Regarding the Hopes, are the Pro4s the go to or are the Pro2-evos (which are on CRC but not on the Hope site..?)?
At the moment, the rims would be for my everything (only) bike...
Its a hardtail, I ride aggressively and I like to make my life hard by riding stuff that I shouldn't, I want a good set that I can forget about.
Now we may have a different idea of aggressive riding, but if you want a set and forget type rim there may be better options. There may not be. The Oozey is certainly popular and we'll regarded.
It is a bit of a long one...
Years ago I scored a set of wolverine blue/yellow coloured snowboarding boots. At the time x-men/wolverine stuff was fairly popular and I was often on the receiving end of "you look like..." type comments, so it seemed like a funny idea. Picked up some matching pants and a yellow t-shirt for under the jacket as well. Then I found a matching cap on CRC! It had a centaur shooting an arrow on the front and matched in perfectly. Off to Japan I went, all yellow and blue and chuckling to myself
I flew via Hong Kong on a travel time that seemed to last for days. Airport food, airline food, cheap take away food all of which was in strong contrast to my (at the time) quite strict and healthy diet from home. Then I arrived on location the food was quality homestyle local food made by my host. So my digestive system was in chaos! I think you're starting to see where this is headed...
At the start of my second day on snow my digestive system gained the upper hand, before grabbing my first chair llift for the day I rushed to the freezing cold basement toilet at Cortina Ski field (great ski field) and unleashed a mighty cleansing work of art. It was an epic job and very untidy.
Fortunately the toilet had one of those futuristic toilet seats my friends and I like to call The Picard. It was heated, and with all my layers of snow gear on I was working a sweat. Sweat is bad news on snow so I had removed my yellow cap, sunnies, gloves, backpack, and jacket. Backpack and jacket hanging on the door, gloves sunnies and cap sitting on a handy shelf on the side wall of the tiny cubicle. The seat also featured a handy showering feature which I used liberally to clean up. Very liberally.
When I was done I stood up. Dizzy and cold I reached for my jacket...and bumped my yellow hat into the unflushed toilet! My sunnies were inside the cap. My lightening fast reflexes saw my arm dart in and out, but I was to late...the hat was quite dry. It had been kept out of the water by the immense steaming pile of muck, which now covered the hat. I was so sad as I placed that hat in the bin. When I had brought it they had a lot of colours, so that night i was back online attempting to buy a fresh yellow one and a few other colours but they were all gone.
The sunnies were safe inside the hat, a thorough was followed by a thorough was, followed by a heavy spray with disinfectant (most public Japanese toilets have a lot of this on hand) and they were back on my head. Naturally the first thing my gang said was "where's your hat?" Oh the shame.