Although there weren’t any demo bikes in my size Large, I did the parking lot test on a Medium and was struck by a couple of things.

First, it’s by far the plushest 27.5 bike I’ve encountered. With 6.6 inches of rear travel and the DW-link, it has that nice Barcalounger feel to it when you sit back. Most of the other 650b/27.5 bikes are in the 6-inch range, including the attention-getting new Bronson carbon from Santa Cruz.

Second, for all its plushness it handled really well. The 14.1-inch bottom bracket, 66.5-degree head angle and short rear triangle gave it a flickability I would not have expected, and have not found, in larger wheel sizes.

It made me wonder if longer travel isn’t the geometric “sweet spot” for the 27.5 wheel size. Shorter travel just doesn’t accentuate the larger wheel size enough, diminishing its versatility, in my experience anyway. I spoke with several experienced 650b/27.5 riders, and most were on the shorter-travel, cross-country side of the equation. They also tended to be a bit shorter than me — 5-9 and 5-10 range.

I’ll look forward to demo-ing a Large when they become available. For now, Chris gives the full rundown on Pivot’s new Firebird 27.5 in this interview.

That’s pretty much what our inquiries into longtime advocacy director David Hiller’s future at Seattle’s Cascade Bicycle Club have yielded.

David Hiller: Whither goeth?

Does Chuck Ayers’ abruptly announced departure affect Hiller?

In press statements, Ayers made several pointed references to advocacy and grass-roots activism, hinting that the “new” Cascade would back off its roll-up-the-shirtsleeves approach to political organizing.

Club board members vehemently deny that’s the case. At the same time, they make it clear that the club will be taking a more professional, corporate approach to cycling issues in political, financial and civic circles.

Hiller did not respond to an email inquiry. A board member told us, “We just can’t get into that.”

When you ask a simple yes-or-no question and the room goes dark, you have to suspect something’s up.

Hiller’s departure, or even shift to a different position, would mark a giant change for Cascade. Moreso than Ayers, Hiller is the face of Cascade to the community at large.

A tireless lobbyist, Hiller has worked hard the past two years to get vulnerable-user (cyclist and pedestrian) legislation passed. Last year he was a key figure in the successful election campaign of now Mayor Mike McGinn.

Hiller has been in the forefront of Burke-Gilman Trail, bike lane and “road diet” campaigns. He’s the first person the press turns to for a quote on bike issues. And for good reason — we can’t recall him ever saying “no comment.” Till now, at least.

If Hiller were to leave Cascade, we doubt he would fade into the woodwork. It may be that David will join McGinn’s staff or find a lobbying position with a different bike organization. In any case, we suspect the name David Hiller will remain synonymous with bike advocacy for some time to come.

All in 2010. Remember that Rusch, who started out as a rock climber and dominated adventure sports before moving to endurance mountain biking in 2001, is a three-peat 24-hour solo world champion. Her full list of accomplishments makes you want to sit down and take a breather just reading them.

Then again, Rebecca Rusch is the kind of person who would be stoked at meeting you or me, or walking down the street, or watching paint dry. She’s stoked at everything life has to offer. That’s just one reason why she’s everybody’s favorite champion.

Climbing at 2010 Leadville 100. Todd Meier photo.

“I just love to ride,” she said in a telephone interview after her Leadville win.

Notably, Rusch finished a remarkable 22nd overall at Leadville, passing half a dozen guys on the fearsome Columbine climb up to the race’s highest point at 12,550 feet. Rusch is matter-of-fact about it: “For the most part the guys are super cool. Especially in an endurance race, everyone is working super hard — everyone’s in their own little suffer fest.”

Women racing in male-dominated mixed events has come a long way from the early days, when just a couple of female names would show up in mountain biking competitions. Back then, a lot of guys weren’t particularly keen about getting passed by someone like Jacquie Phelan, winner of the first three NORBA nationals who had to endure a lot of pushback and ostracism on the trails.

With trophy next to men's winner Levi Leipheimer. Todd Meier photo.

Today, “I think the guys have changed,” Reba said. “What can they say? You’re beating them fair and square, they have to kind of take their hats off to you and say, OK, good job! Nobody likes to be chicked maybe, but people are more used to seeing fast women. The overwhelming majority of them are willing to shake your hand and give you a pat on the back.”

They call her the Queen of Pain, but it’s unclear whether the reference is to her own threshold or what she inflicts on the competition. At last Saturday’s Leadville, Rebecca not only won for the second year in a row, she beat by 11 minutes the course record set in 1997.

She credits women’s silver winner Amanda Carey with pushing her early and often.

“For the first 40 miles I couldn’t shake Amanda. I was thinking OK, OK, gotta keep at it. We were in the Top 25 of the men so obviously both pushing it.”

Then, after the Twin Lakes Dam aid station and start of the 3,200-foot Columbine ascent, she “decided to put the hammer down and mini-time trial. It was make or break at that point for me. I put six minutes into her on the climb up and another few on the descent, so by the time of the Twin Lakes return I had about 10 minutes on her.” She ultimately finished 25 minutes ahead of Carey, who was 42nd.

It wasn’t a cakewalk. She was cramping on the Columbine descent and almost slid out on a couple of corners. “I was like, OK, OK, take it easy,” she said. “It ended up being a clean, solid race for me.”

It helped that the crowd this year knew her name. “You hear people shouting out your name all along the course, it’s definitely super inspiring.”

As strong as Rebecca is, she admitted you always need a bit of luck to win an endurance race. No flats. No mechanicals. No bonking.

“I was prepared, but you have to have a little luck to get through 100 miles without something going wrong.”

Crediting the 29er. Todd Meier photo.

Rusch rode a Specialized S-Works Stumpjumper 29er hardtail. Although she’s “barely 5-foot-7, I’m sold on the 29er, especially on that course with its fire road sections.” All Specialized riders, including men’s bronze medalist Todd Wells, were on 29ers, she said.

She arrived 10 days before race day to get acclimated and meet the locals.

“What’s really cool about Leadville (race) is the sheer amount of people there. They all love to ride bikes, it’s definitely the biggest mountain bike race I’ll ever attend. It’s hanging out with your tribe.”

Rusch is a bit of a jill-of-all-trades on the racing landscape. Asked to characterize her forte, she answers, “Endurance.” “I’d get really bored doing just one thing (discipline),” she said. “I think it comes from my adventure racing background and doing other sports, like skiing in the winter. I like to mix it up.”

Asked which male counterpart comes closest to her style, she says Adam Craig. “He does Super D and World Cup cross-country stuff. He hasn’t done 24-hour racing but he’s a really good technical rider as well as an endurance guy.”

Another one: Mark Weir. “He’s super technical too and loves the downhill.” We would love to see Mark and Reba sit down together over a couple of beers. He Stoke meets She Stoke.

As for her goals, Rebecca says she accomplished 2010′s No. 1 with her win at Leadville. She’ll be back in sky country in a couple of weeks for the 24 Hours of Leadville (Sept. 4-5), but beyond that she’s still mulling over the rest of the racing season. And 2011? “That’s too far away to plan,” she said with a laugh.

Here’s a look at Joe on video, talking about his new Cloud 9 that we previewed last month.

So when she took a tumble and fractured her hip at N. 85th and Greenwood three days ago, her first thought was: I won’t be able to ride my bike for awhile!

Before the accident: Shannon with her newly powdercoated Marinoni

She blames the accident on “doing something stupid,” but it was the kind of thing any seasoned cyclist can relate to. The Greenwood crossroads is one of the busiest in the city, with little bike clearance from traffic. (Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn, a Greenwood resident, can vouch for this.) Although it’s always tricky to reconstruct an accident second-hand, it appears Shannon was going to continue riding in the street but found herself squeezed by cars, to the point where she decided to bail on the sidewalk. She thought she could just ride up the wheelchair-access curb ramp, but instead missed it and hit the curbside square on. The impact threw her from the bike and she hit on her side “really hard.”

“It could have been a lot worse,” Shannon recounted from her hospital bed. If a car had come along, or she’d landed on her head, “I’d be in a lot worse shape.” That’s typical Shannon, making the best of a bad situation and looking at the glass half full.

She’s already started physical therapy and plans an aggressive recovery but does not yet know when she’ll be back on her trusty teal (Bianchi green) Marinoni.

“You know,” she said, “This will be the longest I’ve been off my bike in what, 52 years!”

Get well soon, Shannon — and back to your Samaritan ways.

A downhill glint in her eye.

As a longtime Jill-watcher we’ve been speculating she would move to the Big Dance (after dominating Dual Slalom) given expert counsel from boyfriend Bryn Atkinson. Next stop: World Cup tour! (We hope.)

More from Jill’s blog. Full report from PinkBike.

A downhill glint in her eye.

Northstar isn’t the World Cup of course, but Jill has shown she’s a contender no matter what the venue, and her competition was no pushover, including Kathy Pruitt, Melissa Buhl and the unretired Leigh Donovan. We’ll look forward to tracking her progress through the season as she puts her stamp on the Big Dance. (Jill’s blog has her typically pithy commentary, along with women’s and men’s DH results.)

Then the bad news came: Her sponsors were withdrawing. The team was disbanding. It was too late to try to hook up with another team. Her 2010 season was over literally before it began.

But then she got the call from her brother: Why not join him in his new business, Imagecraft out of the Seattle suburb of Auburn. Brian Gerrard had worked at the two-decade-old sign-banner-decal wrap shop for five years before hitting on the idea of buying out the owners. In her spare time between training runs on Galbraith Mountain out her back door in Bellingham, Leana had earned a degree in business and marketing from Western Washington University. He knew design and operations, she knew sales and marketing. Both highly driven, creative types, they were a natural team.

So now when you see the yellow and black Evil Bikes van, or the tricked out Full Speed Ahead rig, or the Redline trailer, or a Transition bike wraparound, or a BikeHugger decal, you can think of Leana and Brian and Imagecraft. Or if you’re down at Pacific Place or at a bike race with booths and banners or at an autocross competition with numbered cars, there’s a chance what you’re seeing came out of the Imagecraft talent pool.

Evil Bikes van Before.

Evil Bikes van After.

There’s a bigger story as well here, having to do with a new entrepreneurial wave in America. Where kids in their 20s and 30s are having to roll their own careers based on where their hearts lead them. In many cases they’re leveraging new technologies, or new ways of using traditional technologies, and formulating businesses out of personal networks and passions that might not have been considered career-appropriate in the past.

In the Gerrards’ case, Ian and mother Elza staked Brian and Leana a loan. Imagecraft is a throwback in that way — the archetypal family business blending a love for the racing scene with a flair for creative enterprise.

“The local family business is making a comeback,” said Leana. “It has been inspiring to see first-hand how many people have started businesses in the six months since we’ve owned the company. We have a lot of people contact us when they are still in the thought process of starting a business, which has been great because we were able to help them in creating a brand identity often including designing a logo, creating a name and a slogan and helping with the mission and vision statements.”

Leana in full race mode.

So far the partnership “is working out great,” said their dad, Ian Gerrard, an automotive manufacturer sales rep and former rally car racer. “They haven’t killed each other.”

Dad is only partly kidding. Brian and Leana have the usual sibling rivalries. Then again, when brother and sister are both racers, a little competitiveness isn’t a bad thing.

Brian got into racing first — Ian says he “made the mistake of driving by” a Wednesday evening race at River Valley BMX track near Sumner when Brian was 6.

“Dad, wait! Pull over!” son told father. “Let’s look at that!” From that point on, “all he could think about was racing,” Ian said.

Two years later, when she turned 6, Leana was hooked too.

“I guess it was a case of wanting to do what my big brother was doing,” Leana admits.

“I was a little peeved at first,” Brian recalls. “This was like my thing.”

But it soon became obvious that Leana had loads of talent and could hold her own on any course. Big brother helped mentor her and the two became fixtures on the local circuit.

Once Jill Kintner was actually taller than Leana.

Leana turned to dual slalom mountain bike racing in her teens and, following graduation at Western, became a sponsored pro in dual slalom and 4-cross. Besides finishing fourth in the sprint and 15th in the overall downhill at Megavalanche last year, Leana’s results include firsts at Fluidride in Port Angeles and the BC Cup in Kamloops as well as top-3 finishes at NORBA events. Those were in 2008, when she also suffered a broken foot that laid her up for much of the season. Previously she was a five-time collegiate champion in downhill and 4-cross and, since her first win in 2004, has taken home several NORBA 4-cross trophies.

Imagecraft is helping Leana, who is also featured in the popular Bones Over Metal movie, “Women of Dirt,” and Brian, whose top BMX result was 6th at the nationals when he was 11 but who also has won amateur class titles at Whistler’s Crankworx, stay elbow-deep in the competitive bike scene. Leana, who lives at Lake Tapps, commutes by bike an hour each way to work and home daily, then rides weekends at Duthie Hill mountain bike park or other local outlets.

Woman of Mud: Hanging at Duthie.

She’s kept her stable of Cannondales — a Judge downhill, Rize XC, Aaron Chase jump bile and Moto trail bike — and wants to get back into racing. But the job is keeping her more than full-time busy. She tweeted recently that she keeps getting texts asking if she’s still alive.

“I mean, I know I do a dangerous sport,” she says. “But really.” Just about any weekend you can find her out on the trails. And if you need a custom wrap, decal, sign or banner — well, now you know where to go for it.