if he wants to.
I’m not quite certain what (or if) I was thinking yesterday.
The bike docs at Two Wheel Drive had rung me up Tuesday afternoon to say my 1995 DBR Axis TT was out of headset surgery and doing nicely, but I couldn’t get down there to collect it before closing time.
TWD doesn’t open until 10 a.m., so I thought I’d go for a 45-minute trail run Wednesday morning before motoring down to fetch the bike. Sweat a little rather than a lot, don’t you know.
These things I did, then had a medium-heavy bite of lunch.
Sensible so far, yeah?
Don’t worry. It never lasts.
Weather conditions be damned, I just can’t not ride a new/recently repaired bike.
So I kitted up and rolled out to the Elena Gallegos for a short shakedown cruise that wound up being about 90 minutes.
It was toasty out there — just shy of 90 degrees — but bearable. And anyway, I barely noticed because I was having so much fun riding this 28-year-old mountain bike.
Don’t tell The Industry, but you can still mine a few giggles from a made-in-USA titanium MTB with a Tange steel fork, triple crank, eight-speed XT, V-brakes, flat bar, Grip Shift twisties, 26-inch wheels with 2.0 rubber, and a creaky old 1954 MeatSack® motor that couldn’t pass an emissions check in Mexico City no matter how much mordida you paid.
It’s frisky and maneuverable and weighs just under 24 pounds with a saddlebag holding two spare tubes, tire irons, and a minitool. The flat bar, V-brakes and plumpish tires let me roll over a few items I have to dodge on a drop-bar ’cross bike with cantis and 32mm knobbies. And the smaller wheels put me a little closer to the ground for purposes of falling off onto sharp rocks and spiky foliage.
I managed to keep the greasy side down yesterday through an abundance of caution and the avoidance of all truly technical sections, though I sampled a few rocky bits in the name of Science.
Mostly I was just noodling along, enjoying my little trip down Memory Lane, recalling the Good Old Days® when a rigid 26-incher with an eight-speed triple and 2.0 tires was as good as it got.
• Editor’s note: “Shakedown Street” is, of course, a tune and an album by the Grateful Dead, produced by Lowell “Little Feat” George. My favorite underground cartoonist — Gilbert Shelton (“Wonder Wart-Hog,” “The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers”) — did the album cover art. Last, but not least, a resounding “Damn The Man!” goes out to the Save the Elena Gallegos rebels, who gave a righteous beatdown to an ill-considered plan to install an unnecessary and unwanted “visitors center” — the thin edge of a development wedge — in our little piece of paradise. Don’t tell me this town ain’t got no heart.
Mad Blog Media 
I’m still riding a 2005 Stumpjumper with nice steep steering angles and slotcar handling. I don’t understand today’s mountain bikes that make a Harley Chopper look quick.
I imagine the titanium frame of the DBR takes a bit of the ouch out of the fact that it is a hardtail. I recall getting my fillings rattled back in Hawaii on a suspension-free Bridgestone MB-2 (I shoulda bought the MB-1 but as someone here often says, I’ve never been smart) when I was on rocky terrain. I eventually repurposed that bike to a commuter and got a Trek with at front boing boing suspension.
Speaking of bikes made out of atomic number 22, I put the 700-32 Panasonic Gravel King SS wheelset on the Litespeed Gravel for a road ride yesterday. It is quite a bit faster on pavement with those. And took it downhill on Sierra del Norte, which is a teeth-loosening ride on my CAAD5 or Six-Thirteen. It really did smooth out the bumpies.
It’s not what you ride but the smile at the end of the ride that counts. I like my vintage rides too and will enjoy them until they pull them from my cold dead hands; or maybe not; Perhaps I’ll arrange to be buried on one. “Dear Mr. Undertaker: We need one custom made casket to accommodate the deceased on his bicycle in the upright position. What? How much? Don’t worry about it. We’ll just dig hole out in the desert with a backhoe and plant him in that.”
Regarding newer bikes vs. classic bikes, there are distinct advantages to the new ones. I believe that acceptable (non-Missy Giove speed) downhill velocity is a bit more when on a modern MTB rig. I watched another Megavalanche video and could not imagine riding my old 26″ wheel MTB down the hill in twice the time. Forgive my French but: “No, no Andre’. We cannot take zee finnish line down yet. Zay old slow maan is steel up on zee coorse”.
I suppose if someone is doing the Downhill circuit, having those modern lax steering angles might make sense for a dedicated-purpose bike. I find that sort of one dimensional kamakazi riding not to my liking. Not to mention, 69 year old bones, even ones as dense as mine (my orthopedic surgeon said he had trouble putting a screw in my arm to reattach my biceps tendon), take longer to heal.
I tend to like twisty technical singletrack that goes up as well as down, such as La Tierra Trails. I could probably rent something new. But they look really long in the wheelbase and slack in the steerers, unlike that DBR or my Stumpjumper.
Face it, I’m just an old, “get off my lawn” sorta guy.
I’ve never been worth a damn on the downhills, no matter what I was riding. Maybe I’d get better on a full-suspension rig, but I doubt it. I either rode uninsured or with a bare-bones policy during my formative years as a mountain biker — which coincided with my early years as a poorly paid freelancer — and I just never got comfy with letting ’er rip.
Now I mostly ride the road, getting into the neighborhood dirt once or twice a week, and a modern mountain bike just seems like needless complication/serious overkill for the sort of terrain available to me right out my front door (I don’t drive to rides).
A cyclocross bike is fine for most of it — hell, I could ride a road bike on some of these trails (and have) — but a hardtail/rigid bike, whether 29er, 650b, or 26-inch, has some distinct advantages, mostly in the size/pressure of the tire I can run.
• Steelman Eurocross (700c): 33mm at 30/35 psi.
• Voodoo Nakisi (29er): 43mm @ 30/35 psi.
• DBR Axis TT (26-inch): 2.0-inch at 25/30 psi.
• Co-Motion Divide Rohloff (29er): 50mm at 25/30 psi.
• Jones Steel Diamond (29er): 2.4-inch at 15/20 psi.
The DBR Axis TT is a good compromise because it’s compliant enough on the singletrack without being squishy and unwieldy on the road. Some of these new rigs look like Honda dual-sport motorcycles and cost as much, too.
Finally … how many of these monster-rig dudes ride those bikes to the top of the hill before letting ’er rip? You gots to earn your turns.
“…how many of these monster-rig dudes ride those bikes to the top of the hill before letting ’er rip?”
Yeah. Seems to me that sort of defeats the purpose of….riding a bike?
Speaking of downhill. The Los Alamos ski joint on Pajarito Mountain runs these downhill events in the summer. You take the ski lift to the top and then bomb the descent. Friend of mine from work did that a couple times and then getting tired, rode his mountain bike down Camp May Road to town. That road has some pitches close to 20%. Of course he crashed on the road descent, not the mountain, breaking both arms.
Thanks, but if I want to end up in the hospital, I’ll do stupid things on my motorcycle.
I remember getting sucked into some junket to Vail Back in the Day®, when they started doing mountain-bikey stuff on the mountain during summertime.
Take the lift to the top with your bike and ride the bike back down? No thank you, please. It erased my only strength, and the part I enjoyed the most, too — climbing the damn hill on my bike.
On the road, I liked to let it rip on a fairly straight descent. Especially after my road bikes had disc brakes. On rough single track, the “fear” would have me apply the brakes, quit pedaling or both. Coming down Mule Mountain out of Bisbee on the disc Double Cross gave me confidence. But, brake fade worry on the rim brake Saga kept the average speed down. But, you guys know me; I love me some disc brakes.
I would proudly ride that DBR axis anywhere.
There are enough vision-limited curves and turns on the trails up here that you have to worry not only about yourself but about the blokes coming the other way. I was descending a section of La Tierra Trail at a good clip (for me) last week and had to quickly brake and go overland, as coming around a curve, there was a couple walking their dog up the ascent. I could tell they were not entirely amused, even though I gave them plenty of space and apologized for startling them.
But I guess I am of the O’Grady School of Mountain Biking: it’s not kosher unless you climb the damn hill, too, using the muscles God gave you.
I will never forget test riding new Reflex mountain bikes in the Utah Wasatch range when Easton thought they should be building bikes. More or less a flat lander, the first series of climbs about killed my crew with some stopping to re-visit their breakfast. I thought I was bad ass when we reached the summit for the day. But the descent reduced me to a candy ass as I dismounted numerous times. But unlike one dude-I didn’t visit the emergency room in Park City either. Although it rode and handled nicely, I sold my personal Reflex before long since any bike glued together did/does scare the hell out of me.
I’ve always been a timid mountain biker. My first races were aboard rigid bikes on hellishly rocky courses in New Mexico and Colorado, and every obstacle looked like it hated me and wanted to hurt me. I could do OK going up, sometimes, but whatever advantage I gained on the climb, if any, I lost on the descents.
Cyclocross didn’t make me a better mountain biker, either. It just taught me how to get off the bike fast when need be and leg it for a while.
Now that I’m a feeble old fart I just noodle around on whatever and try not to fall down. Like Khal I keep an eye peeled for other trail users, who are often self-deafening with earbuds and accompanied by unleashed dogs and/or children. Got to watch for them buzzworms too. I saw a three-foot gopher snake over by the Menaul trailhead yesterday and another spectator at this event told me he’d seen three rattlers in the vicinity recently.
Surely does make those blind corners interesting. …
You mean you didn’t have Flex Tape with you to wrap those lugs when they got loosened up? I was (am) leery enough about the Vitus, Alan, Guerciotti aluminum bonded lug road frames, that considering an MTB frame wasn’t something I wanted to do. Although, now that I think about it, I have a buddy who still has his bonded carbon Cadex frame MTB.
Regarding descents, it was always fun when you knew you were going down a slope that exceeded the braking adhesion of your tires (didn’t matter whether it was cantis, v-brakes, discs or frame pumps through the spokes). You hoped that you would have enough slope runout at the bottom while at the same time you considered baling before things got real bad. Afterward, when all was upright and uninjured, you knew that you were part cat (9 lives) and your sphincter would be 3 sizes smaller.
Shawn I’m sorry but I can’t remember if sphincter sizing is metric, BSA or Standard? And is there a Park tool to help return it back to factory original specs? I got enough problems on the old thundermug as it is.
French after a puckering descent of course. Oui! Oui!
Actually, for a truly horrific descent butthole sizing is times seven standard, because the old browneye tightens up to a point at which only a dog can hear you fart.
It got so tight on the Forest Service road descent out of Paradise, Arizona that I could have pinch cut a railroad spike.
Is there one of those Park Tools for measuring sphincter rebound after one of those puckering descents?
Yikes!