Giant Demo Day

As I am sure I have mentioned a few times already here before now, I love biking. I have not been able to ever get out on bikes for many reason over the last year, first travel then a bit of a knee injury, however a couple of weeks ago I managed and had an awesome time.

One of my bosses has been kind enough to lend me a bike so I didn’t have to buy one which has been great but the bike is starting to show its age. When pushed it doesnt want to play all that well and a couple of times I have ended up injuring myself because of the bike rather than my ability. So a couple of weekends ago (yes I am late with all these posts!) I grabbed the bike and headed down to the trails. On the way there alone the chain slipped gears a few times and my feet slid off the peddles which was annoying to say the least. I continued to battle through knowing that once I got to the woods I wouldn’t think about the issues as much and would just think about the riding. It is never possible to 100% turn off the worry in the back of your mind that at any second the bike is going to have it in for you and in a way that can cause problems in its self through last minute hesitations.

Anyway, this was must have been meant to be. As I arrived at the trails I noticed that there were loads of people already there with big marquees and loads of bikes lined up. It was at this point that my mind peaked back to something I had seen somewhere about a Giant Bikes Demo day in the woods. I rolled up on my borrowed, battered, old Giant and asked the guy really nicely if it was possible to borrow a bike without booking. To me delight it was and a few short minutes later I was handed a $6000 Giant Trance 27.5 full suspension bike and told to go and have some fun!

One thing that did cause my a slight bit of concern though was an incident that happened as I was signing my liability waiver. Just as I was signing my life away to say it was my own fault if I killed myself, a guy rode up, fully out of breath rambling that someone had come off their bike on the Downhill only section and was quite seriously hurt. The guy had come off and landed hard and couldn’t feel his legs so they had called an ambulance but needed some help until it arrived. Luckily one of the people there to ride for the day was a GP and in a few minutes the guys from Giant had gathered some supplies and were heading back up there to stabilize the poor guy.

I am sure my mum is cringing reading this and hoping that I then thought better of ever doing anything scary and went home for a nice hot drink and to read a book, but that isn’t how this story goes. I signed my name, claimed my prize and went out to blast through trees at excessive speeds! Everything about riding that bike was amazing and firmed up the realization that I need to get a new bike. It is great having something you have not had to pay for that is getting you places when you want, but getting hurt all the time because of it just doesn’t seem as fun and has kept me away from the trails more than I would have liked. This new bike though just flew!

I dont know if it was a combination of excitement about the bike, Adrenalin from the accident information or the new bike its self, but I had the best ride ever and seemed to master the trails like a pro. Going into it I knew the bike would handle the downhill sections better than the cheap on, but it was my real surprise when it was the uphill that I seemed to have amazing improvements on. Before I would get stuck in sections and end up huffing and puffing, but on this it just climbed and climbed away, shaving 2 mins off on one of the climbs. That is already an impressive number until you understand that the total time for the section wasn’t hours it was minutes and that section dropped from 7 mins to 5! This bike was just so much faster and I felt more in control all the time. Not a single time did I feel like I was getting myself into trouble as I knew the machine had me and with my new found confidence I got around the trails with ease.

Many of the things on the bike I am sure I didn’t need and wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference with a bike half its price but I did know there were some things that I loved. The first was the gearing system. On a traditional mountain bike there are multiple gears on the back (often 7 or 9) and then a couple of gears on the front (2 or 3). This lets you effectively have maybe 27 gears to choose from when riding about and in my opinion it is just too much. Because the gearing isn’t linear you have to change one cog down and another up to try and get to something different and to me it just seems like a mess. On this bike they have done away with the multiple on the front, instead having a single, smaller cog and then put 11 on the back, spaced wider apart to still give a similar total range but with a little more of a jump between the gears. This didn’t bother me at all as I nearly always skip gears anyway so it was actually an amazing bonus. Taking the thought process and choice of getting the right gear out of the equation made it so much easier to just enjoy the ride.

The other thing I really love was the dropped seat post. When I first heard of an automatic dropping seat post I just thought it was a massive gimmick and a bit of an expensive gadget with no real purpose but boy, was I wrong. When you ride on the trails you want to remain seated in a high seating position when climbing up the hills to get the most traction and power. When descending though this elevated position causes instability and it is better to have the seat dropped low and to be able to get off the saddle and absorb the impacts of the terrain on your legs. This makes you more agile and able to make it down the course quicker. Traditionally the way to do this would be to have a quick release seat post and to stop and the top of a downhill section, get off, adjust your seat, get on, ride down, then do the opposite for your climb back up. It doesn’t take long but it is annoying and can lead to you not changing it in some sections and spoiling the ride a little. The dropper post gets rid of all of that. By pressing a button on the handlebars and sitting your weight on the seat the seat drops down and suddenly you find yourself ready to smash down the trails. Once at the bottom, press it again and it pops back up. Simple! Its great for adjusting the height on the go and getting just the right height you want for a section. It helped me massively on the ride as I was just able to keep going without having to stop and start which saved me time and kept my motivation up. Before it seemed like an expensive toy, but after riding a bike with it I don’t think I want a bike without!

So today I was faced with a dilemma that lead me into a bike shop looking for someone to talk to to get some answers. I obviously now know I want a bike with these amazing (but not cheap) features and I also know I cant afford it just yet. What I do need right now though is something newer and stable to ride that isn’t going to try and kill me. With that in mind I went into the Specialized shop (across the road from the place that sells Giants) to see what they thought about a bit of a cheaper “filler” bike. Something much cheaper that I could just use for a few months while I save. While chatting to the guy I explained to him everything that I have said here and that I don’t know enough about bikes to know what I want but I know a few features I really have to have moving forwards. He took it all in and then asked me to take a look at a completely different type of bike that had all the features I wanted but was apparently “massively fun!”

 

The bike in question was a hard tail rather than full suspension, however it has something called fattie6 tires, over-sized tires that provide more grip and a bit of bounce so rear suspension isn’t quite as important. Within a minute of talking he passed me a helmet and said “go on, take it for a blast around the block” …so I did! It was a great ride and felt much more solid that I thought it would. It also ticked all my boxes having the type of brakes I wanted as well as the dropper post and the right gearing system. What he basically said was that these are cheaper than what I initially was looking at since they don’t have the rear suspension so save on parts costs. He also put his money where his mouth was giving me their demo version of the bike right there and then to take home for the weekend to try out in my own time. What started as an inquiry ended with me having a new toy to play with all weekend so I am now mega stoked as for some stupid reason I have started writing this instead of getting outside!

If all goes well then I should be able to save for a few more weeks and get myself and amazing xmas present! Christmas in the summer is starting to look like an amazing invention!

UPDATE: For anyone wondering, after a weekend of riding the bike I rolled back into Cycleworld and ordered the bike right then and there. Anyone who has spoken to me since will know that I have raved not only about the bike but also the service I got from all the guys in the store. It isn’t every day that someone gives you a bike for the weekend and says “try your best to kill it!”

…and for anyone concerned, yes they also did me a good deal on a nice helmet 🙂