Day off, time to ride!

I was lucky enough to have a day off today. So what did I do? I went for a ride. I gathered up a few friends to hit some local trails with me. One of my buddies that went was Ben C. It’s been 5 years since he last rode a mountain bike, and more like 7 years since he was Aliso Woods.

It was a beautiful sunny So-Cal morning. Temps hovered around 70-75 degrees absolutely beautiful. Brought out the Vholdr and my handy dandy video cam to capture some footage of us riding. Check it out below.

I almost forgot to mention that I rode the KHS Flagstaff, a full suspension 29er. I had never ridden a 29er FS before, but since my fork blew up on my regular bike, Moe was nice enough to let me use the 29er. I have to tell you, I didn’t have that much of a great experience with it. I’m sure I’m just used to my own bike and the way I have it set up was far from how the KHS Flagstaff was configured.

I had heard about how people say that a XC FS 29er with 3 inches of travel is like having a 5 inch travel mountain bike. These guys believe that the 29er wheels compensate for the extra 2 inches of suspension travel. Well let me tell you something, that’s a whole bunch of horse pockey to me! There’s no way that this bike felt like my AM bike that has 5″ of travel. In fact, going down some of the technical stuff wasn’t better on the 29er than it was on my 26er. If anything, I felt slower on the 29er. However, on the flats, I was rolling deep! That thing flew, its very smooth and fast.

I know that this being my first ride on a full suspension 29er and I do plan on giving it more time to get used to the feel of it all. I also plan on swapping the stems to what I like and see if all that I mentioned above can be dispelled by making a few adjustments on this bike.