Bike trivia

What you nearly bought is more the Matra Rancho of bikes, designed for looks rather than capability.

Nearly any bike is a hybrid of some kind, unless it's a pure fixed-hub track bike or one of Humph's headcase downhill MTBs. I like the frame length and long wheelbase of an 'MTB' shape but the straight-line speed and smoothness of something more road-friendly, and with tyres that can cope with the multitude of surfaces that my typical rides encompass. This is what drew me to Whyte, who started with MTBs and have branched out from there. There are a few bridleways here that I consider too steep or too rooty for mine but it pretty much devours anything else. Yesterday's ride was almost all road, but I went (carefully) down one bridleway that would have been terrifying on a full-on road bike - then kept pace with someone else's full-on road bike most of the way home. So, hybrid if you like - but that is why I don't feel the need for anything bouncier.

At 90kg you're well on the way.  

Might be worth a chat to AW this weekend. You never know, they may have sales targets to hit - or that brown thing they've not managed to sell to anyone else.

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I've been what is now called mountain biking since the late 60s / early 70s. We didn't know it would be called that until much later, we used to call it "tracking".

Of course, the bikes we used were just ordinary bikes of the day that we modified as best we could to deal with being off road, climbing hills and dealing with rough surfaces.

We'd put smaller wheels and straight bars on, knobbly tyres and my friend's dad who was an engineer, welded mounts onto the frames to allow the brakes to be positioned for the smaller wheels. Those wheels of course were by default, stronger and lowered the gearing too.

The most regular fails were caused by snapping forks that were never designed to take that sort of abuse.

As the years passed, technology improved and bikes that gave rise to what we now know as MTBs started to become more widely available. Still rigid forks at that time but much stronger. ( I still have a old steel Californian import hanging on my garage wall that I'll maybe recommission one day for no reason at all )

Suspension got invented and popularised and I like most ( literally on occasion ) fell for it. It does help to take the sting out of fast descents on rough surfaces but most of the time it just adds complication and weight. At very high downhill speeds it can, if set up correctly, keep your wheels in better contact with the ground but there's a lot of smoke and mirrors about it all in truth.

I'm seriously thinking of going back to a stripped bare bike and as mentioned upthread, I'm looking at an Orbea Alma with an optional rigid carbon fork. Should climb like a demented monkey and if it all gets a bit shoogly on the way down well, I'd hope to know how to keep it rubber side down.

Erm, might have think about that for a while...

Nor here. Steak and chips night. Baked portobello mushroom. Herby tomato. Madiran.

Not a tuna bake, I hope? Steak was good. First bottle of Madiran was corked. Fortunately we had another one.