What on earth is wrong with Steve Jones?

http://dirt.mpora.com/news/ohlins-create-a-rather-special-rear-shock-for-specialized.html

Does anyone else have a clue what he’s talking about?

Rotten grammar aside, what on earth does any of this mean?

” its superior performance was failed to be recognized by many company’s and a certain disconnect emerged between riders and the shock in their ability to either know what they wanted or how to achieve it even if it is the case with most other dampers too. “

“If you could simplify the sensation then the feeling is weighted more towards a hydraulic feeling than a spring sensation. The Ohlins introduces a level of grip and chassis stability better than a stock unit. We’re dealing with tolerances here.”

His writing is so bad I keep thinking about cancelling my Dirt subscription, despite the pretty pictures and World Cup round ups.

Classic Jones innit, you’re not supposed to be able to understand it. It’s always a shock when he manages to express a clear opinion, even if 9 times out of 10 it is “This frame is too small for me”

But, basically he is saying that the CCDB is great but too complicated for mortal men. Then lots of handwaving.

He wrote the blurb for that Pinarello promo video, you know.

yeah the size things an obsession of his!

average height (for a bloke) is 5’9 all he can talk about is finding the perfect frame for 6footers!!

average height (for a bloke) is 5’9 all he can talk about is finding the perfect frame for 6footers!!

only because dwafism is more prevalent than giganticism. 5’9 is short i by any measure.

As much as many company’s shout about a shock being tuned for the suspension design the bikes – and yes many of them do have a reasonable middle setting – most bikes still come with a massive amount of unwanted, unnecessary dial adjustment. In the past decade we’ve been dumped with a crazy amount of decision making on the dials out of nothing more than laziness, cluelessness or money counting from many companies. It’s not uncommon to now see twenty clicks of high speed, a similar number of low speed plus the same again in rebound.

He’s not wrong here though is he

I dunno, I bang a shock on, put some air in/turn the coil, set the rebound til it goes “badoing” at the right speed and then lock it out. Any other dials I don’t pay attention to.

Munrobiker – that’s what Steve’s saying!

Why didn’t he just say that then?

it means that bloke from trek might win something??

If you read the whole article quickly it makes sense….

company’s

Any journalist publishing that should be sacked on the spot.

Any journalist publishing that should be sacked on the spot.

How can anyone who write’s for a living make such a basic mistake?

that’s the editors fault, if you ask me.

Jones is also deputy editor 😆

TBF you should just think yourself lucky you could read it at all, normally they’d have printed it in dark blue on a purple background to hide the words, or light blue on cyan, or crimson on black… (as a wee legibility test I passed a copy to my dad to see if he could read the words. “What words?”). Invisible ink on a transparent page.

tThat’s the editor’s fault, if you ask me.

FTFY.

My key word there was “publishing”, not writing.

Still, if he’s dep-ed, still appalling.

FTFY.

Think you may have missed bigrich’s continuation of my little joke. 😉

Possibly.

Is this the (now) thin pamphlet dirt mag with the wall to wall ads?

Fantastic sales team

Weak leadership Editor and direction. (And yes I told them this- they didnt reply).

Pity dirt over the last year was improving again (in the old days it took loads of toilet visits to get through).

Now its a photo/lifestyle gear mag.

The last great rare article was about travelling Pedro’.

think yourself lucky you could read it at all, normally they’d have printed it in dark blue on a purple background to hide the words, or light blue on cyan, or crimson on black.

^^^ exactly this ^^^

Dirt is a very good publication badly assembled by a bunch of lunatics. A bit like the Surfer’s Path but with no consideration for layout and design.

Jones is bonkers. Totally unintelligible. Always has been, clearly always will be. It’s like listening to spud from trainspotting during the job interview. You just have to accept that and move on to the next article.

It’s like listening to spud from trainspotting during the job interview.

LOL! written in yellow on a white background…

last time this topic was discussed jonsey popped up on here to say hello…………… will he bother this time?

Sentences. Throwing Words at them isn’t always an improvement. Wordiness is a growing trend but who knows if it’s for the best. Certainly it gives us feelings and impressions. A more talented craftsman should understand the finer points and may get the best from it. Simply skim reading will yield you very little. Try looking at the pictures – it doesn’t always pay to align your prose when the bikes is so graphical.

Seriously – even if you speak Jones you don’t learn a lot from his articles, and they never seem to be convinced that anything is execptional or rubbish.

At least Dirt employee riders who can ride – if they say a bike is good dh you can believe it.

Very recently all we get from STW – is elbows out, uncomfortable looking on anything technical Dave.

All said and done the Ohlins can still be dialed into a less than optimum by way of going for the harder or softer setting in the wrong environment on the compression particularly but crucially the adjustment is at a very rough guess about 15% off optimum compared with say 80% possibility found on many shocks. This is a massive benefit for any level of rider.

If I were being charitable, I would say this man has some dyslexia issues. Otherwise I would suggest he is illiterate.

Kimbers. I’d say sort it out. Its a slender ad mag now. Embarrasing.

I think it’s some of the funniest stuff ever printed. Pure LSD style rambling that you couldn’t make up.

All said and done the Ohlins can still be dialed into a less than optimum by way of going for the harder or softer setting in the wrong environment on the compression particularly but crucially the adjustment is at a very rough guess about 15% off optimum compared with say 80% possibility found on many shocks. This is a massive benefit for any level of rider.

That one had me crying with laughter. It’s like a window into the mind of a madman. Nothing personal though. I bet he’s a great bloke.

The thing is there are a couple staff at other mags in the UK that, if they joined Dirt, could make an amazing mag/website. Especially with Dirt TV and the Jones comedy column.

Rik – Member

At least Dirt employee riders who can ride – if they say a bike is good dh you can believe it.

OTOH if Singletrack say a bike is good, you might understand what they’re saying 😉

I am quite drunk but it it makes sense to me – I think he’s saying that even when set up wrong they’re not very wrong whereas you can set up other shocks very wrong when they’re wrong.

Sound like classic jones, so in answer to the OP, I’d say there is nothing at all wrong with him. Functioning as normal.

well ive now read the article, the grammar and spelling arent great but it all makes sense (both the article and the shock)

my main issue with it all is that its a 10 grand DH race bike with an upwards of 500 quid shock upgrade

how many people will ever get to ride it?

Rik its the pages of ads now that irritates me. Like an insult. Why dont the ‘riders’ start a new mag? Away from the psychological noise. ..oh wait. Ah $$ sell out.

FFS if you read this, sort out my throne reads again. Dirt belongs by the bed/throne NOT on the coffee table.

the next time you’re in a meeting at work read it verbatim and see if anyone notices

Grammatical niggles aside, I like his writing style. Sometimes it makes my head hurt, but most of the time, when I read his words, I hear his voice in my head, and his enthusiasm pours off the page.

It’s also reassuring to me to know that he is an accomplished rider. I’ll take the opinion of an expert bike handler over an expert word wrangler. As Wade Simmons says “if you’re not a ten out of ten rider, then how the hell can you judge if a bike is a ten out of ten”.

I still think there is a need for slightly more editorial constraint, but when you consider the volume of content dirt generates across multiple platforms, it’s easy to understand the slackness in that regard. I’d rather have the great coverage of national, european and world cup dh, and local and international enduro on an almost rolling live basis with some spelling errors, than have it two days later in the queen’s.

well said jimjam

As Wade Simmons says “if you’re not a ten out of ten rider, then how the hell can you judge if a bike is a ten out of ten”.

Have they considered the fact that the best bike for a 10/10 rider may not be the best bike for a mortal such as I. Personally I would rather hear the opinion of a useless northern mincer than a riding god as i am closer to one than than the other

jimjam – Member

It’s also reassuring to me to know that he is an accomplished rider. I’ll take the opinion of an expert bike handler over an expert word wrangler.

Bit of a balance innit. You don’t want someone who’s useless at either, it doesn’t matter how good they are at one if they can’t do the other.

Like, I saw Chipps at the endurance downhill and thought fair play, you are not a fast uber downhiller but if you want someone to speak for the capable enthusiast/have a go rider which is probably what most of us are, he is ideal.

OTOH I saw Janet Coulson writing in MBR about how suitable her longtermer is for enduro racing. But the reality is, she only really knows how suitable it is for pushing down the tricky bits. There is a bare minimum point below which you just aren’t qualified to talk about a subject.

Junkyard

Have they considered the fact that the best bike for a 10/10 rider may not be the best bike for a mortal such as I. Personally I would rather hear the opinion of a useless northern mincer than a riding god as i am closer to one than than the other

Imo, at a basic level a reviewer is expected to have a level of expertise in whatever the subject is he or she is reviewing. Otherwise, why listen to their opinion.

With regards to DH bikes (which is Jones’ main field) a reviewer should have an extremely high level of competence in order to determine whether the bike is actually any good in comparison to it’s competitors. If you can’t ride extremely steep, rough, technical, terrain quickly then how can you judge the relative merits of a bike which is designed to do exactly that?

If you can’t do large jumps or drops at speed, typical of what someone might encounter on a dh track, then how can you tell how a given dh bike will cope in that scenario?

Furthermore, I believe it would be much easier for an expert rider to suppose,speculate or consider how a beginner might find a bike, than it would be a beginner to judge a bike’s suitability for an expert.

Northwind

Bit of a balance innit.

Absolutely. You wouldn’t want someone completely illiterate for example. But it would be equally worthless to have a rank amateur rider review a downhill bike or an am/enduro race bike and compose a beautiful review of how well the bike rides up and down gravel paths.

In any aspect of life, if you need an advice or opinion on a subject you will generally seek out the person who you regard to be the most expert person you know in that field.

The Welsh dyslexic mountain biking lovechild of James Joyce and Cormac McCarthy. I like the way Singletrack is put together but the whimsical mincing content just irritates me now. Dirt is too badly written and edited for me to be happy paying for it but I’m very happy to collect old copies from my LBS as it does at least inspire me to ride my bike! And sometimes deciphering Jones’ prose can be an interesting challenge… 😉

bring back jerry dyer if he hasn`t been banged up for his rumoured love of young girls!

C’mon…..how can you really take issue with his writing style?, in a world populated by anodyne magazine editors/article writers who spiel such inane comments that bore you shitless when reading their articles “jonsey’s” writing style is a breath of fresh air and to be commended – Gonzo mtb journalism perhaps?. I’d much rather read an issue of dirt than any other mag these days, despite never having rode a F-S bike since i borrowed a Commencal Meta 5 back in 2008 for a day trip to the Lakes.

I’ve had the pleasure of showing him around our local trails for a Dirt Photo/roadtrip article a few years ago, along wi Joe Barnes, Stu Thomson and Liam Moynihan and it was an amazing “learning/riding” experience as what i had previously considered a straightforward bit of trail turned into a total “pop-skip & jump” section followed by a corner carving session taken at an unbelievable speed that i have no hope of ever matching nor knowing quite how they managed it. A **** good laugh and to see how others who are genuinely world class on a bike ride your local trails is a real eye opener as to just how mediocre you really are….i did manage to stuff him wide on the inside line of a berm though so i rode away very happy with my minuscule victory 😀