In this new Top Chief video bare witness to turn after glorious turn of mind boggling bicycle riding in the distinct Dudes of Hazzard style, honestly what other crew throws down such glorious turns?

But this isn’t just about an unearthly ability to link exquisite inertial adjustments, unlike many shreddits that would be intent to pervert these moves with repetitive angles set to bombastic music the turns in this little film, and the riding at large, are woven into a whole that might not accurately be described as cohesive but can most certainly be described as engaging.

We are treated to a joyous dramatization about exploration, education, and rapid water transportation. Why Joe and crew utilize a canoe, where they’re going, and to what end their constant exchange river riding staff is meant to accomplish is never made clear nor–in this viewers mind– should it. Rather we are left to speculate as to their grand designs; is this a metaphor, an allegory, a reference to some ancient narrative? Yes!

Sitting at our desks, the hours ticking by while our own bicycles weather an unrelenting barrage of dust motes, we use riding videos, images, and words as facsimile for the real thing. A video with decent riding is able to satisfy this demand, perhaps acting as a salve on the deep gouge that the hours and years of cycling has rent into our cortex–consider neuroplasticity, the ability to make new neural pathways, consider also the continual reinforcement of a defined neural conduit, say one that has been built up over countless minutes of use; habit, hobby, practice, etc. Perhaps it is from this deep rift that the angst of non-exercise surfaces?

But what of the rest of the brain? Left to a world of dry edits our ability to conjure proxy diminishes demanding ever greater, ever more incredible feats less our attention lapse into depression. But this one-dimensional arms race is not the only way to cut a film and these fine fellows from Scotland are divining another path, one which is far less clear cut. In turn it is the brambled ambiguity of this trajectory that leads to irreverence, to humor, and to their own wonderful idiosyncrasies. In short, it’s nice to see a drowning canoe when everything else seems to be drowning in imitation.