Sarah, in California they just wait at the bottom of the trail, right when you have minimum potential energy and maximum stoke. I've been on group rides with no idea where I was and so I had to follow the group down llegal trails (which, to be honest, were really good). Their technique was to send one rider down first who would then call the rest of us to say its okay. No call = he was busted. Sometimes the rangers would just park at the trailhead on busy days and you would just keep on riding down the fireroad.

A little advice to those of you apraoching land managers for legal trails... Those images of guys on DH bikes ripping down trails and blasting the shit out of the berms, big jumps and high skinnies, people riding in the back of pickups - best leave that behind. That may be what you want, but most land managers are going to say "No way." (trust me, I know). You gotta walk before you can run. Talk about non-threatening XC trails first, show the value of those (races, tourism, riders spending up in the community) and work your way up from there. That's what my MTB club has done, and have been doing for over a decade. The owners of the forests in my area once considered the worth of the forest to be 80% timber, 20% recreation. These days, that figure is 50/50. When there is a big race here a quarter of the cars coming into the city have bikes on the roof. After showing how much money we can generate and after fifteen years of working together, only just now are we getting legal 'stunts'. I spent many years building secret illegal trails, and I have NOTHING to show for it because they are all gone (and trust me, I tried to get approval for some of them - I stood shoulder to shoulder with a guy from the state insurance agency as he thought to himself "This is a lawsuit waiting to happen." and later that afternoon he told forestry to doze it, and they did). Instead, now I work with the club (who work with the land owners) and we have over a hundred kilometres of legal singletrack.

^^ A prudent company would do it as part of their risk management strategy. Lets say an athlete on a photo shoot for their sponsor gets injured. He ends up with a $250 000 medical bill. He then finds an ambulance chasing lawyer working pro bono and sues the sponsor for the medical bills, pain and suffering, loss of income etc etc. Sponsor loses the suit (which I think is a reasonable outcome of this scenario). The sponsor is now out $400 000. Sponsor thinks "If only we had paid that $4000 in health insurance, we'd be $396 000 better off."

@speedbean, yes, I agree. I wasn't explicit in my comment that I think the sponsor should pay their athletes' insurance.

A responsible employer should ensure that their athletes have an appropriate level of health insurance, then the insurance would cover medical expenses and there would be no massive bills.

Forget the eyebrows, look how much weight he's lost. He's been doing some serious training. And you don't do serious training without wanting to be serious about racing.

[Must... resist... temptation... to write... a smart a$$ remark... aaarrrggghhh...]

That trail is amazing. Brad, you rode it well - it looks hard, but I'm sure in reality it is very, very dfficult. And you filmed it too. Hats off to you sir!

A little request for bike reviewers and photographers - could we please see photos of both sides of the bike? Often the crankset covers up the linkages and pivot points. I'd like to see that sort of thing.

Ask Australian DHer John Waddell what he thinks of moto helmets. If memory serves me correctly, the Santa Cruz team manager had insisted that all the riders wear moto helmets, not MTB helmets. When John had a terrible crash in 2003, that moto helmet meant John ended up in a coma instead of the cemetary. John still shreds to this day.