Mountain Bike People Options

[Dogmeat]

Anyone here an avid mountain biker?

I'm probably getting a new bike this week.

Main reason is back and kees are too tore up to jog anymore, and I really need to get some cardio.

I wanna cut down to like 235 and see how much strength I lose ... hopefully not too much.

But, I used to race back in jr. high, but my old 92' StumpJumper has kinda seen the end of it's life because I've left it outside in the rain and snow the last like 4 years .... *sigh*

So anyways ..

What would yall recommend?

I think I might come up with a 2009 StumpJumper FSR Comp 29 this week ..... Any other recomendations?

[jonathan83]

how is a bike worth $3000?

i mean, what makes it so much better than $100 bike at walmart? i dont know anything about bikes so thats why im asking. just seems super expensive.

[Psykopath]

how is a bike worth $3000?

i mean, what makes it so much better than $100 bike at walmart? i dont know anything about bikes so thats why im asking. just seems super expensive.

Parts, build quality, durability, handling, brakes, reliability, etc...

[Dogmeat]

Parts, build quality, durability, handling, brakes, reliability, etc...

That incredibly sexy and slightly painful feel I get between my legs when I sit down too hard on the aggressive racing seat

But, yeah for the most part ..

For instance, my first mountain bike was a $320 Trek 820 back in 1991 or therabouts ... I rode that for maybe a year before I bent the front forks on it, chewed the deraillers up (not from hitting them just shifting them) etc ... That bike would have been fine for casual riding, but not for racing or jumping or anything like I was doing ...

My second bike was a 1993 Bianchi Osprey ... much better than the Trek, had Shimano LX components, it was a $540 bike, which at the time was a fuckload of money .... I worked all summer to pay that bike off. That bike wound up being in the shop just about every time I rode it. I raced it amatureley for a year, then at the start of the second year I had it, the frame cracked on one of the signature Bianchi gussets, which is supposed to be the strongest part of the frame. So basically, I rode that bike into the ground when I was 13/14 years old ...

The next summer, I jumped up and bought a holdover 1992 Specialized Stumpjumper the latter part of 1993 .... Raced that bike for two years, beat on it good, and it never missed a single beat. That bike cost me $925 .... It had Specialized's first incantation of the Future Shock (forks on bikes were the new and coming thing back in the early 90's) ....

Only when I moved to Lubbock and left the bike outside for about 2 years did it kinda start to rust through

I pulled it out before I went and bought the new bike, and it had rusted a lot because I just left it outside ..... So it's my fault that bike broke, not me.

But with that said, a $925 bike in 1993 lasted me 15 years with 2 or 3 years of really hard riding on it....

This new bike feels amazing .... so much different than my old SJ used to feel, and when my old SJ was new it felt like a rocket ship when compared to my old Bianchi...

I'm sure I'll get at least 10 years of use out of this bike. The frame and suspension components have a lifetime warranty on them.

And like I said, my whole justification for doing this is that I'll drop 15-20 pounds this summer from riding again