I have to buy bikes like this as well. Rarely is my size on the showroom floor let alone at a demo. I've bought my last 6 mountain bikes without ever riding them. My last bike was not a great forward move, but it was different and I could notice and appreciate some features which I liked (like a steeper ST than the previous bike). I will still keep the bike for a season/year, but if I am really happy I'll keep the bike for at least 2, maybe 3, years.
I'd love to test bikes from Pole, geometron, Gorilla Gravity, Mondraker, Yeti, etc. but I can't. So I have to decide what aspect of my current bike I want to change and buy the new bike based on that. For example, I have always wanted steeper seat tubes. I build myself a cross bike in 2012 with a 74 degree seat tube angle which I thought was steep at the time, turns out it's not. Now that I am on a bike with close to a 76 degree effective I want to try steeper, so my next bike will have to have that.
March 21, 2019, 2:55 p.m. - cyclotoine
I have to buy bikes like this as well. Rarely is my size on the showroom floor let alone at a demo. I've bought my last 6 mountain bikes without ever riding them. My last bike was not a great forward move, but it was different and I could notice and appreciate some features which I liked (like a steeper ST than the previous bike). I will still keep the bike for a season/year, but if I am really happy I'll keep the bike for at least 2, maybe 3, years. I'd love to test bikes from Pole, geometron, Gorilla Gravity, Mondraker, Yeti, etc. but I can't. So I have to decide what aspect of my current bike I want to change and buy the new bike based on that. For example, I have always wanted steeper seat tubes. I build myself a cross bike in 2012 with a 74 degree seat tube angle which I thought was steep at the time, turns out it's not. Now that I am on a bike with close to a 76 degree effective I want to try steeper, so my next bike will have to have that.