I won a bike!

[lnr]

They recently had a promotion in the canteen at work. One raffle ticket for every sandwich you bought. I ended up with 3 tickets, so was very surprised to find that I'd won. And this is what I won:

It's definitely a more expensive bike than I was expecting it to be (more details). But I'm not entirely surprised to find it doesn't have any lights. And I'm not *quite* sure what I'm going to do with it :-)

Comments

[lnr]

I wouldn't expect lights to come as standard on a bike I was buying. But I wouldn't buy a bike without also buying some accessories and lights would definitely be one of them. You'd kind of hope a bike that you won would be ready to ride. And at this time of year lights are necessary: if I want to ride it home I'll have to do so before 4pm.

I was wondering what your opinion of it would be, since you're the most serious mountain bike rider I know :) Clearly it's a pretty entry-level bike, but it does look like it might actually be a real mountain bike (iyswim) rather than just a toy bike.

I don't really need a new bike: my own is only a couple of years old and in good nick and more appropriate for commuting and a slightly higher price-band bike anyway. But it is quite tempting to hang on to it and give some off-road stuff some more of a go. We had fun on the hybrids round Thetford forest but they definitely had their limitations: notably being too *long*.

I only discovered GHWT because I was looking up rock band on amazon: I was intending to get that but I realised the guitars aren't compatible. It's a complete arse that you can't just buy another guitar hero compatible guitar on its own though. Dammit I want to play 2-player!

[perdita-fysh.livejournal.com]

I had a Saracen aluminium frame hardtail with V brakes as my second bike (only because the first fell off the car at a very young age and was replaced by the company who made the defective bike carrier). I loved it to death and only moved upward because the trails we were riding were so rough that a hardtail was giving me a painful choice between burning thighs (from never sitting down) or aching kidneys (from the constant rattling). Their full-suss bikes were not great then, very heavy steel things which lost most of their momentum into the suspension; but they did make nice hardtails.

Mine was pretty decent and robust for a cheap bike. I gave it to my mum when I got a new one and she rode it for a while although it was too big for her. She has a full-suss Specialised (that she never rides!) now so they've taken it over to France for their house there and I look forward to riding it a bit when we're there next summer. I did lots of local off-road trails on it with no problem, it was the steeper rockier stuff we started playing on that gave me the problems - and that took a couple of years of riding really.

If you don't need the money it might be fun to play on and see how it goes. Check out the second-hand value first though on ebay - if they don't hold their value well it might be worth selling it as new without riding it. I know Marins hold their value really well, I can't remember how Saracens do.

[lnr]

Ha, the only two on ebay are brand new 16" ones. And both have different RRPs quoted, both higher than the RRP on wiggle.

[wechsler.livejournal.com]

My experience is that they last pretty well, if you periodically replace any bits you've crashed.

[lnr]

:-)

And gosh, I didn't realise you were still reading!