There’s something to be said about skills progression too. I love my well manicured trails/parks they help me feel safe getting used to different features so when I go out on something not manicured I feel a lot more confident approaching and tackling it. My bike is way more bike than I can utilize but I’m hoping to grow into it skills wise, which is imo better than buying a bike that’s limited and replacing it every year or two I get better and need more out of it.
Sometimes park riding actually rewards you without you having to learn anything.
For example, if you take a run down a well built jump line, you just have to hold onto your natural speed and you’ll hit the landing. Often steep lippy jumps you can’t even see the target. So basically there is no rider judgement going into it, you’re just fooling around with jump mechanics.
One younger racer I was mentoring could not hit the crux jump on an intermediate park lap, and I realized that he lacked a beginner skill of being able to adjust his speed for the size of jump.
This same thing happens if you take freeride jumping onto tech trails… An intermediate park rider can struggle with more raw terrain on the same level of difficulty just because they haven’t honed that aspect.
Another gotcha is that jumping and riding mechanics actually vary greatly depending on the speed and context. There is no “one correct way” to go off a drop, it is all determined by your entry speed, slope angle, landing zone etc. You have to have a whole crayon box of skills to fully cover it all. Some park riding really simplifies all the other details.
It works the opposite also. A lot of tech riding you never really learn to hit anything at the higher speed that’s used on park runs, and it’s a pretty big learning curve just due to the higher amplitude and bigger consequences.
people buy bikes like they buy cars.
and like cars, they buy a new one rather than maintain their current one.
I agree with this sentiment.
I was a former racer and a suspension tech. When I get a new bike it takes me a few rides to get the suspension dialled.
However, once dialled, that begins a year of deeper tweaking that could include changing damper shim stacks, various internal reconfigurations with volume spacers and suspension mods.
It basically takes me a year of ownership to really feel like the bike is doing what I want.
I think I can basically take almost any suspension package and eventually modify it to what I imagine. So I don’t super care if it’s a Fox or Rock Shox or air or coil, these are not essential constraints on ride quality.
I also usually take about 2 years to figure out the wheels and components to a point where things have the right set of characteristics all together. For example, I won’t enjoy riding a stiff handlebar with noodly rims, for me it’s all a stack of springs that have to respond evenly in various loadings.
Having given this anecdote, what I see other riders doing is total part and total bike swaps. They have a valid issue with some shortcoming on their current ride but they don’t have the right strategy of tuning, so what they do is trade one set of problems for a whole new bike, repeat, repeat.
I actually hate riding a new bike, it makes me ride much slower and much worse.
As someone who can do a lot of basic level auto diagnosis and repair, I don’t treat a car much different.
When you start to pay other people as mechanics, it is often a rational monetary decision to sell a slightly used item and get a new one… If you flip items fast enough that you never pay for depreciation or maintenance you can get away with it…
Sorry wat? Guess I didn’t get that memo, I’ll go trash my 2008 giant stp and buy a new bike. Thanks
a 2008 bike is like a model T ford at this point.
you should very much get a new bike, and be amazed. 2008 bikes were still mostly using road geometry and road components.
Won’t lie that’s a far stretch to say that a bike with hydraulic disk front and rear, Marzocchi Bomber DJ 3, and a geometry that most hard tail mtb mimic these days, I find it hard to agree. The only thing that I am missing out on is having access to a 12x1 group set. But an 8x1 is more than enough for the stuff I do.
a geometry that most hard tail mtb mimic these days, I find it hard to agree.
Back in 2008, there were only two brands that made bikes with geometry that was anywhere at all close to modern, and those brands were Kona and Ragley.
By modern, I’m talking about a rearward bottom bracket that shows up on geometry charts as a steep seat tube angle paired with a slack head angle and long top tube.
You can go onto the website called “bike insights” and plug in your numbers and it’ll show up as a graphic which you can compare against something modern. Your bike won’t be modern at all.
I’ll go further and point out that if your bike didnt come with a dropper post, you’re basically riding an antique. The whole world needed dropper posts to deal with the bottom bracket / seat angle / standing up hitting the seat relationship that only started to be a thing within the modern geometry paradigm.
You should test ride something current.
Here, I did the compaison for you at this link. You will be shocked. Note that the Chromag is described as “average” for today.
I mean, you’re wrong. But ride what you want man. Nobody is forcing you to buy a new bike, you can keep riding your model T and thinking it’s the best thing ever, rest of us prefer suspension that actually works and isn’t a glorified pogo stick.
Plenty of alt-cycling hipsters are riding bikes with 1980s tech and spending thousands to do so, to ‘own’ people with modern bikes. Marketing is a hell of a drug.
Wow, not often you meet a prick in the mtb community. Are you also one of those who think the bike makes the rider? And now, are salty because you found out the truth? Or are you too scared to actually ride your bike because one dent and your high tech carbon fiber frame is scrap?
You’re wrong.
But please blame and mock other people for your ignorance and stubbornness.
https://www.bikeradar.com/reviews/components/forks/suspension-forks/marzocchi-dj3-review
Is the reviewer here, also a prick because they only gave your fork a 3.5 star rating, because even in 2008 it was a middling product?
I mean mine is a used 2016 la Pierre that I got a good deal on 3 years ago and have been doing the maintenance on mostly myself.
There are plenty out there that change their gear like they change their underwear. But as Shawn says in the hit movie Fast and The Furious Tokyo Drift, “It’s not the ride, it’s the rider”.
Mountain biking is gradually arriving at the same place skiing has been for decades. Manicured trails and cushy, predictable, long-travel bikes make the sport more accessible. A lot of people enjoy the flow and the exercise but don’t want to rattle through a loose rock garden or pick a line over slippery roots. Just like a lot of folks want to go to a ski resort to casually cruise groomers. And that’s fine.
I agree it’s basically becoming summer skiing. The resorts are building these trails and getting them approved because they say ‘look at the money we can make.’ All the investment is going into one type of riding because that’s where the returns will come from.
And that’s where the money is. Upper middle class people who can afford to travel, spend money on gear and bikes, and rent a condo and go to restaurants.
The PRO line at my mtb park, has virtually nobody on it. It’s a cool for videos on for YouTube to promote the park, but the people riding it aren’t weekend warriors with two groms who are renting out the condo at the base of the mountain for 500/night.
I think more people are getting into it and there might be some nice trails that attract a lot of beginners and families, but there’s still a lot of numb nuts hitting worst trails in their local area.
