PurpleFrog
Kona Fan
Having ridden on and off road for a week now, I'm obviously an expert and thought I should put my thoughts down before I augur in a bike-squirrel collision...
Technology
Retro seems to be contemporary in a cross bike. Most are still made out of tube-shaped tubes. Of metal! And 99% of them have rim brakes. (Of the rest 0.1% have discs and 0.9% had their MAFAC cantis stolen while they were parked outside the supermarket. In fact there are only enough MAFACs to go on half the bikes that are supposed to have them and ebay runs a sort of informal MAFAC time-share scheme.)
Gears
The Campag road shifters on my bike are brilliant. But the gear ratio on my cross bike was tighter - much tighter - than I expected. Then I worked out why: you're expected to pick the bike up and run on the steep bits.
What is it with these people??? Don't they understand what a bicycle is for???
Freakout!
I had a bit of a freakout moment when I discovered my bike didn't have the holes for fixing a bottle cage on - had the holes been stolen when the bike was locked outside the supermarket? Then I found out this is standard in crossers meant for racing, because the cages (or even just the bolts that fill the empty holes) stick in your shoulder while you are running with the bike. Yes, people really do that.
Riding on road compared to a road bike
A crosser is much better. This is mostly because the knobbly tyres make a cool turbine-like noise when you start to go fast. Yay!
Riding off road compared to an MTB
I'm no Missy Giove, but imo overall it's about what you'd expect, but some interesting details. The bike is faster on mincing "Singletrack World"* stuff but also a bit trickier - so quite a bit more exciting. Really good in fact.
I imagine that if you took it on *proper* mountain biking stuff it would be very exciting indeed, but you'd have to ride much better than me - or be much more suicidal - to do it. Plus you'd probably need a new bike quite soon.
The somewhat interesting details -
- The narrow back tyre (I'm running race legal 30mm knobbly tyres - the limit is 35mm) is much more prone to sliding out on me. Front brake is king on an MTB, but it's the Pimp Daddy Emperor on a cross bike.
- Those 30mm tyres surprisingly good at letting me descend steps, but absolutely awful if I hit a tree root on the trail. I suspect that 35s or 38s will be much better, although I'm wondering if wider knobblies might increase rolling resistance. (I know wider doesn't increase RR for slicks, but obviously things could be different with knobblies.)
- Crossers have their cantis set funny! The yokes are really high and the clearance between rim and pad is big enough to stick your little finger into. Obviously the mechanical advantage sucks. This is supposed to be for mud clearance, but I think it really be because
1. Anyone who thinks that they should carry their bicycle instead of the other way around doesn't have the sanity required for setting up cantis correctly
2. The off road grip on the narrow tyres is rubbish and the lower mechanical advantage makes it harder to go into a braking skid when you clench the brakes in fear
- I'm surprised by how much I love riding on the hoods off road. They're big fat mushy Campys and that might make all the difference.
* http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.p ... trackworld
A website populated by portly mid life crisis sufferers with delusions of gradeur, who think that riding around on an expensive push bike somehow makes up for their dull job in engineering or IT. Inwardly the average singletrackmember would love to posses more skills than the ability to negotiate a technical climb, in reality this means acquiring actual bike handling skills. To cover up their utter lack of ability on a bike they pour scorn on any style riding which isnt utterly boring.
"Hey john, where did you get that fancy new bike?"
"Its actually not new at all, I bought it off some twat with more money than sense on singletrackworld. He clearly couldnt ride for toffee, just like the rest of those asshats"
Technology
Retro seems to be contemporary in a cross bike. Most are still made out of tube-shaped tubes. Of metal! And 99% of them have rim brakes. (Of the rest 0.1% have discs and 0.9% had their MAFAC cantis stolen while they were parked outside the supermarket. In fact there are only enough MAFACs to go on half the bikes that are supposed to have them and ebay runs a sort of informal MAFAC time-share scheme.)
Gears
The Campag road shifters on my bike are brilliant. But the gear ratio on my cross bike was tighter - much tighter - than I expected. Then I worked out why: you're expected to pick the bike up and run on the steep bits.
What is it with these people??? Don't they understand what a bicycle is for???
Freakout!
I had a bit of a freakout moment when I discovered my bike didn't have the holes for fixing a bottle cage on - had the holes been stolen when the bike was locked outside the supermarket? Then I found out this is standard in crossers meant for racing, because the cages (or even just the bolts that fill the empty holes) stick in your shoulder while you are running with the bike. Yes, people really do that.
Riding on road compared to a road bike
A crosser is much better. This is mostly because the knobbly tyres make a cool turbine-like noise when you start to go fast. Yay!
Riding off road compared to an MTB
I'm no Missy Giove, but imo overall it's about what you'd expect, but some interesting details. The bike is faster on mincing "Singletrack World"* stuff but also a bit trickier - so quite a bit more exciting. Really good in fact.
I imagine that if you took it on *proper* mountain biking stuff it would be very exciting indeed, but you'd have to ride much better than me - or be much more suicidal - to do it. Plus you'd probably need a new bike quite soon.
The somewhat interesting details -
- The narrow back tyre (I'm running race legal 30mm knobbly tyres - the limit is 35mm) is much more prone to sliding out on me. Front brake is king on an MTB, but it's the Pimp Daddy Emperor on a cross bike.
- Those 30mm tyres surprisingly good at letting me descend steps, but absolutely awful if I hit a tree root on the trail. I suspect that 35s or 38s will be much better, although I'm wondering if wider knobblies might increase rolling resistance. (I know wider doesn't increase RR for slicks, but obviously things could be different with knobblies.)
- Crossers have their cantis set funny! The yokes are really high and the clearance between rim and pad is big enough to stick your little finger into. Obviously the mechanical advantage sucks. This is supposed to be for mud clearance, but I think it really be because
1. Anyone who thinks that they should carry their bicycle instead of the other way around doesn't have the sanity required for setting up cantis correctly
2. The off road grip on the narrow tyres is rubbish and the lower mechanical advantage makes it harder to go into a braking skid when you clench the brakes in fear
- I'm surprised by how much I love riding on the hoods off road. They're big fat mushy Campys and that might make all the difference.
* http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.p ... trackworld
A website populated by portly mid life crisis sufferers with delusions of gradeur, who think that riding around on an expensive push bike somehow makes up for their dull job in engineering or IT. Inwardly the average singletrackmember would love to posses more skills than the ability to negotiate a technical climb, in reality this means acquiring actual bike handling skills. To cover up their utter lack of ability on a bike they pour scorn on any style riding which isnt utterly boring.
"Hey john, where did you get that fancy new bike?"
"Its actually not new at all, I bought it off some twat with more money than sense on singletrackworld. He clearly couldnt ride for toffee, just like the rest of those asshats"
