She’s alright, I ‘spose…

[url=https://flic.kr/p/TggD66]The Race one[/url] by tom howard, on Flickr

Pivot Mach 429SL w/ Team XX1 Eagle build kit

Voyage of discovery for me this. A few firsts for me.

First 29er
Shortest ever travel FS bike (100mm, 120mm fork)
First ‘XC’ bike
First DW link rear end
First MTB with an even number of gears.
First new bike bought without demo.
First Fox forks in 10 years.

Taken it for a quick spin this aft and by ‘eck its quick! Pretty agile too, much more so than previous brands 29ers I’ve ridden (Niner, Spesh and Orange)

Eagle is lovely, the 50t is a little silly with a 30t chain ring on anything other than cliffs, and even then my issue was keeping balance while moving so slowly, looking similar to this chap…

First real ride is the Moors and Shores sportive tomorrow, so I’m sure ill become familiar with it, if not the full extent of its technical ability.

Full marks to Garage bikes in Morley too. although this is a off the shelf build, save for the reverb and front tyre, its essentially a frame and build kit, and the build is top notch.

Gratutitous pic of shop, and appropriate t-shirt for the occasion…

[url=https://flic.kr/p/SSGNW5]Happy boy[/url] by tom howard, on Flickr

Looks fast, love that blue.

If you’d bought that last week, you could have christened it in all that lovely mud sunshine.
🙂

Do your laces up.

You’ll love it, I’m sold on the benefits of 29ers with sorted geometry.
The only thing that would get me off my Hightower is if Santa Cruz release the rumoured Nomad 29.

Ooohhhhhh nice!!! Enjoy fella!!

That was the plan Rusty, i ordered it 6 weeks ago but the (rather silly) way upgrade get the kits (frames get sent once a month, build kits get sent once a month, but 2 weeks later) meant it didn’t arrive in time 😕

Lucky bike.
🙂

I couldn’t subject something that nice to HtN mud.
It’d cost a tenner a mile in cassettes alone
😀

They need to do weed patrol on the shop frontage.

Hehe, you didn’t see what I did it on 😉

[url=https://flic.kr/p/pX6Lmg]The Perfect one[/url] by tom howard, on Flickr
Its pretty much recovered now…

Nah, thats the only thing in Morley town centre thats alive and green..

Nice looking bike. Enjoy!

Looks mint. Needs a lightweight saddle and maybe a longer/lower cockpit.

Will you be able to wobble around 10ft doubles on it sufficiently though………. 8) 😆 😆 😆

It excels at that, in fact I even rolled, slowly, over a tabletop on it this afternoon.

DTF, even if I drilled the saddle out, it wouldn’t weigh less than an alu trance. Genuinely have lowered the bars though. Turns out 29ers with 2.4 tyres have tall front ends. Who knew!?

Well, moors and shores completed, nothing like a 46 mile ride to get a feel of a new bike.

Very happy! the way it covers ground is just effortless, 46 miles (30 off road) is one of the longest rides I’ve done in a while and I still had plenty of room for more (reckon I’d have made it round the 58 mile course without dying.) Even managed to overtake a guy on a cross bike on an uphill fireroad, which after being lapped by them several times last week at HTN, felt good! It also reminded me that while old skool mtbing was fun back when there was nothing else, I’m eminently glad that trail centres and bike parks now exist.

It’s also worth nothing that whilst I’m sure the Ardent/Ardent race tyres are capable performers in dry, dusty Arizona, they don’t really have the same effect in wet, muddy North Yorkshire, but that’s not really their fault…

Another unexpected bonus is the WTB grips, basically there’s a notch cut out of the bar at the end, which is then filled with a. Squishy rubber bit that damps vibration on the outside of your hand, as well as a flat surface so the grips can’t rotate. Thought it was a bit of a gimmick most of the way through the ride, but at the end mstomhoward and my training buddy were complaining of achey wrists, whereas I was all good!

Going to be fun putting miles into this, next event is singletrack 7.

[url=https://flic.kr/p/TsnVJJ]Aint no Garage Queen[/url] by tom howard, on Flickr