Pushing Boundaries with Ben Smith-Peterson
We headed to California with Ben Smith-Peterson, professional stuntman - a guy you've probably seen on the sets of movies like Mad Max and Triple Frontier, crashing, chasing or jumping from moving vehicles. He's the kind of person who actually lives in protective gear. He knows what the limits of protection really are, and spends his life avoiding injury while pushing the limits of machines.
With no brief beyond wear it like you mean it, Ben let loose in our gear across the California desert, ripping bikes, chasing cameras, and spending more time sideways than he did driving forward.
Designers spend a lot of time on theory, lab testing, and trying to simulate the limits of what gear might reach. That methodical approach isn't replaced, but sometimes you've just got to hand it to someone who puts real demands on it and see how it holds up.
Ben's spirit meets he Silk Road ethos exactly where it should. It's not about the idea, it's about taking action. However you find it, two wheels, four wheels, desert or forest, the point isn't to get stuck in the thought. It's to follow the creative, the passion, the excitement.
For us, there's so much more that goes into protection. The instinct to be curious, to follow a rabbit down a hole, to say yes more than no, to stay open to new experiences, gear has to be more than just performative. It has to be versatile. It has to live with you in the city, travel with you off the bike, work in the sun, stretch to meet the demands of your day. That's been built into the fabric of what we've designed from day one, and it's exactly what we found when we rode with Ben.
Lensed by director and photographer Cameron Grayson, a real-life cowboy, hanging from a bungee cord off the back of his truck, there really couldn't have been a better team to capture it.
