off on any bike park announcements as this blog has better traffic than www.freeridebc.blogspot.com. Below is mentioning that we shut the park www.freeridebc.com due to bad weather! You will be hearing a lot about this park next Spring when we complete the Pro sections and pump track expansions. Gonna be good!
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The park is open to public and free for all to use between dawn and dusk but some of you may have noticed the gate is closed from time to time. This is for safety reasons and for the park general health too. The park can also be shut down at our discretion if some one has modified the course in anyway and we need to repair the damage but for the most part not a problem at all, the weather is to blame!
When it rains heavily the jumps become wet and slimy causing concern for safety as there is little to no traction at all, and when you ride the jumps or the pump track with or without proper tires you cause extreme damage to the surface.
Then when it all dries out we are left with heavily rutted tire tracks all over the park so we must close it down until it dries up! This drains our resources and partial course closures or the entire park needs to be closed for repair.
This Saturday we are holding a cleanup party, basically a modest day raking rocks and debris off the course so that we can prepare the site wit ha product called Soil Tac! What Soil Tac does is penetrate the surface of the park about an inch thick making water bead off the surface almost making it into concrete. This will save the park from heavy winter conditions and all of us can ride it safely!
We would have don't this before but the funds were simply not there to do so until now through very generous donations and community support!
Keep in mind this entire park has come to life through the endless hard work of a small group of people and as with every project of this size and the amazing growth we have had there are communication issues and lack of man hours at times. We will promise to have this blog updated every time the park is closed so you can check prior to driving or riding out.
Thanks a bunch and we hope to see you this Saturday!
I was talking to Eric Peterson of Faultine today and checked out his website where I saw a refreshing video from this summer in Whistler of the Spaniard, Xavier Raventos or “CHO CHO” for short!
This kid is REDONKULOUSLY fast and he uses our Straitline levers and pedals for what they were designed for… Whistler runs!
The rest of these videos are from Eric as well, I had him send me all his summer links from Camp of Champions since he documented the entire summer up on the slopes who else can supply proper “Ode to Whistler” vids in a pinch!
Camp A
Camp B
Camp C
Camp D
Gereth Dyer - Air Dome
Casey Groves - Snakes the Boneyard weeks before Crankworxs
And possibly the most important video Faultine has and will ever make… The Straitline Bear Bell Public Service announcement!
Not shot in Whistler at all I just look for excuses to tie this video in, it was done on a very generous budget of $60 dollars in Guerillabear suits and Eric worked for Break Levers and world wide fame!
For all of you who just hear about BC and our beautiful surroundings check out this guys photo blog I found on BC and a bit of Alaska- close enough! And after visiting Europe where they have cut all the trees and eaten all the animals I can understand why people get so excited seeing a whale or a bear, BC is pretty sick place to live and ride but not the best, plenty of places in the Alps that will make your jaw drop!
Know a little plug for our little know Bike park www.freeridebc.blogspot.com we have been hiding it until it has fully completed so that people see it and go WTF? We just secured a fund raising grant from The Rotary club along with a few municipal awards for bridging community health with such a ambitious project! So we will make a announcement in the Spring inviting all levels from Pro DJ riders to Olympic XC hopefulls to coem and ride it for free!
Okay the following sentence allows me to post and laugh at this video because it is ridiculously bad and not really meant to offend anyone…
“Straitline Components does not endorse or support any views or beliefs depicted in the following video, viewer discretion is advised 18+!”
Now we also do great business in Germany as well and this does not reflect on us in anyways or on the amazing German friends we have, history is history but just take a peak and have a sense of humor.
Ready?
Now more promised shots from Eurobike that I promised ages ago!
In random order…
It was so jammed packed this year our options were to hang with the Transition bike crew 2 hours away in Austria, Sleep i na drained indoor pool with Ruedi of TSG and all his athletes or buy a sweet ass tent and camp 300 ft away from the show! Slept like babies and could roll out of bed and walk to the show. We left the tent when we left all made up like as if we were still there camping, not sure how long it took them to figure out that we were 5000 miles away already!
These guys are the reason you stay on site because a two hour commute still half drunk in the morning sucks- Thorben, Christian and Cuz Cuz the only dude I have ever met that can sleep sitting up in any situation.
Tim has a slight touch of down syndrome but he means well and just sits in the corner quietly when not selling Straitline Components in Germany for SportsNut!
Wine festivals and any form of drinking is highly endorsed over there, old ladies pour you shots of Schnaaps and drink you under the table!
That's actually the Mayor of Saarburger and his son pouring me wine as they rolled by on a tractor!
Dennis insulting another fine distributor of ours! Fritz of Indian Summer does have a pink blackberry cover!
Just my hands, bored on a flight!
This is the point of the night where everyone goes to the washroom and stays as long as possible, bar bills as long as your arm are a sad reality when visiting the Eurobike show.
Just enjoying the luxury toys on a British Airways flight and checking our airspeed trying to figure out how fast I would be if I ran down the aisle. I can’t sleep on flights and the next shot is of the worlds most annoying guy who sat in front of me.
I threw one of his shoes up the aisle out of jealousy of his 3 seat set up and 9 hour nap!
Epic little towns with homes older than Canada!
Lets end this on stupid bikes that sadly dominate the scene and make you realize how niche free ride/dh really is.
License plate almost says what I am thinking!
Wait, lets end on a Straitline Silent Guide installed on a Morewood!
This is us just being us and having fun down in America for Interbike Vegas!
This is us trying to be a bit more professional for a magazine spread in American Machinist!
Yes we love to have fun, yes we own a state of the art facility, and yes we need to drive it home how high tech we have been getting over the past 5 years… but there is a fine line of being a geek and boring the hell out of people so we just have fun and show tid bits of it all in the blog.
Few months back we took a call from Mori Seiki mentioning how American Machinist caught wind of our facility and wanted to learn more about our choice to evolve into a modern automated machine shop. I also think it is really important to drive home the costs and the overheads that a “TRUE” manufacturer carries with him and the staggering amount of processes needed to make a single product come to life. This is a age of the “BRAND” where you outsource your goods to a manufacturing firm and carry little to no overhead what so ever. Most of our clients are modern day Brands, nothing really wrong with that by any means but few really get to visit a facility to see how your shiny new product was made.
The flip side of the brand movement is that the product still needs to be made and someone somewhere just got hired to make it for you, stuff does not just fall out of trees and into Wall marts department stores. There is a lot of behind the scene work that goes on and I hope this article shows a bit about who we are and why we chose to automate our facility and prove that manufacturing in North America is not dying off rather it is coming back and thriving with the use of these modern machines!
I think we are running at 19 hours a day of un manned CNC machining so I must warn you this article is basically like porn for machinists, it can get a bit techy but at least check out the pretty pictures on page 12!
Oh, and you may notice a theme on the front cover! That is Lama Cycles/ Morewood team rider all dressed up in the finest components.
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His frame is actually made in house by our good friends in South Africa Patrick Morewood and his co pilot Richard Carter.
The wheels and hubs are by none other then Industry 9!
Canadian newbie's Elka Suspension –hard to see in the shots but trust me they are on the rig. I have a stage 5 installed on my Banshee Wildcard and these guys have a strong background in suspension, stoked for them!
And lastly all dressed up in Straitline Components gear!
Lama Cycles has also been appointed as a distributor for Straitline so expect to see them on the Race Courses next season with their pimped out Morewood rigs.
First we matched his 08 green STP with some lime green pedals then when we launched it his NWD segment came out in black and white!~ That had a few laughs!
So this year we decided to go to a Matte Black look total opposite direction of our bling approach. It will be a sandblasted finish topped off with custom 24 Karat gold pins for contrast! Yes you can actually say your riding real gold and no extra weight is added in the process.
These pedals are ready in a month or so and are by far the sexiest pedal we have made! So stay tuned!
Aaron LaRocques worked hard for this, pretty rad how he came out of know where taking the prime spot in Whistler during Krankworks to showcase What’s Next, then off to a Live viewing in a Mansion in Las Vegas where Pinbike streamed it Live!
On top of all the posh time slots and premiers he is keeping the video 100% free for everyone to enjoy!
Not Bad for a White guy!
Huge thanks to Julian Coffey- RaceFace for making it happen it was a blurry night full of Limo’s and Keg Stands! You can catch all the drunken mayhem in this LINK HERE
I got thrown in the pool, but my loyal posse was kind enough to check for cell phones and passports but left my wallet, bug thanks for that. The four kegs and private bar was matched with amazing food service, it was the party to be at.
See us in the back with the feet in the pool, also see all the guys? it did lean towards the sausage party side of things but it was a Industry gig and the strip wasn’t too far away.
Casey Groves, Dustin Greenall, Mark Mathews, Andrew Sherry and the infamous Aussy Alan Hepburn had some sick segments.
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