Weekend off

Saturday was my first easy day in quite some time. I did an easy ride from my apartment in Mechanicsburg to Shippensburg. Then I did a TT on the South Mountain Hill Climb course. It took 1 min longer than when I did it with the group but I was 30 watts stronger than after having done a 40k in the morning. Then I rode back to Mechanicsburg with the wind at my back the whole way:). It was a nice easy 82 miles with 7 tough miles right in the middle.

Sunday I went to Rocky Ridge County Park near York, PA for a Trek bike demo. Now I wouldn't dare buy a Trek since our wonderful bike shop sponsor (Pittsburgh Pro Bikes) sells Cannondale, Specialized, Giant, Seven, Independent Fabrications and Delta 7. So, you may ask, what was my reason for being there? I wanted to test some new full suspension designs and finally try some big wheels. First I rode the GF Superfly and I got to see what all of the fuss about 29 inch wheels is all about. It just seemed to roll over roots, rocks, or anything else that may get in my way. Coming from me that is a major revelation since I'm hardly what you would call a good mt. biker. Next I rode another GF 29er but this time it was a full suspension model. In my opinion it was complete overkill. It was a nice bike but felt kind of like riding a down hill bike on a cross country corse. Between the big wheels and the 4 inches of rear travel it was just too much. Finally, my last ride of the day was on a Trek TopFuel 9.8. The Trek rep had told me that it was the bike that he thought I would appreciate the most coming from a road background and was he ever right. It was really a rocket ship. It felt like riding a road bike over double track and then made rocks and roots disappear while staying grounded enough to allow me to continue pedaling at full speed while never loosing traction. One of their big selling points for this bike was something called BB90. It's sort of like a copy cat of Cannondale's BB30 design but without all of the benefits. It does narrow the Q-factor but doesn't enlarge the spindle size to stiffen things up. The narrow Q-factor felt really good on a MTB and I can't wait to try a Cannondale with a BB30 crank. Now I just need to try and decide if I want a new Scalpel or F29er 1. Decisions, decisions............life can be so difficult.

Sorry that there aren't any pics from this weekend but my camera battery was dead and I didn't find out until I was already on my ride Saturday.

Also one last thing. One of the largest dfferences I noticed with all of the MTBs today was that the forks were so much less stiff than the Lefty. Since Cannondale was my first and only "real" MTB I had never experienced this before but the forks on the Trek and GFs felt like they wanted to wash out on every corner, thankfully it never happened but a bad sensation all the same.