JC Cyclists.

Did my first century yesterday. Just over 105 miles with 7000ish feet of climbing. Avg speed was lower because of the extremely rough roads. 3 of the 6 major climbs hit 20% or more and all of them had sections over 10%, I burnt an almost brand new set of brake pads riding them on many of the descents, chip and seal would be a compliment for the road conditions, at the end of the day my hands hurt worse than my legs. Here's the link to the ride.
http://app.strava.com/activities/50007560

There were a couple of groups on the ride, I was one of three riders in the faster group, we kept it slow for the first couple of hours to give the slower groups chances to catch up, after our first store stop we began to go a little faster and then would stop after a hard climb or fast descent to let the slower riders catch up. The entire group stopped for lunch around mile 70 and after that myself and one other ride spent everything else we had out on our own. Fantastic time, even after an ice bath my legs are still a little sore today. Glad to have that under my belt.
 
I had an unfortunate fail on my ride today. I was at the tail end of a 35 mile ride on gravel carriage roads and the next thing I know my rear wheel is locked up. It happened quick, but somehow my rear derailleur was ripped off the frame (or perhaps the bolt fell out and was the cause), and it the cable and chain were wrapped between the highest gear and the spokes. At the very least I need a new derailleur & cable, but I still need to assess wheel, chain and cassette damage.

The worst part was that I had to walk out the last 4 miles. :( http://app.strava.com/activities/51411537
 
I had an unfortunate fail on my ride today. I was at the tail end of a 35 mile ride on gravel carriage roads and the next thing I know my rear wheel is locked up. It happened quick, but somehow my rear derailleur was ripped off the frame (or perhaps the bolt fell out and was the cause), and it the cable and chain were wrapped between the highest gear and the spokes. At the very least I need a new derailleur & cable, but I still need to assess wheel, chain and cassette damage.

The worst part was that I had to walk out the last 4 miles. :( http://app.strava.com/activities/51411537
At least it was down hill. That sucks man! Hope the bike turns out with less damage than you think. Let us know how it turns out.
 
It's at the shop now. My Tricross is only 105 components, so a rear derailleur isn't a big deal cost wise. I might need some new spokes and some wheel work, but everything else looked okay. Good timing in a way because I just got a new saddle for that bike and Joe at the shop will re-fit me when I go to pick it up.
 
It's at the shop now. My Tricross is only 105 components, so a rear derailleur isn't a big deal cost wise. I might need some new spokes and some wheel work, but everything else looked okay. Good timing in a way because I just got a new saddle for that bike and Joe at the shop will re-fit me when I go to pick it up.
Glad to hear it was nothing major cost wise.
 
If any of you guys know a tall guy selling a tt bike let me know. I am 6'5" and am in the market. Brand doesn't make a difference, but the deal does. I don't want to spend a lot because I have never done it before.
 
My impromptu team (3 pilots, one normal dude) was able to put together a road trip to complete the Shiner G.A.S.P. ride this weekend. It was the first century attempted by 3 of us. It was a good time and a good team; we needed each guy at various points as the levels of our legs and motors ebbed and flowed. Our hill guy tried to bonk at about 95 miles but we got him to the line. Awaiting us at the line was free Shiner beer, 2 bratwursts each, sauerkraut, and coleslaw. We're going to try to make this an annual thing - it was a complete blast.

http://app.strava.com/activities/52364458
 
My impromptu team (3 pilots, one normal dude) was able to put together a road trip to complete the Shiner G.A.S.P. ride this weekend. It was the first century attempted by 3 of us. It was a good time and a good team; we needed each guy at various points as the levels of our legs and motors ebbed and flowed. Our hill guy tried to bonk at about 95 miles but we got him to the line. Awaiting us at the line was free Shiner beer, 2 bratwursts each, sauerkraut, and coleslaw. We're going to try to make this an annual thing - it was a complete blast.

http://app.strava.com/activities/52364458
Awesome dude! No better way to end a long ride like that than with a cold beer!
 
Glad to hear it was nothing major cost wise.

Saw your Strava post. Thanks, starting to get my legs. 58:30 is a pretty solid time for the park loop in early may. There are still 4 closed gates you have to slow down for, and the fee station is only one lane so its a bugger.

Riding the road bike right now. The broken bike is the Tricross, and it is still in the shop waiting on a hanger for the new derailleur.
 
Dudes,


New mountain bike question. Do you:

-Get a long travel (120mm) hard tail 29er (Kona Honzo, Trek Stache or maybe a Diamondback Mason) that will work fine for most applications, but really be more of a smooth trail/flow trail oriented bike (think Zippity in Fruita bike21) and maybe the occasional race. This bike would be the start of the quiver of bikes, and would eventually end up sitting next to a road bike and probably a 6" travel full suspension bike that's more dedicated to downhill trails, or...

-Get a longer travel, jack of all trades, master of none long travel trail/all mountain ride (think Trek Remedy or Rumblefish, or maybe a Santa Cruz Heckler) that you could take anywhere and take the trade offs of having that much squish try to climb on a regular basis.

I've gone through this with skis, and now I'll do it with bikes. I've gone from owning 5 pairs of skis and now I'm down to 2. Once we move back out west, I'll go back to having 4-5 pairs for different applications. The same question applies to bikes: do you have one bike that does it all, or do you have multiple bikes that have specific purposes?
 
Dudes,


New mountain bike question. Do you:

-Get a long travel (120mm) hard tail 29er (Kona Honzo, Trek Stache or maybe a Diamondback Mason) that will work fine for most applications, but really be more of a smooth trail/flow trail oriented bike (think Zippity in Fruita bike21) and maybe the occasional race. This bike would be the start of the quiver of bikes, and would eventually end up sitting next to a road bike and probably a 6" travel full suspension bike that's more dedicated to downhill trails, or...

-Get a longer travel, jack of all trades, master of none long travel trail/all mountain ride (think Trek Remedy or Rumblefish, or maybe a Santa Cruz Heckler) that you could take anywhere and take the trade offs of having that much squish try to climb on a regular basis.

I've gone through this with skis, and now I'll do it with bikes. I've gone from owning 5 pairs of skis and now I'm down to 2. Once we move back out west, I'll go back to having 4-5 pairs for different applications. The same question applies to bikes: do you have one bike that does it all, or do you have multiple bikes that have specific purposes?


I would recommend the all arounder... Just make sure your suspension has lockouts on it and you are set. Thats just though.
 
Dudes,


New mountain bike question. Do you:

-Get a long travel (120mm) hard tail 29er (Kona Honzo, Trek Stache or maybe a Diamondback Mason) that will work fine for most applications, but really be more of a smooth trail/flow trail oriented bike (think Zippity in Fruita bike21) and maybe the occasional race. This bike would be the start of the quiver of bikes, and would eventually end up sitting next to a road bike and probably a 6" travel full suspension bike that's more dedicated to downhill trails, or...

-Get a longer travel, jack of all trades, master of none long travel trail/all mountain ride (think Trek Remedy or Rumblefish, or maybe a Santa Cruz Heckler) that you could take anywhere and take the trade offs of having that much squish try to climb on a regular basis.

I've gone through this with skis, and now I'll do it with bikes. I've gone from owning 5 pairs of skis and now I'm down to 2. Once we move back out west, I'll go back to having 4-5 pairs for different applications. The same question applies to bikes: do you have one bike that does it all, or do you have multiple bikes that have specific purposes?

Well I have been on the mountain bike for 21 years now and I have raced XC and DH. Not that I know everything by any means but I think I have some pretty good suggestions. Right now I am running a Canfield Yelli Screamy. It is basically a more extreme version of the 'Stashe. I would highly recommend the 'Stashe as it is the next level technology from Trek for next to nothing. 2400 bucks entry level. I do run a 140 fork on the Canfield and that is the only place where you will come up short.

If you want to talk about why the short chainstay (short wheelbase), slack headtube (69-67 degree) is the bomb I will go on and on. However simply put all I really know about the 'Stashe is that you are getting what took me a year to come up with right out of the box. New wheels will save you over a pound. Replace the SLX with something lighter and you will be tearing it up on the climbs and the downhill. Only thing that is missing IMHO is a short stem 50mm and a dropper post.

Now A LOT of this depends on where you will be riding. If you are hitting up the gnar and super techy trails with lots of drops, roots and big jumps. Well maybe you wont want a hardtail but that is the only reason I can think of where you would want a 6 inch bike for XC riding.

Anyway I do love dual sus bikes. I have a trek session 8. I use it at the bike parks. Northstar and Whistler. I've never seen the kind of gnar that Northstar has any other place. So I love me some 8 inches of travel.

But that is just it. I picked my bikes based on where I ride and what I like to ride. I'm not a jack of all trades kinda guy. If I lived near Sedona or Moab I would likely have a dualy XC bike. However I don't and I'm not about to leave the flowy goodness of Marin to go ride other places. Unless they have a sweet chairlift and some big ass jumps.

Where do you live? What do the trails look like? What do you like to ride? That would help me pick you a bike the most and it would likely help you pick your bike if you answered those questions.
 
I'll go ahead and respond to your post, and then give you my thought process for how I got here, experience, blah blah blah. It might be kind of a long post.

Well I have been on the mountain bike for 21 years now and I have raced XC and DH. Not that I know everything by any means but I think I have some pretty good suggestions. Right now I am running a Canfield Yelli Screamy. It is basically a more extreme version of the 'Stashe. I would highly recommend the 'Stashe as it is the next level technology from Trek for next to nothing. 2400 bucks entry level. I do run a 140 fork on the Canfield and that is the only place where you will come up short.

I've heard (read) great things about the Screamy (on MTBR, if it's to be trusted), and honestly the concept of the "all mountain 29er" or whatever it's being billed as is incredibly interesting to me.

If you want to talk about why the short chainstay (short wheelbase), slack headtube (69-67 degree) is the bomb I will go on and on. However simply put all I really know about the 'Stashe is that you are getting what took me a year to come up with right out of the box. New wheels will save you over a pound. Replace the SLX with something lighter and you will be tearing it up on the climbs and the downhill. Only thing that is missing IMHO is a short stem 50mm and a dropper post.

These are my thoughts on the Stache also. I demoed one the other day, and other than feeling a little stretched out, it was a fine bike.

Now A LOT of this depends on where you will be riding. If you are hitting up the gnar and super techy trails with lots of drops, roots and big jumps. Well maybe you wont want a hardtail but that is the only reason I can think of where you would want a 6 inch bike for XC riding.

I live in Michigan, but I hate the riding here. I hate it so much that when I moved back, I sold my mountain bike and got a road bike. It didn't make sense to have two bikes when I was back in school and not working, but now that I'm headed back to work, it's a lot easier to justify the expense of another bike. This will be a traveling bike for me.

Anyway I do love dual sus bikes. I have a trek session 8. I use it at the bike parks. Northstar and Whistler. I've never seen the kind of gnar that Northstar has any other place. So I love me some 8 inches of travel.

But that is just it. I picked my bikes based on where I ride and what I like to ride. I'm not a jack of all trades kinda guy. If I lived near Sedona or Moab I would likely have a dualy XC bike. However I don't and I'm not about to leave the flowy goodness of Marin to go ride other places. Unless they have a sweet chairlift and some big ass jumps.

Where do you live? What do the trails look like? What do you like to ride? That would help me pick you a bike the most and it would likely help you pick your bike if you answered those questions.

Quick answers: I live in Michigan. The trails look like flat sand. I like to ride Park City and Fruita/Moab. I like flow, but I'm fine with square edged 1 foot rocks/drops/etc., gnar ain't so bad in a general sense, but I started riding too late in the game to really appreciate being airborne; put simply, I'm not young or stupid enough to learn how to huck.

Also, a little background: I started mountain biking while I was living in Park City. I thought it'd be ok, you know, something to do in the summers when I wasn't skiing, but frankly I fell in love with the riding out there. I was rolling a Gary Fisher Marlin (with the original genesis geometry), and had a blast with a 100mm travel hard tail out there. Again, I wasn't hucking anything, and I'm not entirely sure I want to, but that's where I learned to ride. Made it out to Fruita and Moab, both of which I loved. To me, perfection is Horse Thief's Bench in Fruita (again, bike21 know the trail).

So now I'm looking at getting another ride. Like I said briefly, my options are a low end (read as: heavy) all mountain bike (5-6" of travel) that I KNOW I can take anywhere, but won't do any one thing very well, or start diversifying my quiver of bikes. I've come to the conclusion that there's no right or wrong answer here, both avenues are reasonable ways of approaching this problem. Frankly, the issue is really whether I start getting specialized bikes for specialized tasks now, or do it when we move back to Utah in 3-5 years.

My thoughts on the all mountain type rigs were initially this: grab something generic like a Santa Cruz Heckler, ride it stock until I beat the crap out of it, and deal with hauling 30-32 pounds of a not-very-efficient-at-climbing bike around until I get back to Utah. At that point, if I find that I want to get into the park, I can replace the rear shock with a coil shock, and then put maybe 170mm of travel up front (and try to break the frame), or I can put a 140mm fork up front and get the rear shock PUSH'd in a few years. It's not a bad move, in my mind. A bike like this would be able to do nothing well, but could get around on any trail. The drawbacks are obvious; weight and inefficiency. It would be brutal to try to do a stage race on something like this (which is something I think I'm interested in trying my hand at).

My other thoughts were the Stache. You know the benefits and the drawbacks, so I won't waste my time with a discussion of the details of the bike. It's a great idea, and I found it's quite a nice ride.

So fast forward to a few weekends ago where I was finally able to get on some of these bikes at the local demo day. I was able to ride a Giant Reign, Trek Rumblefish Pro, Trek Remedy 9.8 carbon, Trek Stache 8, and a Specialized S-Works Stumpjumper FSR 29er. Here's the quick and dirty of what I thought of each of these bikes:

Giant Reign: Fine bike, but creaky as hell. The CTD ("new and improved" pro pedal) wasn't setup properly for this bike, so the shock was riding full open on flat XC trails, so that sucked some of the efficiency out of the rear shock. Overall, there's something I've never liked about Giant bikes, and there's still something I just don't like about Giant bikes. Other folks love them, but there's something about the suspension design that I can't dig, and I don't know what it is. Good bike for somebody else.

Trek Rumblefish Pro: I came into this demo day being a 29er hater. I rode a 29er once 5 years ago and it was horrible (Gary Fisher Hi-Fi...the first one they produced). So when the guys told me to check this one out, I wasn't very interested, but I thought I'd give it a go. I have to admit, I'm a changed man now. The Rumblefish's low speed steering was quicker than I expected, and the thing ate up any terrain (roots) in front of it without seeming to notice it was there. Climbed well, accelerated well, and frankly, I couldn't find any draw backs to the bike. The only thing I'm worried about is catching air with this bike, what with 28 spoke wheels and giant 29er rims. I could see how it could be really easy to destroy those wheels if you took too big of a jump.

Trek Remedy: This was a fantastic bike, but what do you expect at this price point? Climbed well (though with 26 inch wheels and such a slack head tube, it wallowed a little bit. I could see how this could be a liability on steep ascents), descended well, and was a great all around bike. If I had the cash, I'd throw down $6,000 on one of these tomorrow.

Trek Stache: This thing road a lot like the Rumblefish save for two important differences. First, the steering was a tiny bit quicker at higher speeds in a very important way (you wouldn't get caught in tight switchbacks), and it wasn't nearly as plush (no crap, right?). It rode like a hard tail, but as a very playful hard tail. It could eat up bumps and crap in the trail with ease, but you still had to pick an actual line and get up off the saddle BEFORE you hit any rocks or roots (or said simply, it is less forgiving of sloppy riding). Overall I liked the bike. It's got a 90mm stem, which I THINK would be better with a 50mm stem as you said, but I'd want to ride it for a while to see if that's really the case.

Specialized: I hated this bike. I hated the people at the Specialized tent. They were all very mean, egotistical people that I want nothing to do with. I've got a Specialized Allez as my road bike, and I considered going home and selling it because these guys were such bags. Oh and the bike rode like crap. Who would pay $10,000 for this POS?

So after the demo day, my thoughts are still pretty much the same; Grab a Stache now and have a bike that I can do MOST trails that I want to ride, be able to race, and be able to travel with, or wait a few months and grab a heavy all mountain bike. This would either be a Rumblefish, a Remedy, or a Heckler if I can find one to demo.

If I get the Stache, eventually my stable will have the Stache (probably as a single speeder in a few years once I trash the drive train, though that's only a guess), something in the 5-6 in travel range (maybe a Blur LT2? Maybe a Nomad? Maybe a Tracer? Maybe a Bronson? Maybe a Tracer 275? Maybe a Yeti 575? Heck if I know, but you get the idea), and then a road bike. If I find that one way I want to go and jump into the park (quite literally), then maybe something along the lines of a Kona Operator?

Long post I know, but does that give you an idea of where I'm coming from, where I'm at, and where I'm going?

In the end, as I said earlier, I don't think there's a right answer here, and I don't think any pathway would be a bad way to go. At this point, what I think I'm going to do is go grab a Stache 7 and have some fun with it for the next few years, and see what I want to do with it when I move back to Utah. I can still travel with this bike and ride what I want to ride out west, and it'll give a chance to grow as a rider. I'd get the Stache 8, but frankly, I don't think it's worth the money. I've always run Rock Shox suspension before, and once you hit their air shocks, I've found they do a fine job (I'm a huge Fox fan when you get into higher end bikes on full suspension designs, but that's not what this bike is). The wheelsets are the same (though the 8 has a slightly lighter hub), I like Avid brakes well enough (as long as they're not Hayes. I hate Hayes brakes), and the drivetrains are similar enough. Long story short, I don't think the 8 is worth the extra money for me, for this kind of bike, for the type of riding I'll be doing. As you said, if I really want to lose some weight, it'll be in the wheelset; so I'll wait until I taco a rim and then grab something lighter and stronger.

So with all that...thoughts? Suggestions? Here's your chance to tell me I'm an idiot and I'll happily listen :)
 
I'll go ahead and respond to your post, and then give you my thought process for how I got here, experience, blah blah blah. It might be kind of a long post.

I've heard (read) great things about the Screamy (on MTBR, if it's to be trusted), and honestly the concept of the "all mountain 29er" or whatever it's being billed as is incredibly interesting to me.

These are my thoughts on the Stache also. I demoed one the other day, and other than feeling a little stretched out, it was a fine bike.

I live in Michigan, but I hate the riding here. I hate it so much that when I moved back, I sold my mountain bike and got a road bike. It didn't make sense to have two bikes when I was back in school and not working, but now that I'm headed back to work, it's a lot easier to justify the expense of another bike. This will be a traveling bike for me.

Quick answers: I live in Michigan. The trails look like flat sand. I like to ride Park City and Fruita/Moab. I like flow, but I'm fine with square edged 1 foot rocks/drops/etc., gnar ain't so bad in a general sense, but I started riding too late in the game to really appreciate being airborne; put simply, I'm not young or stupid enough to learn how to huck.

Also, a little background: I started mountain biking while I was living in Park City. I thought it'd be ok, you know, something to do in the summers when I wasn't skiing, but frankly I fell in love with the riding out there. I was rolling a Gary Fisher Marlin (with the original genesis geometry), and had a blast with a 100mm travel hard tail out there. Again, I wasn't hucking anything, and I'm not entirely sure I want to, but that's where I learned to ride. Made it out to Fruita and Moab, both of which I loved. To me, perfection is Horse Thief's Bench in Fruita (again, bike21 know the trail).

So now I'm looking at getting another ride. Like I said briefly, my options are a low end (read as: heavy) all mountain bike (5-6" of travel) that I KNOW I can take anywhere, but won't do any one thing very well, or start diversifying my quiver of bikes. I've come to the conclusion that there's no right or wrong answer here, both avenues are reasonable ways of approaching this problem. Frankly, the issue is really whether I start getting specialized bikes for specialized tasks now, or do it when we move back to Utah in 3-5 years.

My thoughts on the all mountain type rigs were initially this: grab something generic like a Santa Cruz Heckler, ride it stock until I beat the crap out of it, and deal with hauling 30-32 pounds of a not-very-efficient-at-climbing bike around until I get back to Utah. At that point, if I find that I want to get into the park, I can replace the rear shock with a coil shock, and then put maybe 170mm of travel up front (and try to break the frame), or I can put a 140mm fork up front and get the rear shock PUSH'd in a few years. It's not a bad move, in my mind. A bike like this would be able to do nothing well, but could get around on any trail. The drawbacks are obvious; weight and inefficiency. It would be brutal to try to do a stage race on something like this (which is something I think I'm interested in trying my hand at).

My other thoughts were the Stache. You know the benefits and the drawbacks, so I won't waste my time with a discussion of the details of the bike. It's a great idea, and I found it's quite a nice ride.

So fast forward to a few weekends ago where I was finally able to get on some of these bikes at the local demo day. I was able to ride a Giant Reign, Trek Rumblefish Pro, Trek Remedy 9.8 carbon, Trek Stache 8, and a Specialized S-Works Stumpjumper FSR 29er. Here's the quick and dirty of what I thought of each of these bikes:

Giant Reign: Fine bike, but creaky as hell. The CTD ("new and improved" pro pedal) wasn't setup properly for this bike, so the shock was riding full open on flat XC trails, so that sucked some of the efficiency out of the rear shock. Overall, there's something I've never liked about Giant bikes, and there's still something I just don't like about Giant bikes. Other folks love them, but there's something about the suspension design that I can't dig, and I don't know what it is. Good bike for somebody else.

Trek Rumblefish Pro: I came into this demo day being a 29er hater. I rode a 29er once 5 years ago and it was horrible (Gary Fisher Hi-Fi...the first one they produced). So when the guys told me to check this one out, I wasn't very interested, but I thought I'd give it a go. I have to admit, I'm a changed man now. The Rumblefish's low speed steering was quicker than I expected, and the thing ate up any terrain (roots) in front of it without seeming to notice it was there. Climbed well, accelerated well, and frankly, I couldn't find any draw backs to the bike. The only thing I'm worried about is catching air with this bike, what with 28 spoke wheels and giant 29er rims. I could see how it could be really easy to destroy those wheels if you took too big of a jump.

Trek Remedy: This was a fantastic bike, but what do you expect at this price point? Climbed well (though with 26 inch wheels and such a slack head tube, it wallowed a little bit. I could see how this could be a liability on steep ascents), descended well, and was a great all around bike. If I had the cash, I'd throw down $6,000 on one of these tomorrow.

Trek Stache: This thing road a lot like the Rumblefish save for two important differences. First, the steering was a tiny bit quicker at higher speeds in a very important way (you wouldn't get caught in tight switchbacks), and it wasn't nearly as plush (no crap, right?). It rode like a hard tail, but as a very playful hard tail. It could eat up bumps and crap in the trail with ease, but you still had to pick an actual line and get up off the saddle BEFORE you hit any rocks or roots (or said simply, it is less forgiving of sloppy riding). Overall I liked the bike. It's got a 90mm stem, which I THINK would be better with a 50mm stem as you said, but I'd want to ride it for a while to see if that's really the case.

Specialized: I hated this bike. I hated the people at the Specialized tent. They were all very mean, egotistical people that I want nothing to do with. I've got a Specialized Allez as my road bike, and I considered going home and selling it because these guys were such bags. Oh and the bike rode like crap. Who would pay $10,000 for this POS?

So after the demo day, my thoughts are still pretty much the same; Grab a Stache now and have a bike that I can do MOST trails that I want to ride, be able to race, and be able to travel with, or wait a few months and grab a heavy all mountain bike. This would either be a Rumblefish, a Remedy, or a Heckler if I can find one to demo.

If I get the Stache, eventually my stable will have the Stache (probably as a single speeder in a few years once I trash the drive train, though that's only a guess), something in the 5-6 in travel range (maybe a Blur LT2? Maybe a Nomad? Maybe a Tracer? Maybe a Bronson? Maybe a Tracer 275? Maybe a Yeti 575? Heck if I know, but you get the idea), and then a road bike. If I find that one way I want to go and jump into the park (quite literally), then maybe something along the lines of a Kona Operator?

Long post I know, but does that give you an idea of where I'm coming from, where I'm at, and where I'm going?

In the end, as I said earlier, I don't think there's a right answer here, and I don't think any pathway would be a bad way to go. At this point, what I think I'm going to do is go grab a Stache 7 and have some fun with it for the next few years, and see what I want to do with it when I move back to Utah. I can still travel with this bike and ride what I want to ride out west, and it'll give a chance to grow as a rider. I'd get the Stache 8, but frankly, I don't think it's worth the money. I've always run Rock Shox suspension before, and once you hit their air shocks, I've found they do a fine job (I'm a huge Fox fan when you get into higher end bikes on full suspension designs, but that's not what this bike is). The wheelsets are the same (though the 8 has a slightly lighter hub), I like Avid brakes well enough (as long as they're not Hayes. I hate Hayes brakes), and the drivetrains are similar enough. Long story short, I don't think the 8 is worth the extra money for me, for this kind of bike, for the type of riding I'll be doing. As you said, if I really want to lose some weight, it'll be in the wheelset; so I'll wait until I taco a rim and then grab something lighter and stronger.

So with all that...thoughts? Suggestions? Here's your chance to tell me I'm an idiot and I'll happily listen :)

A few things stuck out for me:

Yeah the company culture of Specialized is weird. They sponsor the junior team I help coach and they have been super cool to us. Then again sometimes the demo guys had to drive all night and they just get jaded. Kinda like pilots ;)

Sounds like you have thought things out really well. The only thing your being an idiot about ;) is not paying for the Stash 8. You will keep this bike forever and likely put better wheels on it at some point. The brakes are what drives me to think the 8 is way worth the extra coin.

If you are moving back to lift served territory (Utah, Colorado etc) you may not want to put yourself in the I will never learn to huck box. I'm 35 and I started my hucking career 3 years ago. Way to old by hucking standards. I can honestly say it has been the most rewarding thing I have ever done. Cyclocross, road, XC all great but learning to keep up with the bros on the DH bike has been the best. Keep an open mind here. I'd love to live in the rockies. I just bought a dirt jumper and I am finally getting over my fear of gap jumps. Valmont bike park. Yes please!

My buddy loves his Rumblefish. He is the one that I try to follow around the bike parks when we ride DH bikes. Catching air seems to be no problem for him in general and on the Rumblefish is no different. He kills it. I'm not sure what kind of wheels he has. Wheels go kaboom. 29er wheels do this really well. Worrying about killing 29er wheels is not reason to not buy a bike.

What it really comes down to I guess. Is to quiver or not to quiver. The Rumblefish will do all. But it wont do anything really well.

So my take on the whole thing:

Get the Stashe 8. Ride a lot have a ball. Put a 50 mm stem on it and a dropper post over time. Keep riding this bike all the time. Run it into the ground. Turn it into a singlespeed. This bike will serve you well for at least 5 years. You will be getting groceries on it in 10.

Rent a DH bike and ride your local park. Do it with some bros who have done it before. You will LOVE IT. Hell you are welcome to ride Northstar with me anytime.

Love it so much you'll buy a DH bike. Learn to ride the DH bike and have fun being challenged. (2 years or so)

Buy a dirt jumper and ride it at the bike park. Hit the tabletops first. Then move on to bigger things. (year 2 or 3)

Stop in at CLE? Hit Ray's Bike Park. AWESOME!!!!!!

Take your new skills out on the XC trails and get a sweet dual sus XC bike by then it will be some 650B wonder we haven't even talked about. (3 years from now)

Clear as mud?

(yes I'm saying the XC dualy is too much bike for you right now) don't take it personally. I learned that the hard way.
 
Word, holmes :)

So let me ask you about catching some air; how much protection are you wearing? Now that I've got a (very cute) little girl at home, I'm not very interested in breaking my neck and getting myself laid up for 12 weeks (or doing even more damage than that) with her wandering around the house. Neck brace? Full face helmet?
 
Word, holmes :)

So let me ask you about catching some air; how much protection are you wearing? Now that I've got a (very cute) little girl at home, I'm not very interested in breaking my neck and getting myself laid up for 12 weeks (or doing even more damage than that) with her wandering around the house. Neck brace? Full face helmet?

If you can make it out to Marin I will take you on a fun ride and sell you some Stans Crest wheels for a song. I have 3 sets and an extra front wheel. Also based on the race you posted, you need the Stashe 8 with a nice set of wheels.

Onto the question:

When I ride DH:

Beef.jpg


Full face, neck brace (Leatt brace) elbow and shin guards. Shin guards being essential for the pedal smack. Note that I smashed my face so hard on this run I broke my helmet visor off and I was good to go!

When I ride dirt jumps.



DJ helmet, goggles (eye protection) gloves and shin guards for the pedal smack. No goggles at the pump track.

The trail in the movie is a cool deal too:

3 part Tamarancho Flow Trail movie: 1 http://www.hanskellner.com/2013/04/02/2013-tamarancho-flow-trail-episode-1/ 2 http://www.hanskellner.com/2013/04/11/2013-tamarancho-flow-trail-episode-2/ 3 http://www.hanskellner.com/2013/04/17/2013-tamarancho-flow-trail-episode-3/

Anyway my ego stroke post is over. Read this guys take, I know NOTHING compared to this guy:

www.leelikesbikes.com
 
Have an extra $10,000 laying around? Then dig this :)

bronsonhouse-1.jpg


I'd say go for a squishy 29'er like the Tallboy LT. As all around as it comes these days and will do a lot.

http://www.santacruzbicycles.com/tallboylt/

tallboylt.jpg


My wife is on a Tallboy now and loves it. I'd like to add one to my quiver too, but I'm banned from buying bicycles for a bit.

It is the age old question and as Beef says, ain't no such thing as a true do-it-all. This is why I have my rigid 29'er and 6" trail bike. Depending on where I go, both are perfect for what I need. Though I wish the trail bike climbed better, it absolutely rules when I point it downhill.
 
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