Mountain Biking - Ry, Miller, others?

[Pennzoil GT-R]

I wish there was anything worth riding here. Its too hot and too steep, any decent trail has steps every 100m or so.

Clips make a huge difference once you get used to them, you get so much more power when you learn to pull as well as push. I have numerous scars down the back of my leg where ive come unclipped on a rock or a stump.

[thewalrus]

[millertime]

[thewalrus]

[ryguy79]

I fell about 50 ft down a steep slope today, lost balance during a techy climb and fell the downhill way, unclipped in time, but tumbled til I hit a log and have some great bruises. If the log hadn't stopped me I'd have gone into a creek raging at full spring runnoff.

But I kept riding, had a wonderful 5 hours in the saddle, got up to around 10,000 feet where it was getting a bit chilly.

[ryguy79]

Some of the fun stuff that made it worthwhile.

https://vimeo.com/128828171

[thewalrus]

[ryguy79]

Longer one, lower down on the same trail system.

https://vimeo.com/128839864

[ryguy79]

[thewalrus]

[thewalrus]

Three years ago I didn't even have A bike. Insane. And addicting.

[thewalrus]

One other observations:

Road Bike snobs are the worst.

Shaughnessy and I went into one store looking for mountain bikes a couple weeks back. They only had road bikes but we figured we'd browse anyway. Some really high end Italian stuff. Colnagos, Pinarellos, etc. A couple boutique Canadian brands as well, whose names I forget.

Guy comes up to us and asks what we ride... a Trek and a Specialized. His nose literally raises a few mm. "Well, these bikes are the ones that cyclists use on the Tour de France and the Giro D'Italia. They are the Ferraris of Road Bikes. Please enjoy browsing." Then he walked off quickly.

Like WTF?!

[Arthur Dent]

The best are the over weight ones (bike owners). They spent metric tons of dollars to save a few grams on a pedal assembly and the like but could lose 20lbs for free by putting down their fancy sugar laden Starbucks coffee.

But honestly snobs in any interest are bad. ie - audio fans with their gold tipped Monster cables and such.


I'd love a nice hybrid bike for commuting but a disposable Kijiji sourced mountain bike is the best solution I've found so far. I usually get a couple thousand kms out of each for $50 or so. Makes for some interesting mechanical failures though. Had a steering shalf break on me once. Back brakes down the west side hill once (front still ok so wasn't too bad makes you think for sure). Etc.

[ryguy79]

[ryguy79]

[ryguy79]

Truly the best non weight weenie upgrade for anyone that likes to have fun downhill, even on a hardtail.

[Pennzoil GT-R]

[1300zuk]

I kind of prefer road over mountain, but I can't stand the amount of douches and bags of dicks on road bikes in Michigan. In Georgia there were people my age riding road, and riding road solo gets slow and not so fun.

So I guess I need to give mountain biking a try again.

[thewalrus]

[ryguy79]