Down And Out On A Hardtail
Posted on March 28, 2007 @ 8:32 AM
I have been living in my car for the last two months now, and it smells like a camel’s backside. I know this because a friend told me, and he used to work at Bristol Zoo.
So anyway as I sat there one day, trying to fix the travel kettle, (I know I should have gone for gas, but I didn’t want to risk setting fire to the car, see the MOT has expired so that the insurance ain’t valid, and I can’t MOT it while I’m living in it), I started thinking about how, not long ago, I had a house full of possessions that I thought where important or essential to me, things that I couldn’t possibly manage without. Things like a double bed, a TV, a DVD player, a Moulinex-magi-combi-blender. Now I’ve got a car, three bin bags and a bicycle. Easy. Kind of.
Now the point here is that the bicycle I take with me. It’s a hardtail. A bicycle with no rear suspension. No frills. It kind of suits my lifestyle at the moment. Back to basics. Now two years ago that bike would have been a full suspension rig, a bike I used to love, a bike I thought I’d ride forever, but one day it just broke, just like that and I couldn’t afford to fix it. I was desperate for something to ride, so a quick scratch round the shed and I found it. A Saracen X–Cess hardtail…I did say I was desperate. But from the moment I got on that thing I was hooked. OK, so it felt a little sketchy for a week or two. A few things felt odd, the steep head angle, the ‘jackhammer’ ride off–road. It was just a case of adapting. Adjusting to a different style of riding. But once I got used to the difference, it seemed to breathe a new energy into my riding. I rode that bike everywhere, I rode it to the woods, and started digging new tracks, rode it to the trails, made my own trails, paid a farmer twenty quid for a trailer of topsoil, bit of street, bit of downhill, in fact anything and anywhere. The fact was, I was having fun on this bike, a lot of fun. The passion for riding bikes was re emerging. Skids and wheelies, it was brilliant. I once even did something that from a distance looked like a manual. Basic skills were improving. Sadly though the inevitable happened, the bike snapped suddenly in two places (once in the woods and once at the jumps). I knew though that I wouldn’t be looking in the shed for another one, no I would buy one. A new one, and it would be a hardtail.
All I can see are positives. For a start they’re cheap, you can buy a well spec’d bike for under a grand. Maintenance is low; there are no pivot points to worry about, no rear shock to fret over. It’s versatile, you can get a lot of mileage out of it and I could afford one, so that was that. There was no going back to the springy bikes. I could see the future, and for me that was a DMR Trailstar. That was a year ago and I think I can honestly say I won’t buy another bike. I think you know when you’ve found the perfect bike for you, when it all just feels right, when it feels like it was built specially for you.
Although I ride this bike everywhere I’d say that eighty percent of the riding I do is downhilling. I’m not a masochist, I just love it. I love the fact that you can really feel the ground beneath you, really feel connected with it. OK so you do feel every rock and root, rut and breaking bump, but that seems to add to the enjoyment. The hardtail teaches you to be smooth through these sections and when you get it right…it just feels so sweet. King of the World. It puts a big smile on your face. Like it was all down to your skill, not the fact that you had 8” of travel front and rear compensating for your mistakes. If bikes were guitars then I reckon suspension is the distortion pedal, click it on and it’ll cover up a multitude of sins and make everything sound good, play without it and it’ll expose the horrors of sloppy playing. The hardtail is just pure in my book. Anyway the point of this story is don’t wait till you’re living in your car, or a zoo, or even for your beloved downhill bike to break, take a hardtail for a spin. Adjust and adapt to it. Love it or hate it, it’ll definitely improve your riding.
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