General thoughts on mountain biking.
With the increasing cost of raw materials, specifically steel and aluminum, frame producers are having to find ways to cut costs. The larger companies like Trek, Cannondale and Giant have been outsourcing for years, but now we are seeing more “boutique” brands like Titus and Santa Cruz doing the same thing.
What most folks didn’t hear during all this buzz was the word Klein. That’s right Klein is coming back to the states. Just when Trek was pushing out the last old stock of Klein from their warehouses they decide the flip the switch back to on “On.”
I see no place for a long travel 29er. I ride a 36 lbs 6″ bike as my regular ride, and to get a 29er to fit the same bill…the geometry would not work. To get the slack angles required by 6″ + bikes, a 29ers wheelbase would have to be so long that it wouldn’t be turnable in tight dh situations.
So “the other half” was pouring hydrogen peroxide on the back of my leg from a pedal stabbing incident at Windrock when she looked at me and said “can’t you ever not get hurt?”
I don’t know about you guys…but I thought it was hilarious. There is some truth to her statement, at least in her eyes. I do come home with at least something almost every other ride due to pushing something past its limit or from a freak incident.
Thanks to the guys over on the Turner board of MTBR…We have a great time line of the events that surround Turner Bikes. I have been a huge fan of Dave’s bikes over the years (even owned one and will own more in the future), so I find this story very interesting.
We also included some pictures of old and new Turner bikes in the gallery below…
A fellow ride on our local blog (Cresdawg) linked up some great articles on the roots of mountain biking, so I thought I’d share them with you guys. They really are great reads, and it is always fun to look back on how it used to be. Most of these pictures are before my time, so it makes it even more interesting in my opinion.
Well, I did today. I headed up to Rich Mountain (which is a killer of a ride anyway) with some friends today, and I just could not control my heart rate. It was peaking over and over again on stuff that should have been nothing! I had to cut the ride short and head back to the car which was a really long, steep climb and a long downhill away.
Over time, I have come across several blogs that I read on a regular basis. As I find more, I will add their links to the list on the left side of my blog.
We are entering a new area in mountain biking, and things are changing swiftly. The 5″ bike market is taking the industry by storm, and riders who thought they would never be on that much travel are now making the switch.
Do you remember the feeling you had when you rode your first “real” mountain bike? I remember it vividly. First, the bike was a Raleigh M80.