Burton 2010 Burton Easy Living, Love, Hero, Seven, Hate

Burton 2010 Feelgood ES, Feelgood

Burton 2010 Gtwin, Blender, Social

Burton 2010 Jeremy Jones, Fix, Twin, Dominant

Burton 2010 JJones, Hero, Love

Burton 2010 Joystick, Easy Livin’

Burton 2010 Lipstick, Troop, Lux

Burton 2010 Troop, Lux, Feather

Burton 2010 Method ($$$$$), Vapor

Burton 2010 Custom X

Burton 2010 Custom, Custom V-Rocker

Burton 2010 Fish

Burton 2010 Malolo

Burton 2010 Operator, Jussi

Burton 2010 Dominant, T6

And finally an awesome video of Chris Sorman laying down some serious butter action on the 2010 Burton Easy Livin’:

I’ll add more images as I come across them so check back soon. Coming soon – The Burton 09/10 Binding Roundup and The Burton 09/10 Boot Roundup. (maybe)

Photos courtesy of: Powderroom.net, ShayBoarder, SouthoftheNorth and FlouFun. Please visit these sites for waaaay more 2010 spy shots.

Years and years ago, (we’re talking early 90’s) I remember hearing rumours of a crazy electric drivetrain. Oh how my cycling buddies and I laughed. “What happens when you cycle through a puddle…”, “what happens when the batteries run flat…”, “the rear mech will cost the same as my whole bike…”.

In 2005 these rumours started to become reality with prototype electric drivetrains cropping up on the bikes of select Shimano Pro Peloton racers. Now almost 20 years after those original whispers and here we are with a fully electric drivetrain from the bicycle component behemoth Shimano.

Named Di2 or e-Dura-Ace, it’s an electronic version of Shimano’s top of the line road bike groupset and by all accounts if freakin’ amazing! Riders familiar with Dual Control levers (pull towards the bar for braking, push perpendicular to the bar for gear shifting) will be instantly comfortable with operating the system as it works in the same way…. except now your shifts are almost instantaneous. Other major benefits over a standard mechanical system is the ability to shift under extreme load (changing gears whilst sprinting or climbing) and the new front shifter. The Di2 front derailleur not only shifts super fast but also trims itself to eliminate chain rub. Wow, imagine never again having to listen to chain rub! Add to that the fact you wont have any cables that need replacing/fray/stab you.

The designers at Shimano have obviously poured a lot of hours into the development of Di2. Technically speaking I think they’ve done a great job but I would have like to have seen a little more visual appeal injected into such a unique groupset. Carbon fibre paired with dark grey anodised aluminum and polished titanium make the parts look extremely high end and goes some way to justifying the price tag (we’ll get into that in a minute) but they dont really jump out and say “I’m special” or “I just spent thousands on these”. Rather they look a little understated when compared to SRAM’s Red Groupset.

The front derailleur houses the “brains” of the system – an ultra compact CPU that not only controls the servo motors in each derailleur but also monitors positioning to trim the chain line perfectly. A wise choice to house the CPU in a place where it is most protected from knocks! The rechargeable Lithium Ion battery pack bolts on to standard water bottle mounts and is surprisingly small and light considering it lasts long enough to supply gear shifts for over 1000km of racing. Overall I reckon a lot of people will dismiss Di2 as a gimmick. “Why change something that isn’t broken”. But this stuff is made for high end competitive cycling, where the difference between winning and losing a 100km race is measured in milliseconds. If you can make a shift faster, smoother and without dropping power, then you’ve got a pretty hefty advantage over that guy racing you to the line.

Before you all rush out and deck your prized race steed with Di2 loveliness think about this – it’s going to set you back over $2000 MORE than the standard Dura-Ace groupset (which is already uber expensive). I bet that antiquated mechanical drive-train you’re currently running starts to look not so bad after all. And what’s cycling without a little chain rub eh!

Check out Di2 here.

I could sit here and type a heap of technical mumbo jumbo about pawl this, and cog that, but I think nothing explains it better than a few videos and as bike legend Greg Herbold will tell you, “Hammerschmidt will change the way you ride your bike… it’s pretty awesome”.

Check out more videos on the Hammerschmidt site www.magicmechanics.com.

So, advantages over the standard Chainset/Front Mech combo:

• More ground clearance
• Consistent chain-line
• Infinite ratios
• Shifting under load
• Shifting whilst standing still or coasting
• Shifting whilst airing a 40ft drop (just because you can!)
• Strength/Impact Resistant
• Built in chain guard
• Freakish looks

Disadvantages:

• A little more weight (but its aimed at All-mountain riders)
• Lots of moving parts in that little box
• A perfectly faced Bottom Bracket is essential
• Gives your credit card a bad fright

So expect this thing to appear on a lot of bikes over the next year. Just like the QR on front forks, we may see the disappearance of another long-standing bike part, the front mech.

Being an interactive designer for a living, I have high standards when it comes to site design and it’ll take a pretty decent site to impress me. That being said, simple is always good to! So here’s a round-up of this seasons new websites so far. (Don’t hold your breath, there are a lot of unexpected let downs here).

DC SNOWBOARDS

Oh come on! You’re telling me that someone with Ken Block’s money, and DC’s style allowed this site to make it onto the internet. This site is POOOOR. Then again when racked up against the rest of the DC site it kind of fits. You only have to fire this up on a 1024×768 screen to start having problems – a Flash scroll bar within an HTML scroll area…..OMG. But it doesn’t stop there. Whoever designed this site must be getting paid by the scroll bar, you just have to select a board to get another scroll area on the left, then another on the right. I make that a count of 4. On that note I shut it down, this site officially sucks!

NITRO SNOWBOARDS

They’ve certainly crammed a lot of info into this site. And when I say crammed, I mean it. It just feels too busy from the home page onwards. BUT, unlike the DC site, I did want to explore more. So I made it past the annoying horizontal board scroller and now Im looking at a board. This is great. I love the info layout and the sizing matrix/rating chart at the bottom. And the best bit – the HUGE image zoom, biggest I’ve ever seen on a board site and it really let me see the graphics proper good.

VANS SNOWBOARDING

So this site from Vans isn’t too bad. And for me to say that it must be pretty good. In fact compared to DC, this site is a masterpiece! I like the flash/HTML mix, the zoomable boot feature, good tabbed information layout. Like the interactive Team area. Like the Video section.

SESSIONS

When is Sessions going to stop using the same web template that they’ve been churning out for the last 4 seasons? If the old saying “if it aint broke dont fix it” applied then I’d understand, but in this case its “it’s broke, go fix it”. Something about their clothing line is reflected in this site. Its a bit huuuumppphhh. Just a bit nothingness. I’d love to be able to zoom up those small clothing images for a start.

BURTON

This is a bit unfair. Burton have a whole lotta cash to throw into marketing (although so do DC and look where that took them!) so I’d expect pretty good things from the big B. PLUS they have their own in house design team and work with some of the most talented Ad Agencies in North America. And it shows. This site is what a product site should be, although some will argue and say it has no soul, I think the mix of Flash/HTML/Blog/News/Video/Photography is hard to top. The products are fully zoomable which is fantastic. The navigation is interesting yet intuitive. Everything loads real quick. Overall a big thumbs up for what I deem to be Burtons best effort in years.

K2 SNOWBOARDING

So I cant finish this post on a high note, there has already been far too much ranting gone under this bridge. So lets finish with K2’s new site. Can anyone say “black”. Man this site feels so heavy. Black (and green) overload, with white type, and a lot of it. Fair enough, there is some very cool video features, and some nice photography, but its all so small I cant see the product. Example – this is the first year K2 has introduced a number of different Rocker profiles to their line… a pretty major achievement. But to explain this they’ve stuck up a picture so small I cant see the difference between the three boards. Useless. Overall this ones getting a thumb half cocked.

I may add more sites to this post as they creep online. I’ve just scratched the surface of snowboarding’s corporate efforts online but at this rate lets just say, you’re better getting off your @rse and going down to your local store to check kit out. WAY more enjoyable!

Alta Bikes is a collaboration between some of Norway’s top designers (and they have plenty to choose from!). Bleed (graphic/interactive design), Norway Says (furniture design), Frost Produkt (product design) and Shnel & Melnychuck (ad agency), so it’s no surprise that with that talent pool the bike looks as stunning as it does! Originally released in 2006 and produced by Hard Rocx Bikes, the first batch of bikes sold out straight away. Now, 2 years later these bikes are garnering a lot of attention internationally.

Available in Yellow or White, with a green version shown in the ads it is a super-clean bike influenced by the single-speed trend in cities like London, New York, Tokyo and even here in Vancouver.

The bike’s signature feature is the handlebars, designed to give you the power you need to deal with hills and obstacles when cranking on that single 46/16 gear ratio.

Weighing in at only 9.4Kg the Alta is designed as a minimalist machine, keeping the weight and the need for maintenance/repair low.

The bike looks so good that you’ll want to show it off even when it’s sitting in your apartment – Alta include a wall mount for this purpose.

Time to chuck out the 40″ LCD and place this puppy on the tv stand!

Even the Alta website and ads are unique, featuring people with tight underwear and ridiculously huge legs hanging out in their apartment with the bike in the background. Cool idea but pretty freaky at the same time!

Refill 7 started out as an Aussie collective of 80 artists brought together by Refill magazine, MTV and Vision Street Wear to produce 50 limited edition decks per artist. The difference being instead of applying the artwork to the decks surface they cut away from the seven (hence the name) layers of ply using a laser cutter.

The results are stunning and were so successful that the group have now bought their own laser machine and have gone into full time production. You can order on their website but be prepared for a hefty price tag. Although I dont think these decks are for skating!

Here’s a few pics pulled from their Flickr page.

So what makes the Xcel suit so special? Well it’s basically the most watertight, flexible wetsuit on the market today, and features a 100% waterproof Drylock zipper as part of Xcel’s X-ZIP 2 entry system. Add to that 300% Ultraspan Superlight Neoprene, Ultrastretch composite quadrupled glued(!!!) Fusion Seams, and an Ultralight Thermo Barrier, and you have a suit that deserves another award just for the constant use of “Ultra” in its descriptions! And how does it work? In lamens terms – climb into the suit through the mega-stretchy neck hole, pull the collar over your head, cinch the elastic bungy, zip over the horizontal chest zip and you’re ready to surf.

Xcel managed to beat off competition from industry big-hitters like Rip Curl, Body Glove and Billabong.

The SIMA Image Awards identifies the surf industry’s most influential companies, recognizing them for their efforts to advance and to grow the industry. It is the only awards program that gives the surf industry the opportunity to recognize fellow companies for their outstanding contributions to the industry. Nominees are selected by a panel of industry experts, followed by a formal vote by SIMA members and specialty retailers who determine the ultimate winners.

“We’ve been seeing the Infiniti Drylock system consistently deliver in all aspects of performance,” adds Greg Wade, Xcel vice president of sales and marketing. “Its performance in the water, at retail, and now at SIMA’s award program, are all testaments to Xcel’s position as a leader in wetsuit design and innovation, and an inspiration to us to keep pushing that leading position even farther. I’m especially excited about the expanded Infiniti Drylock line that we’ll be introducing later this year!”

So there you have it, expect to see this award-winning wetsuit design pushed out through the Xcel line for ‘09.

Riders want to warm up on the XC trails in the morning, then take it to the bike park in the afternoon, and all on the same bike. So it makes sense that Shimano, the worlds largest bike component manufacturer is shifting (phnar) its emphasis to designing groupsets that meet the requirements of this varied style of riding by blending the lightness of XC parts with the strength of freeride. A wise move, you can expect to see this stuff everywhere next year and Shimano thinks so too, with production already in full swing in order to meet demand.

So what can you spend your hard-earned cash on? Well first lets check out the 2009 Saint groupset(M810). Saint was introduced in ‘03 as Shimano’s hardcore Freeride/Downhill offering but for next year it promises to be lighter, stronger and more rigid than its predecessor (M800).

Four piston calipers are making a return and they provide 50% more stopping power than the current BR-M800 calipers. The two part caliper (joined by x4 Torx bolts) is 9% stiffer than than current mono-bodied M775 XT caliper. The calipers also have an increased oil flow which should make bleeding easier.

The brake levers feature Servo Wave technology that contributes to the brake power and offers excellent controllability and extra pad clearance as well. The levers feature tool-free reach adjust and a beefy lever blade for optimal control and strength.

The new Saint Shadow rear derailleur uses a universal traditional dropout mount, which replaces the axle mount/interface of the M800. There’s a super wide inner link on the derailleur that offers additional stiffness, providing crisp shifts and engagement. It’s available in a short (SS) and a medium (GS) cage version, (top-normal shifting only), which should appeal to all riders with single or double chainring setups.

The Rapidfire Plus shifters have been designed to combine a crisp shift feeling with one-finger braking. They feature 2-Way Release technology that allows the release lever to be operated in two directions. The new Saint shifters have been developed with an adjustable bracket to allow inboard and outboard mounting for optimum cockpit setup.

The Saint cranksets (image at top of page) have gone on a major diet, they’re lighter and stiffer than the current M800 versions. Both single and double chainrings have been developed with Hollowtech II technology and feature a heavy duty redesigned spider arm and spindle. The new crank arm design allows more ankle clearance and the “honeycomb” designed bash guard has great impact resistance.

Visually the Saint kit is way better looking than the old M800 and positions Shimano nicely alongside the likes of SRAM and Race Face in terms of ‘bling appeal’. The gold accents of the milled aluminium parts, the angular shapes and the contrasting Saint logo create a individual and high-end look for the Saint line.

Also new from Shimano in the ‘09 bag is a brand new groupset going by the catchy name of SLX which will replace the Hone groupo and kinda replace the long standing LX too. Shimano is going to reposition LX as their ‘touring’ groupset leaving a big gap to fill in the mid-level mtb range, a gap to be filled by SLX with its myriad of component options. You can view SLX in two ways, like a lightweight Saint or like a burly LX… meaning you can expect to see it on a wide variey of ‘09 mountain bikes from XC hardtails to freeride machines. In-keeping with the recent trend of Shimano products a lot of attention has been given to the aesthetics.

Here’s Shimano’s word on SLX: “Designed for All Mountain and tough Trail use, this groupset excels in terms of durability and high performance. The parts are tough and lightweight and, in-keeping with the recent trend of Shimano products a lot of attention has been given to the aesthetics. SLX, although targeted primarily at hardcore riders also fulfils the demands of other riding styles. Are you ready to challenge its extreme potential or do you stay with Cross Country specific components?”

The SLX group includes two types of HOLLOWTECH II cranksets for different types of riding styles. The first is an All Mountain compact drive crankset with a double chainring 36/22T combination, designed to give more range over the traditional 32/22T setup. It has a reinforced construction with increased axle and spider strength to meet the rigours of All Mountain riding.
In addition to the double/bash guard chainset, there will also be a triple SLX crankset for Cross Country riding where a larger spread of gearing is required. It will be available in a chainring combination of 44/32/22T.

The SLX rear derailleur gets the full Shadow treatment currently seen in the XT and XTR groupsets. The main advantages are its extra thin profile (reducing chances of the rear derailleur snagging or hitting any trail objects) and shorter, more direct cable routing enabling crisp shifting and a faster response. This derailleur will be available in both medium (GS) and long (SGS) cage versions and weighs in at only 260 grams.

The group is completed with shifters, disc brakes and hubs. The SLX Rapidfire Plus shifters feature 2-Way Release technology that enables the release lever to be operated in two directions. Furthermore it has an inboard/outboard mounting option and a removable optical gear display with an integrated cover plate, similar to that currently seen on Deore XT.

The disc brakes feature 2-piston hydraulic calipers and boast 20% extra stopping power compared to previous generation LX and Hone brakesets thanks to the Shimano’s Servo Wave technology in the lever. The levers have also been developed with a tool-free reach adjust.

The freehub integrates Shimano’s quick engagement technology for faster acceleration and improved reaction in technical terrain. The hub and freehub have been developed with a high quality sealing and they carry cup and cone bearings for easy adjustment and high durability particularly to side loads. In addition to the standard 9mm QR front hub there is also a 20mm through axle version for an extra rigid hub/fork combination and some of the longer travel forks on today’s market.

So there we have it… some Shimano ‘09 übergoodness. Start saving!

Intense Cycles has just unveiled a new trail bike at the Sea Otter Classic in California, but it is yet to be named. Intense are asking for suggestions from Sea Otter spectators and soon through their website.

Details are a bit scarce but the bike has a pretty sweet looking hydro-formed frame design offering somewhere around 5.5″ of travel using next gen VPP suspension, a 1.5″ headtube, and grease ports for easy maintenance and prolonged bearing life.

Curvy tube-age. (images: bikemag.com)

So far the best name I have heard is the “Intense Orgasm”…

Girl Skateboards’ Eric Koston and Art Director/Artist Andy Jenkins got together to make a limited (RED) Edition deck.

The result is actually 2 decks formed from Andy’s artwork which come together to form one image – the Girl logo surrounded by the (RED) “embrace”. Not only does it look great and no doubt skate great, but a good whack of the profits go to support the global fight against AIDS. Bonus!

Check out the video below showing Koston riding, and Andy designing. Then perhaps go buy some (RED) product…