I learned what I needed to learn about this bike today REALLY fast. After the Nutbrown's dropped by for a nice lunch with baby Gavan chilling out, I started riding over to meet Devin to ride Sideshow and COP's verboten lands.
As I cruised across the footbridge by my house, I decided to dive right in and ride the stairs on the university side instead of the spiral ramp. All I needed to learn today about the Lynskey happened in 4 seconds:
A) the bike is super solid and takes the steep stair descent with poise - the geometry is confidence inspiring and the material makes the frame supple not bone jarring - the beauty of titanium.
B) I messed up and installed bottle ejectors rather than bottle cages.
C) NEED to put a few more travel limiting spacers in the Lefty - I think the 29ers are supposed to run with 80mm not 100. When I finished the first flight, the shock compressed enough that the tire rubbed the bottom of the head tube, making the dreaded BRRAAPP sound of knobs rubbing on something that doesn't give. In addition to the maximum travel being used, this provided me with an immediate doubling of breaking force. I think I got to a point where my belly button was over the head tube, my arms were strained, and I was really hoping not to eject over the rail for a 15' swan dive.
Somehow it all held together. A lady walking up the stairs looked at me funny... and I didn't feel like walking the second set of stairs. Grabbed my bottle before it rolled off the ledge, clipped in, u turned and hit the second flight with a little more knowledge. Bottomed out again, but I was pushing my weight back more in anticipation and sort of wheelied the last few, so all worked out fine.
Trust me, the first 3 mins on my new bikes aren't usually like this, but at least the getting to know each other part went fast. There's a high degree of built in trust already at this point with the calmness of the new frame!
Next fun part was dropping into Sideshow from the top by the chain link fence... this entry leads down the steep chute with mini drop, then the 90+ degree hard right to put you on the rest of the trail. You know how new disc brake pads need to wear in a bit before providing full stopping power? Yeah, I know that too, but just not today when it would have been handy to keep fresher in my mind. This is the part where our burgeoning trust is tested again, as I say to Lynskey: "man we aren't slowing down much and the we need little less speed for this sharp right" and Lynskey replies ala Pulp Fiction "bitch be cool" so we could ride it out... explored the rhubarb a bit down below the trail, but calmly on two wheels.
Following this we proceeded in Cool Hand Luke style - "stick with me pal, and you'll be just fine" says Lynskey, and from there things went pretty smooth. Just powered out little climbs with great rear traction, coasted the swoops, it was all good. It's fun to play with big big traction, and other than leaving the Lefty set up with too much travel, the action on the Fox internals is just magic... I'd spent some time tweaking the setup (pure guess) this morning and it just felt so functional and positive.
The aggressive tube shaping definitely brings the frame rigidity up, totally noticeable relative to my round tube ti bikes (I'm sure the giantly wide downtube to BB shell flare helps too). It's no Cervelo R3 (last I checked they don't have a 29er Lefty model anyway), but it also is very noticeably different than a "simple" ti constructed frameset. You may not notice the whole round tube flex on regular ti frames if you just do geared bikes. But when trying to bend the frame with your legs is the goal like on a SS this awesome ti manipulation is the way to go.
Second rule for SS in my books: avoid eccentric BB's like the plague. Once we got over to COP, we switched up bikes for a little bit. Devin's got some love scheduled for the Niner, and I'm sure it'll get back to the glory days (in fairness he's blazed a lot of miles on this thing). But what I noticed first is there was a lot more to listen to than just my lungs and heart and tires on trail. I don't miss having passed mine along, those BB's keep asking for rider attention to keep them doing their thing properly.
BB's are the highest stress point of a bike. Single speeders put out the same power as they do on geared bikes, but they utilize a broader torque range. Putting moving parts at the highest torque point of a bike makes no sense to me... the designs are elegant and make sense on paper... trails are the real proving ground. Slider dropouts or just plain horizontal dropouts are the way to go in my humble opinion.
Back to the switch test - as expected, the ti frame provides a more buttery or Cadillac feel. All the same bumps are there, but they're shouting at you from the next room with the door closed rather than right in your ear.
We banged out 3 laps of the technical Giver8er course, which was good for just getting to know the bike. As all 29er's with front suspension, the front end sits high. Yet the steering is crisp, felt much closer to a race bike with 3" drop from saddle in handling, but with the security on the steep and gnarlies of still having a higher front end. The Industry Nine wheel seems to nicely compliment the stiffness of the Lefty, no sense putting a soft spring in a system of springs...
With the wide bar and steep climbs, nothing squeaked or flexed to the rub point even in max push/pull mode at low cadence, which surprised me as my rear wheel was just a tad off center after I tensioned the chain.
The only two things I can even think to complain about are just part/situation specific. The cages need some bending or replacing so they can actually cage bottles. And the big Racing Ralphs deliver awesome traction (climbing grip and corner railing) on hardpack, soil, roots, float on sandy parts, but when the trail goes to ball bearing gravel, they just have so much width and short knobs that they float too easily on top. Fine as long as you see it coming and are ok with drift... just let it roll!
After all the joy of single speeding had my legs getting slower (after trying to keep near Devin on the last climb right up to the 77th Street exit), I did a slow lap and played who's the boss with the foliage and twigs that aspired to poke mountain bikers endlessly for 8 hours at the Giver8er next week. 8 hour enduro's are hard as it is, I don't need to be whipped 200 times each lap - and maybe that's just me, but I assumed a few others might be in the same boat. I wore out one set of gloves busting pokey sticks. Maybe the tree huggers will be mad at me, but I'm pretty sure there's a billion more poplar suckers growing beyond the couple hundred ones I snapped. It's all fun and games till someone loses an eye...
After a 5 hour first date, I think the Lynskey has exceeded my expectations pretty solidly. A solid bike would have done the trick. This thing is solid, quiet, smooth, beautiful and light, plus just a pure pleasure to ride from a geometry perspective. Love it!
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