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I’m pretty new to mtbing, but I’ve been a roadie and a graveller for 15 years. For some reason, one of the best local mtbers has sort of taken me under his wing, which has pluses and minuses. The pluses are that I’ve learned a lot. The minuses are that I’ve crashed a lot. But I wasn’t crashing on the ride in question, back in May. I was riding pretty well. I hit a stream crossing pretty fast, one that had scared me before, and cleaned it fine. Stopping on the other side, I put a foot down, but missed the top of the stream bank where I was aiming for. That led me to fall into the stream, and I put my right hand out to catch myself, breaking one of the carpal bones in my hand and earning me two months off the mtb. I still remember laying in the stream thinking, “The water isn’t as cold as I expected.”
Another Nutmegger here. Pretty new to mtb riding, but long-time roadie and gravel grinder. Local rides for me include Waldo and Huntington.
A goal of mine, too. When I was a kid, I could ride a manual (when did they stop being wheelies?) for a hundred feet. Not so much any more. How did I forget?
We don’t have a lot of long trail climbs here, but plenty of shorter, technical ones. Looking at the front wheel works for me on long road climbs, but I find it’s a recipe for failure on our rooty, off-camber, and rocky trails. At least I have to look far enough up the trail to pick out a line that’s rideable at a climbing pace.
My wife calls me an elitist because I tend to sneer at technology I don’t use. I suppose she’s right – Otherwise I’d be riding a penny-farthing. On the flip side, a friend of mine with an e-road-bike says, “It’s just like riding a bike, but without the exercise.” So there’s that, which kind of galls me, but then again, he doesn’t have any pretensions of riding the way I try to. And then there are people like musikron above, who completely blow my snobbery away.
Guess e-bikes are like life – There isn’t just one way.
I thought about it, and ended up going with my LBS. The owner gave me a good deal on last year’s Specialized Fuse, and he gave it to me on a handshake because I wouldn’t have the money for a month and didn’t want to miss the deal. The LBS holds an important position in our local bike culture that no internet retailer could replace – It’s a little like walking into Cheers. Even if I’d had to pay more, I would have felt that it was worthwhile.
A 1985 Ross Mt. Hood. I still have it. In fact, I never rode it much and became a bit of a roadie. Last fall I decided to tag along with a friend on some trails and found out how much fun I was missing. Pretty soon it became obvious that my underdeveloped skills were in fact only part of the problem, so a month ago I upgraded to a Specialize Fuse Comp6 Fattie. I’ll never sell the Ross though. It was the first bike I ever bought new. My wife calls it “Rosebud”.
