Today, my house smells of sheep ****

Actually, it's only the porch and a good thing it is too.

After wibbling for a long time, I've finally bitten the bullet and bought
a new bike. A Giant Trace 2 MTB to be exact. One of those new-fangled
bouncy bikes with pivots everywhere.

So yesterday I got to finally take it out for a spin. I didn't have time
to go anywhere were there was serious off road but I hacked round the
local riverpaths, bridleways and woodlands. Nothing that couldn't have
been ridden on a Dawes Galaxy, but it wouldn't have been as fast or
as fun.

It's weird having full sus with over 4" of travel - as an experiment I
tried just riding into stuff, rather than trying to be subtle and riding
over it. The bike just shrugs a bit and then carries on. The feeling of
being stuck to the ground when going fast on singletrack is just amazing
as well: combine that with hydralic disks and the grin factor was up to 11.

Technology has certainly moved on since I bought my last MTB (only four
years ago). Now something with this much travel is regarded as a cross
country bike and actually weighs less than my commuting bike (a Dawes
Super Galaxy with flat bars + hub dynamo). And not in a on the scales way,
but in a heft it round and it's noticably lighter sort of a way.

I've also experimented on the pedal front and fitted some platform clipless
pedals from Merida (looks very like the Shimano M545). I had atacs on the last
bike but swapped them for flats after a while - I found that I didn't like being
clipped in for technical bits and also sometimes found getting started on very
steep stuff hard when I missed the pedal clip in. So far the platform ones
seem a good compromise.

Hopefully later this week I'll get to go up to the North York Moors and
ride it properly

Arthur

--
Arthur Clune

in message ,
') wrote:


Actually, it's only the porch and a good thing it is too.

After wibbling for a long time, I've finally bitten the bullet and
bought a new bike. A Giant Trace 2 MTB to be exact. One of those
new-fangled bouncy bikes with pivots everywhere.

So yesterday I got to finally take it out for a spin. I didn't have
time to go anywhere were there was serious off road but I hacked round
the local riverpaths, bridleways and woodlands. Nothing that couldn't
have been ridden on a Dawes Galaxy, but it wouldn't have been as fast
or as fun.

It's weird having full sus with over 4" of travel - as an experiment I
tried just riding into stuff, rather than trying to be subtle and
riding over it. The bike just shrugs a bit and then carries on. The
feeling of being stuck to the ground when going fast on singletrack is
just amazing as well: combine that with hydralic disks and the grin
factor was up to 11.

Isn't it completely amazing fun? I got into mountain biking in the 1980s
and bought myself something reasonable for the time - a gaspipe framed
rigid with BioPace[1] transmission and canti brakes. And I then
proceeded to ride that for fifteen years, largely because it was still
fun and coped all right with everything I tried it on (but in the
cyclocross sort of way that if you can't ride you carry). And I've been
to far more outrageous places on that bike than I have on my new one,
but... two years ago ago I got my self my first bike with /any/
suspension, a Cannondale Jekyll, and the difference was just astounding.

URL:http://www.jasmine.org.uk:80/dogfood/story/article_10.html

I can ride it places where I simply don't have the skill to ride - the
bike just copes. Indeed, with very few exceptions the only places I
can't ride it are the places where I bottle out - it's not a limitation
of what the bike can do, or even a limitation of what I can actually do
on the bike if I get the nerve up. If I do get my courage together and
roll it gently over the edge, and remember not to brake too much, the
bike will just cope and I'll get to the bottom safely.

It's simply amazing what a modern full suspension bike can do - and it's
amazing fun. They may be horrifically expensive but they're worth every
penny.

I've done a ride around the carpark on a Trance. Very nice. Not nice
enough to tempt me away from my Cannondale, but if I didn't have the
Cannondale I /would/ be tempted.

Hopefully later this week I'll get to go up to the North York Moors and
ride it properly

Enjoy!

--
(Simon Brooke) http://www.jasmine.org.uk/~simon/

;; killing [afghan|iraqi] civilians is not 'justice'

wrote:
Actually, it's only the porch and a good thing it is too.

After wibbling for a long time, I've finally bitten the bullet and
bought a new bike. A Giant Trace 2 MTB to be exact. One of those
new-fangled bouncy bikes with pivots everywhere.


I'm heading in the other direction. Through sheer laziness I ended up
taking my old hardtail up to the Lakes recently rather than my normal FS
bike. It was a refreshing revelation riding trails I know well and has
reawakened a love of hardtails in me.

Suddenly I am riding over things, rather than through them and let the
suspension take care of it, and the bike is so light and flickable for
threading through a narrow singletrack. I was actually riding a lot of
stuff I thought would be too rough without suspension and with a
lightweight bike it was so much easier to lift the wheels over obstacles
and to lift the bike over styles etc.

I was thinking of getting myself a new Santa Cruz Nomad but now thoughts
are turning to a nice Moots YBB instead


--
Tony

"I did make a mistake once - I thought I'd made a mistake but I hadn't"
Anon

Simon Brooke wrote:


URL:http://www.jasmine.org.uk:80/dogfood/story/article_10.html

I'm getting timeouts on that.


I've done a ride around the carpark on a Trance. Very nice. Not nice
enough to tempt me away from my Cannondale, but if I didn't have the
Cannondale I /would/ be tempted.

Coming from a road viewpoint, it's quite amazing value for money.

--
Arthur Clune

Tony Raven wrote:

Suddenly I am riding over things, rather than through them and let the

I guess sometimes a change is good. For me the difference between my old
Trek hardtail and this is eye opening.

--
Arthur Clune

in message ,
') wrote:

Simon Brooke wrote:


URL:http://www.jasmine.org.uk:80/dogfood/story/article_10.html

I'm getting timeouts on that.

Oh, %$^^&. I've been fighting with routers and firewalls all weekend, I
finally thought I'd got it sorted. Could you please very kindly let me
know

(i) what IP address www.jasmine.org.uk resolves to where you are?
(ii) whether you're still having trouble with it?
(iii) what happens if you try
URL:http://217.34.156.188/dogfood/story/article_10.html?

I /hope/ you've just got a stale DNS cache, in which case it will come
right in a couple of days.

--
(Simon Brooke) http://www.jasmine.org.uk/~simon/

Hobbit ringleader gives Sauron One in the Eye.

in message , Tony Raven
') wrote:

I'm heading in the other direction. Through sheer laziness I ended up
taking my old hardtail up to the Lakes recently rather than my normal
FS
bike. It was a refreshing revelation riding trails I know well and has
reawakened a love of hardtails in me.

I was thinking of getting myself a new Santa Cruz Nomad but now
thoughts are turning to a nice Moots YBB instead

There's a /huge/ difference between 180mm suspension travel and none. For
the kind of riding I do, 100mm is fine - I've no desire to get one of
the newer, longer travel bikes. Indeed, less than 100mm would probably
be fine; 80mm might be perfect if there was a weight benefit (e.g. a
Scalpel).

--
(Simon Brooke) http://www.jasmine.org.uk/~simon/

pSchroedinger's cat is blinkstrongNOT/strong/blink dead./p

Simon Brooke wrote:
in message ,
') wrote:


Simon Brooke wrote:


URL:http://www.jasmine.org.uk:80/dogfood/story/article_10.html

I'm getting timeouts on that.

MeToo.

(i) what IP address www.jasmine.org.uk resolves to where you are?

$ nslookup www.jasmine.org.uk
[chop]

Non-authoritative answer:
www.jasmine.org.uk canonical name = parkeri.jasmine.org.uk.
Name: parkeri.jasmine.org.uk
Address: 62.6.156.78

OTOH if I try from the webserver I get:


$ nslookup www.jasmine.org.uk
[chop]

Non-authoritative answer:
Name: parkeri.jasmine.org.uk
Address: 217.34.156.188
Aliases: www.jasmine.org.uk

- and from there it works.

I /hope/ you've just got a stale DNS cache, in which case it will come
right in a couple of days.

Looks a lot like it.

Wait a minute, no, it's worse than that. Your definitive nameservers
(as listed in your whois) disagree on that IP. So it's not anyone's
cache that's stale.

--
Nick Kew

Simon Brooke wrote in
Oh, %$^^&. I've been fighting with routers and firewalls all weekend,
I finally thought I'd got it sorted. Could you please very kindly let
me know

(i) what IP address www.jasmine.org.uk resolves to where you are?

[alexp@speedy alexp]$ ping www.jasmine.org.uk
PING parkeri.jasmine.org.uk (62.6.156.78) 56(84) bytes of data.

--- parkeri.jasmine.org.uk ping statistics ---
11 packets transmitted, 0 received, 100% packet loss, time 9998ms

(ii) whether you're still having trouble with it?

Site times out.

(iii) what happens if you try
URL:http://217.34.156.188/dogfood/story/article_10.html?

Works fine.


--
Regards
Alex
The email address above is a spamtrap.
alex@ the same domain will reach me

Simon Brooke wrote:



There's a /huge/ difference between 180mm suspension travel and none. For
the kind of riding I do, 100mm is fine - I've no desire to get one of
the newer, longer travel bikes. Indeed, less than 100mm would probably
be fine; 80mm might be perfect if there was a weight benefit (e.g. a
Scalpel).


I currently have a Heckler so a tad over 100mm but I really surprised
myself taking an 80mm front, 0mm rear bike over some technical trails
for the first time in a long time.

The Nomad will set up for 130mm travel which is more than enough for my
riding.

--
Tony

"I did make a mistake once - I thought I'd made a mistake but I hadn't"
Anon