A Rebirth. And a Manifesto

I started up this blog a few years ago in praise of the oft-ignored and ridiculed hardtail mountain bike.

I wrote back then – and the evidence lives today – that the cycling industry has largely moved on to full suspension bikes and consigned hardtails to entry-level rigs that don’t have a place outside of big box stores.

The cycling press will also tell you that there are few trails of consequence outside of the sport‘s Appalachian and Western outposts. The midwest is somewhere that you fly over on the way from one trail mecca to another.

Well, I’m calling bullshit on both of those dogmas.

Hardtails Are Rowdier and More Fun Than Ever

The ‘Big 4’ of cycling (Trek, Specialized, Giant and Cannondale) either slot hardtails into their entry-level lines or maybe (maybe) offer up one down-country style hardtail. But there are plenty of innovators that are crafting hardtails that can handle steep and technical terrain.

Among them are my beloved All-City Electric Queen, the Chromag Stylus and Primer, the RSD Middle Child, the recently revamped Santa Cruz Chameleon, the Orange P7 S and the NS Bikes Eccentric.

If there’s anything in common about these bikes, it‘s more more travel, a slacker head angle, a longer wheelbase, more travel, and the ability to handle tire sizes that would not have looked out of place on fat bikes a few years back.

These are not your father’s XC bikes. They’re not even your kid’s XC bikes. These are bikes designed to shrug off whatever you throw at them and keep you coming back for more.

If you grew up riding riding full-suspension bikes you may never be able to wrap your head around what these bikes are capable of. If you grew up on hardtails, however, you’re thinking, “Hell, yeah.”

And that leads me to my next point.

If You Haven’t Ridden in the Midwest, You Haven’t Mountain Biked

I’ve been fortunate in that I’ve been able to ride in some of those mountain bike meccas previously mentioned. Those trails have a lot to offer. Lift served riding. Miles and miles of trails. Beautiful alpine meadows. Tree surfing through aspens.

But there is little there to challenge some of the trails here at home in Ohio. We don’t have miles of climbing or descending – my Strava elevation profiles tend to look like a crooked saw –  but we earn our fast technical downhills in climbs riddled with rock gardens and root beds that can stop you in your tracks. Like an Olympic slalom specialist, we weave through gaps between trees that are barely wider (and sometimes narrower) than our bars.

We (somewhat) breathe air that often is thick with humidity. We kid that we don’t need to bring water bottles because we get the hydration that we need from the air.

Oh, and the dirt? Clay. Slippery when it’s the least bit wet. Something  like tacky concrete when it’s wet. Rainy springs and falls. Daylight savings time. You learn to appreciate the days that you can actually ride.

In short, this is not easy.

In Praise of Hardtails and the Midwest

You’ll be hearing from me a lot more. About hardtails. About riding rowdy Midwest on hardtails.

Stay tuned.