Hope this doesn't happen or I'll stick to France and give Switzerland a miss entirely. I wouldn't know when I was leaving one area and entering another and wouldn't want to risk getting it wrong!

Seeing the ShiverSC there made me smile. My son got a similar deal, but he's tall for a 9 year old and went straight to 24" wheels. The hard part is getting the suspension to work properly when the kid only weighs twice what the bike does... and to anyone who says that kids should stick to cheapy hardtails, they've never ridden La Pinilla which is our local bikepark. Here's the bike, a 14" 1999 Orange Sub5: http://yonibois.pinkbike.com/album/Lads-Peaty-rep-Sub5 and us at the bikepark: http://yonibois.pinkbike.com/album/La-Pinilla/

That bike's stil wearing Continental rubber. Aren't they changing that sponsor too? Thought Gee hated them??? (Guess I was wrong).

Carbon's been used for decades on motorcyle exhaust end cans. It's very heat resistant, is an excellent heat insulator and shouldn't suffer any more than alloy in an application like this, not even if it were used for DH.

Second that! Do you think they'll bring out a women-specific-design called the Rita?

I didn't know who the guys were, but the track looks like it's the dogs. I'd have gone for The Fall instead of that weak dance track though!!!!

No way! Are we supposed to suffer for our sport? I was recording in Morzine this summer and when the guys back at the chalet watched it, some of them said, "What's that noise all the time?" and the rest said, 'That's Yoni laughing all the way down, he does that." Riding's a blast, don't throttle it. Pottie obviously enjoys his riding, more so on that course. Good on him!!!!

I second dannythekiwi from years working on motorbike engines. Most torque figures, unless otherwise stated, are 'dry' figures, which means that the friction between the bolt and the threaded piece is taken into account. That means that when you tighten the bolt the torque (force on the spanner) is the friction between the threaded piece and the bolt + the force of the bolt stretching. If you grease or oil the thread you remove that friction between the bolt threads and the threaded piece and for the same torque reading the bolt will have been tightened more, risking stripping the thread, breaking the bolt or deforming the piece you're tightening.

Orange used to make all of their monocoque bikes in Halifax, UK. (Patriot, MsIsle, Sub-5, 222/3 etc). The run-of-the-mill looking bikes like the Gringo were Taiwan. Don't know if that's still the case though.