chapter 4: SOUNDS A BIT RUDE...BUT ISN'T.

Used to be all bikes had fully rigid frames. This means no suspension on the front or the rear. It’s simple, cheap, strong and quite hard on your arse when you start riding on anything that is not a nice flat road (and I should point out that flat road is a concept with which our local council is not well acquainted). 

There is apparently a sub-movement in mountain biking that is re-embracing the simplicity and purity of fully rigid frames meaning it is possible to acquire one that isn’t cheap as chips and jam packed with crap brakes and drivetrains that will not stop or make you go (in that order) with any kind of certainty but I am fairly certain all of these people are masochistic hipsters so I will have no part of them.

At the other end of the scale you have full suspension bikes.  As previously mentioned, it is possible to spend simply obscene amounts of money on one of these and the options available are simply staggering. From huge Downhill bikes with massive amounts of travel (the technical term for this being ‘bounciness’) to lighter and less extreme options that can actually be moved, by the rider, in an uphill direction. They look fairly cool, cause far less arse damage and generally come with fairly decent bits and pieces at my chosen price point.

On the downside – they have lots of complicated components all of which, given my record with machines of all types, would no doubt break at the most inconvenient moment possible and/or become totally non-compatible with more or less everything I attempt to attach to it 5 minutes after I get it home (does anyone remember the Apple IIC? I didn’t think so).

I also suspect parking one of these in the middle of a modern city or town without 5-10 kilograms of locks and chains attached to them is almost just exactly the same as saying ‘Hey, disreputable looking young person. Come and steal my bike.’ Which possibly says more about me than today’s young people but there you go.

Which leaves the third option. Hardtails are so called because they have suspension on the front fork but none on the rear (once again bringing the arse into play). Here’s the thing though – I just like them. There are some good reasons for going in this direction. Nice logical reasons. You get more for your money component wise with a Hardtail (unless you head into full carbon cross country territory where you can once again start paying prices that would make a banker blush....some bankers....ok I’m exaggerating here) and there’s a lot less to break, service or constantly have to smear grease all over.

And while all of those arguments contribute to my decision making, for me, it comes down to the idea that a bike should be as simple as it can be. It shouldn’t look like a motorcycle that’s engine fell off somewhere and it shouldn’t have so many cables and levers and switches attached to it that you end up ejecting the rear wheel when you thought you were changing into 2^nd gear.

So a Hardtail it is.

Mind you, 7 paragraphs does not really reflect the reality of this decision making process. It took me literally 6 months of constantly switching back and forwards to come to this conclusion (and frankly it might still change again cause I’m fickle as). I feel for example that I owe an apology to the very nice man at Drift Cycles in Newcastle whose time I wasted to the tune of probably about 1 and a half hours. Sorry about that.

NEXT: A short break.