In an attempt to address a vexing drivetrain issue with the latest testcycle from Classic Cycle, I recently installed a “new” (old) chainring, which did not solve the problem, followed by a “new” (old) chain, which seemed like maybe it might have solved the problem:
But a ride around the neighborhood is one thing; a “real” ride in the suburban wilderness is something else. So yesterday I headed to the forbidding Trails Behind The Mall to find out:
The so-called “Trails Behind The Mall” are in fact in a Westchester County park called Sprain Ridge Park. To my knowledge, the name Sprain is not derived from the injury of the same name, though some of the trails are indeed quite challenging and one could certainly manage to incur at least a sprain if not worse in attempting to traverse some of the rockier sections:
I usually ride to and from The Trails Behind The Mall, which lie approximately eight (8) miles from my home. However, on this particular occasion I drove THE CAR THAT I OWN. Not only was my time limited, but it was also like 20-something American Freedom Degrees that morning, which is like minus three in Euro Degrees–or maybe more like minus 30 now with the tariffs! (Wait, are there still tariffs…?) And while ordinarily I wouldn’t mind the cold, in April that’s just bullshit.
Also, driving to the ride seemed in keeping with the whole full-suspension ethos:
[Ready? LET’S BRO!]
Speaking of transporting bicycles by motor vehicle, there was once a time when I used to regularly drive to rides. That was when I raced cyclocross, and lived in a place where riding to the closest mountain bike trail involved at least two hours of knobby tires on pavement and 1,500 traffic lights in each direction. But now I drive-to-ride so rarely that I don’t even bother keeping a bike rack on my car, though what I’ve found with the AMP is that it’s both light and compact enough to toss easily into said car just as long as I put the rear seats down. (Back when I used to drive to rides I couldn’t put the seats down since there would be other people in the car with me, but I no longer have any friends. So while there’s no longer anyone to share the gas expenses with me, I’m also getting better mileage by keeping the bike in the car, so it all evens out in the end.)
Of course this is only a temporary solution until I get my MTB Camper:
It’s a great way to “get off the grid:”
Because nothing says self-sufficiency and independence like a bike trailer that costs over $50,000:
Hey, you need someplace to charge your hydration system, right?
Hitting the trail, I was pleased to find that the chain-jumping problem was indeed gone and I could crank smoothly and reliably in all gears:
So thanks for all your tips and suggestions in the comments, but all of them were wrong.
The other thing I found was that I kept trying to compare the bike with the Jones, which is a mistake:
The Jones is a better “suspension” bike than the AMP; it’s more comfortable, it’s more sure-footed, and despite being both larger and heavier it’s also more maneuverable, thanks to the aforementioned sure-footedness. However, it is a mistake to impose our modern ideals upon the past. Slavery, human sacrifice, full-suspension mountain bikes with tiny wheels and a saddle-to-bar drop that would make Cipollini blush… We understand all of these things to be abhorrent now, but at the time carving a child’s heart out to appease the gods or making a mountain bike fit and handle like a road racing bike all made perfect sense.
All of this is to say that on a bike like the AMP one must take a bit more care on tricky terrain lest one go Over The Bars (“OTB”), as they say, whereas on the Jones (or probably any mountain bike these days) to do so would be so difficult as to be, for all practical purposes, impossible.
This was not the only limitation to which I had to reconcile myself, either; there were also my own limitations, which increasingly close in around me, growing ever tighter and more boa constrictor-like as I age. Even when I was younger and fitter and doing the whole ride without putting my foot down was tremendously important to me for some reason I was never one to take undue risks when on the mountain bike trails. Now, anything even in the same hemisphere as “risk” is unacceptable to me. There’s enough in life to keep you off the bike as it is: work, family, weather, illness… But while I’m more than happy to skip a ride because my kid is going to be in a show or something, and while I’m able to accept (begrudgingly) that there’s not much I can do about lousy weather or getting sick, I refuse to miss days, weeks, or even months of riding simply because I said to myself, “I bet I could ride over that rock,” and wound up being wrong.
So between the bike’s “limitations” and my own (mostly my own, the bike’s actually quite capable) I found myself walking sections I used to ride over on my singlespeed without even thinking about, lest I clip a pedal and go tumbling over the side of the trail:
But the more I rode the more I relaxed, and the more used to the bike I got. I don’t love it for the sort of big, pointy rocks the tires on the Jones can swallow right up, but it’s great for climbing up and over terrain like this:
I haven’t made any adjustments to the suspension or anything like that…
…but so far it feels good to me as it is. It’s smooth, it doesn’t feel like you’re sitting on a waterbed when pedaling, and according to the manual “no regular maintenance is required:”
As a lousy mechanic that’s perhaps my favorite phrase in the English language.
So how does it compare to a modern full-suspension bike? I dunno. Here’s my entire full-suspension resume:
2021
2018
2014
2002 Maybe…?
[Pic from here]
I borrowed a demo full-suspension bike from the shop and brought it to Hartshorne Woods, NJ. It was a Specialized Epic with a Brain shock as I recall, though I may be getting that wrong, but if not it must have been 2002 because apparently that was the first year Specialized offered the Brain shock and it was supposed to be a big deal.
So in 20 years I’ve ridden four full-suspension bikes for a grand total of something like 10 hours, which doesn’t exactly make me an expert. Come to think of it, it doesn’t exactly put me in a position to declare bike suspension to be evil, either. But hey, whatever, it’s the Internet, right?
Anyway, like comparing the AMP to the Jones, comparing the AMP to modern full-suspension bikes isn’t fair. The better comparison would be one of its contemporaries, like the undamped Softride:
It’s definitely better than the Softride. That stem was terrible, like attaching your bars to a packing tape dispenser.
Anyway, who even needs comparisons? The ride was a lot of fun, and the more I rode the bike the better it felt and the more I liked it. And I wasn’t the only turkey out there, either:
See?
Birds of a feather flock together.
