The new photo and word peephole into our world

So, let's pick up from where we left you all hanging...

Val Di Sole, round two of the 2012 UCI DH World Cup, just came and went. Our Irish spy, John Lawlor, was there to document the highs and the lows:

It was a bittersweet weekend for the Syndicate and our people. Stoked to see Minnaar maintaining his unflappable consistency, but stunned to see Aaron Gwin put such a beating on everyone. That was a lesson. Also really tough to see Cedric get as badly hurt as he did, and still not sure of how that is all going to pan out. In the video above, you'll also see Josh Bryceland take a pretty ugly soil sample during his race run, even though he somehow managed to recover from that bell-ringer enough to still finish 37th. All in all, this served to make us all realize what a punisher Val Di Sole is. For reference on the nature of punishment at Val Di Sole, please see 2011:

Or 2010:

That place is a beast. Just ask Sam Hill:

Or Steve Peat that same year, for that matter. Bring on Fort Bill, where we all get to speculate where the Gwin unit gets his powers from. We think it has something to do with the Ginger Magic:

This post features the instagram photographic stylings of our very own Eric Oglander -

- who has been stretching open his art-chakra at work today, with this peek behind the facade of pretty bikes:

It is also refreshing to see that the time honored SCB tradition of hacking up builder cards into something more playfully disturbing is still fully intact:

One week has passed. Time for another reaping of the hashtag #santacruzbikes. In which we all say goodbye to Will Dixon, who is fleeing our clutches for the bright lights of the big city:

Wherein Morga_Deth showed off the hardcore side to Laguna Beach (who knew??):

Whereby Seb Kemp redefines "upbeat" in the face of ugly surgery (his quote being, "when life gives you lemons, it's best to squeeze them over fish."):

Where our New Zealand distributor finally found some love for the wagon wheels:

And during the span of which it would seem a lot of folks got some bicycle riding done in some pretty awesome places:

Our shipping guy keeps it more real than anyone else's shipping guys. Check this out:

That is the middle finger of our shipping guy, Danny Buzzard, aimed straight at Glenn Danzig, Sunday night at the Warfield in San Francisco. This shot was taken seconds before Danzig decided he didn't like being flipped off, and kicked Danny in the face. The face kicking was immediately followed by a security goon grabbing Danny from behind and choke-dragging him clean out of the show.

Yeah, we know, hating on angry fat old Danzig is about as played out as worshipping bacon or celebrating cheap canned beer, but in the same way that cheap canned beer and bacon are universal truths, realizing that Danzig is a chubby ol' wreck living in such a state of unconscious self-parody that he kind of NEEDS to be ridiculed and flipped off at every opportunity is also a universal truth.

Danzig sucks. We all knew that already. Danny flipping him the bird was a pretty succinct expression of an emotion most people who were once into the Misfits have felt at some time or another. He should be used to getting flipped off by now. After kicking our shipping guy in the head, it's pretty evident that Danzig's level of suck has just skyrocketed, at least as far as we're concerned. 

Just a reminder, for all five of you who follow this new and questionably improved slice of Santa Cruz life, if you are on instagram, #santacruzbikes will subject you to our relentless stalk and poach tactics. If you work here, and are on instagram, #104bronson is how we'll check in to see if you are working, or wasting your time taking photos of your co-workers working. Oglander, we're onto you!

Anyway, there goes the week, here comes Memorial Weekend. Or Decoration Day as it used to be called. Here are some blatantly stolen photos to send you on your way. Thanks to all who tagged in:

The Wonder Twins, above, feet up post-demo, enjoying the blue-collar white-collar hospitality of BIKE magazine's publisher...

The artist formerly known as Hightower snapped this pic during the Sierra Buttes Trail Stewardship North Yuba epic ride last weekend. Rat bastard...

Meanwhile, peterfoleyusa snapped this Tallboy LTc in the wild, proving to the massed speculators of MTBR.com that yes, they do exist, and yes, they are out in the world getting ridden by happy customers. Sweet...

Queezyski got artsy with his Heckler...

Masahide666 reminded us that winter still exists, somewhere...

Nickrueff got in touch with his bambi side...

First up, this gem from Corey Adams:

It should be noted that Corey is the man behind the masterful Macho Taildrop film, as well as the similarly masterful Manwolf videos floating around under various guises on the internets. The reason for this video being here, however, is not to blow smoke up the ass of Mister Adams, but to blow smoke up the hindquarters of our boss, The Legend. Or, to those who know him in a less formal manner, Rob Roskopp. Please note, the above video is LONG. But the first few minutes are a gigantic Rob Roskopp/Jimbo Phillips high five. The rest of it is pretty cool, if you are into insider art and skating. But it's not as cool as Corey Adams' finest hour so far:

Damn, that never gets old... Changing gears, one of our Free Agents, Logan Peat, appears to have snuck into the basement of what promises to be a pretty dang entertaining summer, courtesy of Red Bull and Brandon Semenuk's none too shabby house in the woods:

Keep an eye on that one. Lastly, but by no means leastly, we'll leave you with this, what has to be the best damn ad for a gym ever:

Just another day in the neighborhood. Product manager, machinist, and one half of the wonder twins trying to ignore the wolf stalking their lunches...

Meanwhile, it was a busy weekend here at the mill. Much as the crows of virtual doom like to gather and cackle - "Where are those new bikes you said you'd have by mid-May? We haven't seen any here on webikegeekworld.com yet! You must be late!" - the truth is that we've been shipping the hell out of stuff. This monster of a container arrived last Friday:

It was gone by the time the regular joes got here this morning. We suspect it got filled with the help of these guys, who when they weren't getting all Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid at the coffee shop around the corner, were punching some good overtime this weekend. The guy riding the bike is named Joe, by the way, but not "regular" Joe. That's why he was working on the weekend:

And it would be a fair bet to assume that there was some degree of unicorn puke involved in the filling of that there container:

Meanwhile, at a different coffee shop with the exact same name on the other side of town, the warranty manager was training his replacement. "Repeat after me; we can't verify this until you send us the frame for inspection. Here's an RA number...":

  He's got a ways to go yet. As do we all. Time for a non-sequitur escape from this post, and what better way to do that than with taxidermy?:

Now, you may be wondering just what is going on here, and how exactly it has any connection to this ol' tin shed here by the beach. It takes some watching, then some explaining.

Harrison Roskopp, executive producer. Aha. That would be the boychild of our overlord here. So there's the family connection. But it goes deeper than this. Way deeper. There could be a whole lot else at work. For instance, the goings on in this video are not entirely that different in theme to what occurs here when Rob is sick, or when someone has poached his parking spot. Secondly, could this all be Rob's way of grooming a successor to our current videographer? Flipper is doing good work, but he lives in South Africa and probably demands a higher salary than Rob'd be able to leverage his child for in some sort of slave labor/company store situation.

And third, could Harrison and his crew be the hope for a dream that I personally have held close and dear to my heart for a very long time - the first EVER stop motion, claymation, freeride film, complete with an acapella metal soundtrack? We can only hope. As for Harrison, strong is the force in this one. But he still has some work to do before claiming primacy in the world of Lego stop motion Star Wars homage: