The talk of the town at Crankworx last week was all about the new bike Aaron Chase was spotted with. Although it looked like a normal Cannondale hardtail, this thing was anything but that. The frame was actually a short travel full suspension rig that had a shock mounted in the top tube. The pivot was based around the bottom bracket.

I'm amazed that nobody had thought of this before. Setting up rear suspension this way shaves a ton of weight and makes for a much simpler, durable design. According to Aaron there isn't a ton of travel and you wouldn't want to do any downhilling on it but it's just enough to "take the edge off." Sounds like the perfect design for a slopestyle bike.

From the looks of it Cannondale borrowed some parts and designs from their old Headshock and Lefty programs to maket this work. Right now there aren't any concrete plans to take this to full production, but you never know.

Both times I ran into Chase when he was on his bike I happened to be without my camera, so we had to poach these shots from Bike Magazine (read their writeup here).