Posted by: Vandy
Posted by: DemonMike
Did you get evacuated? I know of people who have in that region. I have only been here for a year next month. Have yet to ride, been over a year for me now.
Yeah, family was out. I had to stick around for work, finally got to head down to the Fraser Valley the past couple days. I hope you're doing well because I see the Sparks fire is creeping in on Barriere.
...
On to the bike!
I spent a few hours at Thornhill doing laps for a bit of a proper shakedown on the flowy jump lines. I wanted a bike to hopefully suit the smoother faster trails you tend to find in the Kamloops area, and I think this will do nicely.
Still no weight. Next time I'm in Kamloops I'll see if some bike shop will let me break their scale.
Pros:
- Climbs way better than I imagined it would. For what it's worth, I'm definitely of the seated and spinning school than the stand and mash. The front stays planted with minimal hunching over the bar. I actually had to consciously think about not leaning forward so much because its a bit of an automatic response. The rear suspension is reasonably calm, able to maintain traction, and responsive to unweighting to hop the rear wheel over things. It motored over some big nasty roots that I thought I would stall out on without much fuss. Basically I felt like I could relax more when climbing and chug my way up.
- Anti-squat feels quite balanced. I was kinda worried about "the numbers," but as usual, it's more than just the numbers. I didn't feel like my feet were getting excessively jostled despite me riding in my Chuck Taylors... I was stopping to check out the jumps before hitting them the first time like a good boy, and I felt there was a good amount of support when you hammer out a few pedal strokes to get up to speed. No excessive mush or bobbing to be had.
- Good support to push against in corners and off the lips of jumps.
- I think its the extra stack, but I didn't find the long chainstays made it difficult to get on the back wheel.
- Rear traction feels great. I didn't feel the back end skipping around in turns or under braking. Most of the trails back home were torched in the fire but there are a lot more fast flat corners I'll be checking out whenever we get back in there.
- Confidence-inspiring. From time to tim I think we can all end up fighting the "lean back!" lizard brain response. I felt like I could really ride the front wheel and hit the turns pretty damn hard. Dare I say I slapped a couple berms.
- This bike wants to go FAST.
Cons:
- Takes a fair bit of effort if you want to kick the back end loose. It will do it, you just gotta really mean it. This bike is much more about business than goofin'.
- I can see the desire for speed writing cheques that the amount of suspension can't quite cash if you aren't paying attention in the rough.
- Frame protection was peeling off out of the box. Privateer had another set in the mail before they even replied to my inquiry, so we'll see if I can fix it up.
- I noticed a bit of chain noise as well. I think this has more to do with the fact the clutch on my GX derailleur is punched than anything inherent in the frame design. The actual coverage of the included chainstay/seatstay protection seems good, although it could probably be thicker material.
Future changes? I want to move away from the disposable SRAM clutches and everyone talks about 12-spd Shimano like it's the second coming of the baby Jesus. Unfortunately I doubt I can find a microspline freehub for my SRAM-branded hubs. I'm probably going to drop the coin on a new wheelset next year and move to microspline so I can throw an SLX 12-speed drivetrain at it.
I probably could have gone for a more conventional brand, but I wanted Alloy, and I didn't feel like spending $6,000+ to get the good suspension bits on a new bike. It's still the honeymoon phase, but I think I got what I was looking for. Also I now have so many pirate-themed options for naming my bike, possibly the best part.
No evacuation notice for us. We are 20+KM east of the town. And I thought I recognized that road. Used to live minutes away from Thornhill. Some of my buddies build several of the trails there.
