I took the bike out on the trails today, and really enjoyed it. I ride bikes a lot, but in the last over 10 years, it’s been almost entirely around town, to the pool, to Baseball, to get groceries, ice cream, or your friends homes. Often times with a trailer or tagalong.
I took the bike out just with flat petals, because it’s been a long time since I’ve used my speed place frogs on a bike on terrain. I figured it was best to just take it slow and easy, especially since it was only the second time that my oldest child has been out on trails.
I’ve never had a bike with a dropper post, so that was interesting, and I definitely see the benefit of it. It worked great, though it did take a little bit of for thought in some cases to lower it and then to raise it back up.
I also have never had a 1x drivetrain before. I can definitely see the benefit of it for a mountain bike. One is set up well, so that you can switch through multiple years with one flick of a finger, and get some decent range pretty quickly. Later in the day, I drove my around town trek, verve, and I will say that having the high low range of a two speed front gear is beneficial in many ways, and I didn’t miss it in a few spots on the trail, where there were some smooth straight, runs where getting speed up could’ve been facilitated with a single gear change. All the same, I really do like the simplicity and the reduction of thought necessary with a drivetrain like this.
The bike road great, I had pumped up the shock, and it felt really good over different types of obstacles. I do think that the slacker set up of this bike let me shift my weight a bit differently than my other one, which helped to gain traction in some steep terrain. While I’ve read that a slacker geometry, makes it less good in climbing, on the trails around me, the clowns are pretty short, and the way that weight was distributed seemed to benefit compared to what I remember on some of the steep sections.
Now I really do have to figure out what to use to loop the chain and drivetrain. The dirt I’ll show on the chain was what was amassed in a little over an hour worth of riding. Some trails I go on will just cook everything in a fine red or brown dirt but this one was not so bad.
