My mountain biking day…

Began with breakfast, the most important meal of the day blah, blah, blah (fast forwarding) so I left the car at the trailhead and headed off for a nice ride around the Leith Hill area. Luckily it had rained several hours in advance of when the weather man promised, that meant my dry weather Michelin tires were sliding everywhere on the roots resulting in several emergency dismounts but it was still a nice day.

Everyone should know the Giant Trance is the best bike in the world (up for debate if you really want to) so I won’t mention how it rocketed up the climbs, how responsive the suspension is and how it has captured the ability to be a fun a lively bike to ride just like the Giant Anthem is known for but with more travel and more friendly geometry. I will however mention that I think the steering could be improved with a shorter stem and setback seat post and that a set of tires like Hutchinson Toro’s would vastly improve wet weather performance and grip.

I passed the same spot where I took the last set of Trance photos on Flickr overlooking the valley leading up to the Leith Hill Tower only to find that several logging tractors had taken a lot of the trees a long side the track down, I would have taken some more photos there but someone else had the camera. About half way through the ride I stopped off at the tower for tea and cake only to find when I sat down that I was surrounded by Specialized bikes, of about 12 riders 10 of them were riding Spesh's with only two riding a Turner and Kona. I’ve got nothing against the people who ride Spesh bikes but it’s always slightly disturbing to see such a high demographic riding them, lets have some variety please.
And on that note lets take a moment to admire these two Ti bikes that arrived after the Spesh fleet had left, that’s 4 bikes in a day with the Charge Spoon saddles including mine so apparently its reputation as one of the best saddles is spreading…

It’s always good to know that the reports from the US riders on Mtbr that a lack of riding manners and of riders ignoring each other is not true here in the UK, almost all the riders said hi today and were riding very responsibly unlike some, even the Specialized riders were nice. Has anyone lost this off their Fizik saddle? I’ll bet you won’t find bits dropping off Charge Spoon saddles…

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