themonkeysdidit

A leisurely start time today as both Warren and I wanted to catch the end of the Grand Prix before heading out to the trails. By the time we parked up it was probably gone 11 but this just meant the sun was out in all its glory and we had high hopes of dry and dusty trails.

We started out blasting down BKB and Reservoir Dogs. This is where our hopes and dreams of dust were dashed; anywhere under the tree canopy was littered with surprisingly deep puddles, ready to catch you out if you weren’t careful. After we were spat out back on to the road we began the climb up to the start of Christmas pudding. This was much drier (once you got past the first section) and by now we were flowing nicely. After eating the spray off Warrens back wheel as he ploughed through a particularly murky puddle we were back in Peaslake and I was picking lumps of – what I hoped were – mud out of my teeth.

Here we climbed back up to the top of Holmbury Hill and munched on some home made (cheers Gem!) breakfast bars* while we decided where to head next. As we still had plenty of time we decided to head out and pick a trail we hadn’t ridden before. This turned out to be a great plan as we found a nice new single track route that obviously hadn’t been ridden for a while as there were several points along it where you had to really crouch down the side of the bike to avoid the low tree branches. Following on from this we found another new track (to us anyway) that flowed incredibly well and ended in a nice and fast downhill section. I’ll try and find the name of this one as it looked quite popular. These new routes were so good, we climbed back to the top of Holmbury and did them again, this time we weren’t so reserved as we knew where we going and what lay ahead so could blast along much more. At the start of the second the trail we came across a fellow group of riders about to embark on the same route. They looked far more competent than us than us so we let them go first, and then had no trouble keeping up with them!

After a final climb back to the top of Holmbury we took the new Doc trail and finished down Telegraph road. This almost went to plan! The first minor problem was landing a jump at speed. We were flying pretty quickly towards the jump and I made a fantastic take off. However, the landing was more than my bike was designed for and I not only bottomed out the rear (oo-err obviously) but also the front. The rear wasn’t too much of a surprise as I ride a hardtail and the tyre preasures were low for traction. However, the front had (admittedly only) 100mm of suspension to go through before the rimms come into play and I used it all up! The obvious answer to both these problems is a new bike! Hopefully this year I’ll make the leap to dual suspension.

The final problem was caused by the colossal, herculean strength in my legs**. Powering up the slight slope at the start of telegraph road I ripped the chain in two, sheering one of the rivets. Luckily, I had a chain tool so we were able to make a quick repair and we raced off down the final trail back to the car.

*We use a recipe from Nigella’s Express book which are really tasty and give you the required energy kick, despite not being swimming in golden syrup.

**Obviously!

Moosecycles demo day

Last Sunday was the date for Moosecycles Spring demo day, and with it, the opportunity to test some more bikes to help decide which full suspension bike to plump for – more on this in a future post.

Rather than review each one in turn (and face the backlash that caused last time!) I’ll just give my impressions of the three I tried. First up, some crazy adjustable German monster!

Bionicon Supershuttle

Bionicon spershuttle

The Bionicon bikes have a unique feature. They are full suspension bikes with on the fly, adjustable geometry. A button on the handle bars allows air to flow from the front forks, to the rear shock and back again. Meaning you can lengthen the front forks to give the laid back geometry of a down hill bike or the more XC orientated short fork and steeper head angle.

The system actually worked surprisingly well but to be honest, it was just too much bike for what I was after. Pedalling up both road and fire road made this very clear. The bike was heavy and just felt too big and burly for what I want. In the words of some other review I read somewhere, it was more “whallop it” than “whippet”! It was a blast on the down hill though, although (for my skill) it needed to be the all out steep downhill, not the tight and twisty single track we have in abundance here.

Marin Mountvision 5.8

Marin Mountvision

I’ve always been undecided about the look of these – but that opinion was based on pictures alone. Seeing it in the flesh, the big quad suspension lump in the middle of the frame actually looks gnarly and you can convince yourself all those extra pivots and linkages vastly improve the track of the swing arm

Swinging a leg over and the setup immediately felt right. My position in the cockpit, the reach to the handle bars – everything just felt spot on. Decent kit as well for the price; a bolt through Fox fork and XT parts throughout. Climbing back to the top of the hill on the fire roads was without issue, the pro-pedal working a treat. I’ve read other reviews that say this bike is heavy but I didn’t get that impression, although this was coming straight off the Bionicon which (I think) was much heavier.

Now came the fun part, blasting down BKB and Reservoir Dogs. It was, in a word freaking awesome*! The geometry was spot on for the single track and seemed to suit my style of riding (what ever that may be!) perfectly. All in all, this bike was a blast! Even the final descent down the waterfall section was taken with much more confidence than I usually have – pretty good for a bike I’d been on for less than 30 minutes I thought! I arrived back to the demo guys with a huge mud splattered grin, asking questions about price, availability etc… It was a dangerous ten minutes before the final test of the day!

Intense Tracer VP

Intense Tracer VP

Now this bad boy is at the high end of the price range (in fact, it’s higher than the high end of the pretend budget I don’t even have yet!). Still, it looks good and has a very similar VPP system to the excellent Blur LT so I had high hopes for it.

My legs were starting to give in a bit by now (yeah yeah, OK, I’m a wimp) but I got back to the top of BKB and blasted down. This bike was faster than the Marin! The only downside with it was they had the large frame in a single track set up, and the medium in a down hill set up. Typically, I need a medium frame and wanted to test the single track set up. Ah well, I took the large as the geometry would have been closer to what I’d ended up with if I won the lottery but it did impact the flickability of the bike through the twisty and technical single track.

Anyway, the final descent down the waterfalls was, to be honest, brown trousers time. And it was entirely the bike’s fault. It was the bike’s fault for being too damn good, being better the harder you rode it, and for providing you with way more confidence than was humanly safe! So I thundered down the waterfalls and almost hit a couple of trees at the bottom; I was going way too fast. Still, I think the sound of my heart trying to break through my chest and the “joker” grin I had (complete with mud flecks on the teeth) would give the impression of how good I thought this bike was.

Conclusion

The Bionicon wasn’t for me, wrong type of bike for right (well wrong really) type of rider. Now comes the tricky part, the Intense was supreme, but that does come at a price. The Marin was really good and costs a good deal less than the Intense so overall, this was probably the best of the day!

* OK that’s two but it was a bit like New York!