Anyone who frequented Ghyllside Cycles in Ambleside in the early 90s might remember the bluey green XTR-equipped Dave Yates Diabolo that lived in there for a couple of years, with the asking price constantly dropping to the point that my dad could resist it no longer, and bought it ‘for your mother’.
Due to snapping her wrists a few years ago, and on account of her being 70, mam is no longer emulating Josh Bender and so the bike has a pair of road-going tyres on it, to suit her canal path ways. So, rigid steel bike, full (albeit old) XTR and skinny tyres. You’d expect it to be reasonably light, right? That thing has its own gravitational pull. The other bikes in their shed revolve around it, and the type of riding you do depends on what bike is floating past at the time you go in.
From a personal point of view, I’ve never owned a bad bike, although it took me nearly two years of riding my first (and only) FS to realise that when I felt funny things happening with the back wheel, I’d not got a puncture, it was the suspension working.
Last time I was in the market for a new bike, in 2005, I demo’d an Orange Five. Unmitigated shite. I’m willing to concede that suspension technology back then was wildly different to its current state, but I genuinely cannot look at a Five now without thinking that they are horrible bikes to ride.