Monday, September 8, 2008

The 29'er Revolution

Plenty of people have strong opinions about 29'er mountain bikes. Personally, I'm a convert. I may never ride a 26-inch wheeled mountain bike again. Heck, I even got some brake post converters that enable me to run 29'er wheels (700c) on a standard mountain bike frame (only with cyclocross tires because of clearance issues, but that's okay with me)--With that conversion complete, I've only got one other 26-inch mtb in my stable, and that's been collecting dust--partly because of the small wheels and partly because it's encumbered with 26 more gears than I really want to deal with. There are plenty of reasons to love or hate 29-inch mtb wheels, but when I ran across this photo of me riding a standard 26-inch mountain bike (with a 20-inch frame no less), I realized that I could never go back... it looks like I'm riding a BMX bike!

1 comment:

Unknown said...

OK - that does look ludicrous - no doubt. Perhaps 32" wheels would be just right! I'll try one of them new fangled 29ers someday... though I did all right on a trusty old 26" FS bike this year, despite little to no time to ride outside of racing. Racing the CX bike in 1X10 mode made realize that 3X9 gearing is absurdly redundant!

Good stuff Dave - and thanks for the humorous picture to start the day with.