I’ve been hearing a lot of negative talk swirling around the interwebs lately about the basic premise of the social media platform Instagram. Despite the fact that Instagram’s user base is growing in leaps and bounds while some other platforms, such as Facebook, are declining, Instagram still hasn’t reached nearly the massive size that Facebook has. Consequently, how Instagram is used, or better put, how it should be used, is still up in the air.

As a social media professional, I am constantly using these tools, as well as contemplating the ways that the general public uses them and interacts with them. And for some reason, the way Instagram users are using the platform is getting a bad rap lately.

Read the full article here.

Regular readers may remember that I visited the Big Bear, California area during my summer 2012 road trip, and that I wrote a detailed article on Snow Summit Mountain Resort.

Of all the ski resorts in the United States, Snow Summit has one of the most storied histories in downhill mountain biking lore, but also one of the most controversial. In my article from last summer, I detailed the controversial history surrounding Snow Summit’s rapid fall from one of the top downhill racing stops in the states to not allowing downhill mountain biking on their property at all.

Read the full article here.

Full disclosure: out of everywhere I have ridden my bike, Crested Butte tops the list as my all-time favorite location. I’ve ridden all over the United States, and while there are many places I still want to visit inside our nation’s borders as well as abroad, Crested Butte is currently my favorite place in the world.

Read the full article here.

This is a sad day for mountain bike racing in the Southeast, but I can’t say that I didn’t see it coming. 24-hour racing is, unfortunately, a quickly-dying breed. 24 Hours of Georgia will be buried next to the fresh graves of the 24-hour mountain bike worlds, which was recently canceled in August of 2012, and 24 Hours of Moab, which was also canceled after the 2012 event.

Read the full article here.

It’s not every day that a writer can legitimately say that a company has completely re-thought or revolutionized a certain type of product. Well, they say it all the time… but how often is it really true?

In regards to the Unzen 10 hydration pack from Shimano, I can claim with complete honesty that Shimano has started from scratch and completely rethought the mountain biking hydration pack.

Read the full article here.