Rigid Update
Last night was the first full run I had with my Rigid bike. A few days ago I was only able to take it out for a few miles, but last night we did about 11miles of riding at the Fullerton Loop.
Going into this rigid conversion, I honestly thought I’d get beat up like crazy. To my surprise, my ride was rather pleasant. Sure its stiffer than having a suspension fork, but I quickly learned that if I were to soften my grip on the bars and put some weight towards the back, the jarring effect weren’t so bad.
RL I’m just curious… on a rigid, could you take those downhills the same speed as you normally do? It seems like with a more stiff bike that you would have to slow down more or break your face on the handlebars.
Great question. Going down on Nora Kuttner (the long hill that ends at Euclid) I was fast, but not as fast. Reason being, it was dark and my lights aren’t that great. But for the most part I was riding at the same speed as I did with a suspension fork. There were some parts I wanted to go as fast as I could to see how well it handled the trail without crashing.
Had you never ridden a fully-rigid mountain before? You dang whippersnappers!
Back in the day I used to have a few of them back in the 80’s and 90’s as a young buck, a Mongoose and Schwinn.