Yeti Lives Again

I received a call from my local bike shop on Friday afternoon. They had just gotten the 2008 Yeti 575 replacement frame from Yeti Cycles. I rushed over to pick it up. I immediately had the bike shop press in the headset cups, and then I spent Friday night and Saturday morning building it up.



I pressed in new sealed bearings in all the pivots and installed new shifter housing and cables. It's practically a new bike.



I knew this would be hard, but before I ride it and scratch anything, I'm going to sell it. I may ride it on some bridal trails just to make sure it shifts and brakes well. Otherwise, I'll sell it while it's still pristine. She sure is pretty, though...

29'er Revealed

I recently wrote about my first exposure to the 29er craze. After test riding that bike, I knew my next bike would be a 29er. I assumed I'd ride my beloved Yeti 575 for another season and then upgrade to the big-wheeled bike in the Fall of 2009.

When I destroyed the Yeti, my timeline for going big-wheeled moved up. Since test riding the HiFi, I have been researching 29-inch-wheeled bikes and had already decided on the bike that I wanted to get - 2009 Niner R.I.P 9.

With the help of Brett at Niner Bikes, I tracked down a demo 2009 R.I.P 9 in XL at Colorado Cyclist. At 2:00 this afternoon, UPS delivered some boxes to my front door.

Here's the puzzle that was in the bigger of the two boxes.



And here it is less than an hour later.

Death of a Yeti

One of the newest trails in the area recently had some new sections added to it. The new sections include a few small kickers, or small jumps, for added fun. Of course, they are optional features since you can easily pedal around them. However, I like them. After going to Snowshoe, I crave air time now.

Being the Winter season on the East coast, the weather forecast is wet and chilly. Not too cold to ride, but usually too wet. After a small dry spell, we hit the trails again. Sure they were soupy in a few spots here and there, and the wet leaves and roots made cornering tricky, but we were finally riding again!

During the ride, we approached one of the new kickers. It's a small thing, really. Only about a foot or so high. The approach is a slight downhill and the landing slopes off a bit more. It's a great way to catch some air - albeit small.

As I approached, I sprinted for the kicker. I sailed into the air and cleared about 15 feet. The Yeti soaked up the landing with no problems at all, but the trail had a slight right-hand turn ahead. Unfortunately, I now had too much speed to get traction on the wet roots and leaves and missed the turn. I crashed into a small tree. I walked away with nothing more than a slight abrasion. Neither the tree nor the Yeti were as lucky.



Andrew, who was the rider following me, later described the crash like this:

"I only heard two things when this happened. A slap/snap sound which I am guessing was the tree protesting the blow. And what sounded like a 6 year old girl wailing because their favorite dolly lost her hair.

I saw the tree and it won’t be long for the world. But I never saw the girl or her damaged doll."

Ouch!

26er or 29er...

I'm 6'5" (36" inseam) and weigh about 210 (minus bike gear). I've always ridden a 26-inch-wheeled mountain bike. Over the last few years, I've brushed off the 29er craze. Most of it was centered around light, fast hardtails. I'm never going back to hardtails again, so I just ignored the ridiculous 29er fad.

Within the span of about 2 weeks this past November, the guys I ride with have expressed how "weird" and "odd" I look riding a 26er. They said it's like watching one of them ride their bikes with 24" wheels on it instead of 26" wheels. One guy compared it to watching a clown ride one of those tiny clown bikes at the circus.

So that got me thinking about the 29 inch wheel "fad." Maybe it was a good idea after all. It certainly makes sense for the vertically gifted; but has anyone decided to put a decent amount of suspension on those bikes, yet? Time to fire up Google...

As it turns out, there are a few decent fully suspended 29ers out there now. They've cropped up within the last three years, and a couple of them get very good reviews.

As a coincidence, about this time, a local rider posted his 2008 Gary Fisher HiFi Deluxe 29er for sale. What a great opportunity to test ride one and see if it lives up to the hype. I met the seller at a local trail and we rode for about an hour together. The HiFi weighs 3.75 lbs. less than my Yeti (with the big Marzocchi 66 ATA SL1). I noticed the weight loss right away as the HiFi climbed very well. I found it very responsive to accelerations and just a little bit sluggish when cornering - most likely due to the larger wheels size and greater centrifugal force to overcome when steering. However, I seemed to hit a lot of roots with the pedals. I found that quite unsettling.



The seller suggested I take it home for a few days and really get to know it. How could I refuse? As I drove home grinning from ear to ear about the graciousness of the seller to let me drive off with his bike, I realized that I had a very big problem ahead of me. Two problems, actually. First, I had no idea how to tell my wife about yet another bike in our garage. Second, I'll either have to spend more money that I don't have on bikes or I'll have to give the bike back. I didn't like either of those choices very much.

I rode the bike for four days on my home turf. To my surprise, I was able to clear technical climbs that I had previously not been able to do on the Yeti. That's no fault of the Yeti. I believe it's the bigger wheel that makes the difference. The 29 inch wheels want to go over all the small rocks and roots in the trail instead of bang into them and stop. I didn't have to wrestle the bike up-and-over all those small momentum-stealers anymore. +1 for the 29er.

While killing some time in a parking lot before a ride one day, I noticed a set of concrete stairs that I normally ride down on the Yeti. I thought it would be a good test to see how they feel on the HiFi, but I wasn't keen on the idea of circumnavigating the parking lot just to ride down about 14 stairs. Hmmmm... How about riding up the stairs instead? I gave it a shot. To my surprise, I made it up every one of those 14 stairs with ease. That's crazy! I could never do that on a 26er (which I proved a few days later). Ok, so that proved it to me - the 29er "attack angle" on obstacles is far superior to that of the puny 26 inch wheeled bike.

After four days with the HiFi my initial impressions of the HiFi hadn't changed much, but my prejudice of the 29er "fad" certainly did. The deal breaker for the HiFi was the low bottom bracket height. It also felt a bit delicate under my 210+ rider weight. After some research, I found that the HiFi has one of the lowest bottom bracket heights of the full suspension 29ers out there.

Reluctantly, I gave the HiFi back and thanked him for his generosity. This test ride has me convinced that my next bike will be a 29er (just not a Gary Fisher HiFi 29er). Out of curiosity, I asked the seller why he was selling his bike. He admitted that he's selling the HiFi so he can build up a 2009 Niner RIP 9, which has a higher bottom bracket and are built much burlier.