falling off bikes since 1975

“What’s that pile of crap?”

Not normally the kind of response I expect from the wife when I get home from a ride on a new bike. Even in the dark she was obviously unimpressed by the 29er I’d been riding for the evening.

Still, maybe she had a valid point. It had been stupendously dull to ride on almost two hours of sweet singletrack with some excellent riding friends.

I was prepared to eat humble pie about the whole 29er experience. Even though I had been warned I could leave it at home. And uneaten it remains. The whole bike was a disappointment from the off. I had hoped it would be like the Pompino, a bike I really really wanted to dislike, but loved as soon as I threw a leg over it, and loved even more once I took it off-road. Sadly this beast had few redeeming features.

Where I would have been whooping along on my normal sized singlespeed, the ride had been like going to a rock concert by your favourite band during a head cold. And with cotton wool in your ears. Muffled. Dull.

I could put this down to being used to whippy steel singlespeeds and this being an aluminium frame, but I loved the stiff as a stiff thing beat your back to buggery feel of the Cannondale F400 last time I threw a leg over one. Nope, I can’t blame the aluminium frame. And equipped as it was with a fair package of components with no obvious faults or contribution to it’s general lack of oomph I can only really blame the wheels.

For starters I have issues with the bike geometry and design, aesthetically and practically.

Let’s start at the pathetically short head tube, supposed to withstand the leverage of those longer forks. Silly thing is that it could be made longer, without raising the bar height by:

a) losing 1″ of useless spacers,

b) swapping the 1″ risers for flat bars. Fashion still wins out over function it appears even in the corduroy and sandal wearing world of 29ers,

c) all of the above.

“Ha Ha!”, exclaim the 29er advocates, “it needs a short headtube to keep the standover height”. Excuse me? None of my other 17.5″ bikes need a short headtube to give me a decent standover height. It’s the oversize wheels causing the problem, not the headtube, so if standover height is an issue, it should be tackled at source, by ditching the oversize wheels, not by designing a frame that’s going to have warranty issues. And even if the designers had put a taller headtube on there the standover could be restored to the same, slightly too tall, position it is now by shortening the seattube centre-to-centre distance. It’s already 2″ longer centre-to-centre than my medium Turner Five Spot, so don’t tell me that it isn’t possible.

On the trails I was underwhelmed.

What a cramped cockpit it has.

This is supposed to be a long 29er. It felt cramped. In a moment of anal-retention I got out the tape measure this morning and quickly measuring the distance from tip of saddle to steerer tube and I confirmed that it was an inch shorter than my Five Spot, and two inches shorter than my singlespeed. And then it had a shorter stem than either of them, reducing the reach even further. I could move the saddle back on the rails, but then I’d be too far back in relation to the pedals.

Still, this has enabled the designers to give it a short wheelbase. It has shorter chainstays and wheelbase than my wife’s Spot singlespeed, and comes up with the same length chainstays as mine.

Even with this short wheelbase, upright position, short stem, and wide bars I did a lot of ploughing over stuff. It’s a good job 29er wheels do roll over things, because I had to. It’s steering was on the ponderous side of slow. There are those that say they steer more nimbly than riders of 26″ wheels expect. Apparently I have higher expectations than most.

It felt like the entire ride was ever so slightly uphill. On sections where I’d normally be spinning my singlespeed along in a frenzy overcoming momentum was the issue I think.

As for the much vaunted larger contact patch I can’t say I noticed any extra grip over those on plain vanilla 26 inch wheel singlespeeds. I did notice extra flotation, but that could simply have been down to the wider tyres. If anything the tyres were it’s one saving grace. Almost. Normally I love Bontrager Jones XC. I run 35mm versions on the Pompino, and somehow my wife has ended up with my 1.9″ versions on her Turner. Somehow she always ends up with my new tyres on her bikes. Don’t know how it happens, but it does. But on this bike they held mud. More mud than they would on a regular 26er.

The big rear wheel did a good job of dulling any sensation of what the rear wheel was doing. Too good. I can get a similar level of comfort on my wifes singlespeed - she runs a longer wheelbase than me on an identical frame- but at least her bike still has some whip to it. 24 hour solo racers with a penchant for dull bikes that they can ride in a stupour at 3 o’clock in the morning without it throwing them off might like this feeling.

Oh, 24 hour solo racers, that’s one of my niches. So will I be taking it to Mountain Mayhem? Get Real! I prefer a bike that keeps me on my toes, even if I have suffered broken fingers at 3 o’clock in the morning through a momentary lapse of concentration. And on those occasions when I might want something to dull the pain give me a well set-up short travel full-suspension bike any day. At least they don’t feel like you’re riding permanently uphill! 22 hours in the last thing you want as your legs are dying is a bike that already felt a drag to ride when you were just two hours into the race.

So, lets scratch the 24 hour race idea.

Lets summarize by comparing it to my favourite 24 hour race singlespeed, Kirsty’s Spot

The chainstays are identical lengths.

The Spot has a 1/2″ longer wheelbase.

The Spot feels whippy, the 29er feels dead.

The Spot steers, the 29er barges.

The Spot cockpit is bang on, the 29er is cramped.

The Spot can be whipped up to speed, the 29er feels like it’s being ridden permanently uphill.

I’m going to persist because there has to be something to this 29er idea, even for people like me who aren’t 6 foot 4 giants, but aren’t eeny weeny midgets either. I don’t hold out much hope of a Road to Damascus conversion though.

The best thing I can find to say about it is that at least it’s not purple. My wife may have been too kind.