We went to Hotham over the new year break and spent a day on the shuttles at Bright. We had three 14 year olds (huckwits) and a couple of pretty new riders so spent most of the time just going down Hero/Shred Kelly.
As I have said, I'm old, only have one eye and need to go to work on Monday, so 'sending it' is 100% not my thing. Having said that, after a couple of runs down to have a look at things (and pick up the pieces from a couple of crashes, more broken mechs FFS), I thought it might be time to have a crack at a few of the A lines and stop rolling/manualing the jumps.
I made plenty of mistakes but inexplicably remained upright for the entire day. The Push HC97 damper in the Pike just gets better and better the harder it's pushed and I'm sure it saved my ass a couple of times. I reckon there may be scope to add another volume spacer to the Kitsuma, but I'm reluctant to improve small bump compliance at the expense of pedal response. I managed to overshoot a couple of the large table tops to flat which was really just not that eventful, no hard bottom out just a little bit of poo coming out. By the 5th run down I hit every A line and the bike was awesome, no complaints at all.
While waiting for the shuttle at the bottom an English bloke took some pictures of it to send back to his mates in the UK who are huge Bird fans, it's the first time anyone has recognised the brand of bike, usually I get 'what the hell is that thing?'.
In summary, I haven't ridden my Paradox in 6 months and am thinking about selling it. Unless I'm riding a short 30km loop with a good smooth surface, the Paradox is just slower/harder/less comfortable in every situation. Perhaps I'll take it for a hack this arvo and try and rekindle the love. The Bird is just capable enough down hill for me and very snappy uphill and for the more XC stuff that I do.
On my things to do list:
- Fit seat stay protection for chain slap on the inside, it's just starting to get a couple of marks on there
- Investigate new brake option. The E4's have good modulation but they just aren't 'right'. Not great power and too fussy. I'm not a fan of the binary response from Shimano brakes so will have a look at Formulas or something I suppose.
- Probably time to look at getting a new rear tyre