Lurker to Mountain/Trail biker
 

After reading this tread for quite a while I just got a great deal on a slightly used CO-OP DRT 2.1. I'm really enjoying the bike although it will take a while to get used to looking down and seeing 27.5 x 2.8 tires after primarily riding a road bike and 700 x 37mm touring bike. I plan to ride trails and avoid technical stuff that can hurt.

I need to get up to speed on hydraulic brakes and thru axels but I'm sure that some u-tube time will help. I'm sure that the Park Tool videos will be extremely informative. I'll likely add a dropper post and go tubeless in the near future.

Just a quick question...I live between 5-10 miles from a few trails. Do most of you ride these distances over pavement to trailheads or do you drive and rarely/never ride on pavement? If it matters, the bike has Rocket Ron tires (I don't remember the exact Rocket Ron model.)

I'm sure more questions will arise.

Thank you.

The ride or drive to trails thing eh it depends. I personally wouldn't want to ride 10 miles (20 round trip) on the road just to get to the trails and then do another 15 on the trails. Riding a mtn bike on the road sucks at least when they have rocket rons on them, mine does as well :). 5 miles I might at least some times. I ride my road bike to one of the parks with mtn trails though and sometimes if things are completely dry and I want to have some fun and hit the easy trail with it, 28mm road tires are great on dirt, rocks and roots.

I doubt you are going to find much consensus on this.

it depends on how much time someone has to ride, the bike they are riding (some suck more than others on the road), WHY they are riding, just how far and how hilly it is...

If I was in my HT (which was not too bad on pavement) and just felt adventurous and wanted a ride with a little bit of everything... sure I might ride 5-10 miles to some trails.

But if I am in the mood for singletrack on my FS bike, I’m usually not going to want to ride the road long to get to the trails. The bike sucks on pavement, and the pavement eats through the soft, knobby, expensive tires fast.

Welcome! As already suggested 5 to 10 miles is probably too far on a dedicated mountain bike. However, I do it consistently in my local area and budget for new tires. Tires are available in different treads/compounds.
Definitely consider a dropper post as your first upgrade. In my humble opinion the best innovation in recent years for mountain biking. Tubeless tires are also over the upgrade for your money.

Congrats on the new bike! Looks pretty nice. I hope it brings you many miles of smiles.




I feel quite lucky (and to be honest, this was a major selling factor when I moved/bought a home)to live less than a mile from a trail system...so I ride to my trail head a lot. Honestly 5 miles? I'd probably do it sometimes. 10 miles? Probably not, unless I could do it on a gravel/cx bike.




With regards to the brakes, learn to look down through them to check pad wear--it's easy to miss because the pistons advance automatically to account for wear, and too often people run them down to the metal and damage their rotors. Replacing them is relatively easy--remove the pads, clean around the pistons with some denatured alcohol, press them in, and reinstall the pads. Replace the wheel and pump the brakes until they feel firm. Chances are high that you'll have to realign the caliper afterwards--basically, loosen the brake mounting bolts and pull the brake, then tighten them. This will almost always result in a functional adjustment, although they might rub--a pro would adjust the alignment by hand to get no rub.




Also don't freak out if the brakes have a small amount of rub or noise--this isn't going to slow you down meaningfully, and doesn't mean anything is really wrong. Be careful not to touch the rotors braking surface with your hands or get any oil/grease on them. If you want you can clean the bike with some soap and water and spray it off and they rotors will be fine.





Last week I managed to shuttle to the start of a 16 mile trail (my wife and I happened to camp there the night before)with thousands of feet down techy trail to town, and then pedaled the 8 miles home. Man that felt brutal--I was too proud to call her for a ride after telling her I was planning on pedaling home.

I have to drive because there aren't any mtb trails close to me. I wish there were!

I commute on my mountain bike, and do not change the tires. The rear wears out in <1000 miles. But it doesn't bother me to go slow.

In recent years? What!?!

Do you feel differently?

It's not about how I feel. It's about fact.

The fact is that if you've ridden for a while you understand that the innovation ("a new method, idea, product, etc.") happened many years ago.

I was kind of late to the dropper party (notwithstanding my Hite Rite way back when) but still started riding with one in 2005.

That's why your "the best innovation in recent years for mountain biking" bit made me chuckle.

Thank you for assuming I'm a new rider and do not understand the English language. I'm not going to play the semantics game or assume things about you but I would like to see some proof of your "fact" that the dropper party was already going strong enough in 2005 that you were late to it.

Fact:

I bought my first Gravity Dropper in 2005. They had already been out for a few years.

So droppers have been a new product, according to you, for at least 14 years.

That's why I'm still chuckling. Thanks.

I'm glad my comedy derailed this thread for the OP. Do you have any insight for the OP or were you just trolling?

Discussing bikes on a bike forum is trolling?

Asking about your uninformed claim and then educating you is trolling?

That's an odd, a very defensive, response on your part.

As far as the OP's question goes: some people have no trouble riding to the trailhead. Some people struggle.

I never made an uninformed claim in my post and up until now the only thing you were doing in this thread is laughing at me.

guess I don't see the point in replying just to dress someone down in something you kind of agree on? I mean you both think a dropper post is a good idea.

If you started riding a GD in 2005 you were most definitely NOT “late to the dropper party”. You were on the bleeding leading edge.

GD had been in business for maybe 2 years (tops) but had sold very few. The Maverick Speedball came out in 2004 but was not a remote operated dropper (and also sold very few) The GD was the only remote operated dropper even available until 2007 when CB released the Joplin.

I remember this well this because I bought a GD in 2005, and despite riding and living in CA where everyone is buying the newest everything, I had seen exactly ONE out in the wild before that. In fact, other than mine, I saw only that one other from 2004-2006. When I moved back east in 2006 to a town with a fairly thriving mtb scene, it would be another year before I saw another dropper (2007). And another year or before I saw a handful.

Droppers did not start to catch on much until the late 2000s. Up until then, the pervasive view was that they were ridiculous gimmicks. It was well after 2010 that the majority of people were using them.

So perhaps “recent innovation” was the wrong phrase, but “recent adoption” would be fairly spot on. They were not widely adopted until well into the 2010s, and it has only been in the last 4 years that droppers became so ubiquitous that mtb geo has begun to take droppers into account.

BTW, the GD I bought in 2005 has been in constant use ever since on my main ride.

EDIT: Shoot, just realized this all has zero to do with the OP’s question. Sorry.

I drive to the trailhead. The parking lot at one of our mountains though fills up quickly, so it isn't unusual to park a ways away from the start of the trails and ride my bike the rest of the distance. Maybe a KM or two.

The poor OP probably unsubbed from his own thread after it got turned into some drama thing. :rolleyes:

"the best innovation in recent years for mountain biking" is the uninformed claim that you made. Droppers aren't some new invention as you falsely claimed.

Yeah, I was indeed late to the dropper party since I was the third (fourth?) guy in my extended group to get one. I was a hold out until I saw how well they held up and how they made riding more fun.

I don't know where you're getting your sales figures but 2004 was the year that they were everywhere in the media (MBA, Velo News, Dirtrag, etc.)

Did you skip the first part of my sentence? No claim made.

Yours was a very unusual group then. For several years after I got mine in 2005, almost nobody even know what the heck it was. Everyone thought I had a seat post shock. Yes, GD got SOME coverage (that's how I knew about it) as as something new, but nobody was raving about them, and not a lot of people bought them. They were largely written off as a gimmick. I road with a lot of of folks I hooked up with through MTBR in CA from 2004-2006. These are the guys who were buying new bikes practically every year. I saw ONE besides mine.

The fact is that droppers were extremely rare before around 2007, and still uncommon until a few years after that.

Go look at some of the "show us your rigs" threads from MTBR from 2004-2007 and tell me the percentage with GDs you see. Gonna be really, really small.

Got it. My mistake. Your opinion that droppers are the best innovation in recent years is unfounded and based on a serious misunderstanding of the facts. Since they've been around for over a decade.

Lotsa coverage, including folks raving about them (ex: Biker - Editor's choice 2005).

gravitydropper.com/news/

Yeah, it sounds like we rode with different groups for sure.

Magazines doing their job and covering new products does not equate to a product selling well or being popular.

I am sure bio pace rings got a bunch of coverage when they came out. I’ll bet Hite-Rite did two.

Not only were we not riding with the same people, we were apparently witnessing two entirely different mtb cultures and not following the same forums (like MTBR).