Saved just enough to push through day 3. What a great weekend! Started out with more Camp 4 Coffee. Then pack up as much as possible, ride the road bike up to the ski hill, get a new day lift pass, and get in line. Made it to the Revel tent and got a Rascal to demo. I’d been trying all day yesterday to get one, so ready to ride:
Fun ride, really an agile, fun ride. Great demo! That was bike #8.. So on to bike #9 – it is the YT Jeffsy Core 3. This was another fun ride! Wahoo!
And got back, met Carrie, grabbed lunch, then time to head home. We drove to Alamos, charged up, rode out bikes along the Rio Grande, and then on towards NM.
Outerbike recap – 9 great bikes, over ~$50k worth of bikes ridden. Most interesting – the belt drive. Did over 135 km / ~85 miles, 17 laps on the Mountain. Best result – none of the bikes blew me away – that is, my current Pivot 6 is pretty sweet and just as good as any of these bikes. Next bike I look at will hopefully have a belt drive, but I don’t need a new bike soon. Lots of fun, happy with my current bike, good food and time in Crested Butte with Carrie – perfect birthday!!
Day 2 as in 2 much fun and 2 many bikes! Got up, grabbed Camp 4 Coffee. Rode the road bike up from town to the ski hill. Get lift pass and get in line for the gates to open. The first bike I rode was the most interesting:
A nice Zero bike. But I picked this one to try out the belt drive. Really interesting ride – I did some more cross country riding, including down and then back up a short ski run. This is a 12 speed bike and the belt drive and internal hub/shift allows you to shift the whole range while not moving. Slightly different ride/shift – but lower maintenance. A future bike will have a belt drive!
Demo bike #5. I rode the Intense 279 – the first mullet bike (a 29″ wheel in front, 27.5″ in back). I like the bike and how the mullet rode – roll right over more with the 29″ and a little more agility and control with the 27.5″. Glad I rode this to try it out.
Demo bike #6 – Steel is Real! Rode a Reeb (the short travel). Really great ride! I rode both the downhill (frequency) – the bike definitely isn’t a pure downhiller by design; and also rode a more cross country trail – that was really fun and the bike shined.
This was the only demo bike that had a cooler full of refreshing drinks upon return. No surprise from reeb – but definitely grateful for it:
Thanks reeb!
Demo bike #7 – Lamere Trail. This was my favorite bike of the day. Just good fast fun (retail on the bike I rode was ~$8500 I think. It better be good! 😉 I liked talking with this company. I was interested in trying their e-bikes (but didn’t really come to try e-bikes on this trip – they didn’t allow e-bikes on the lifts). I especially liked the Lamere suspension design. Some sweet carbon – and it felt like it.
Met up with Carrie for happy hour and then we rode our road bikes back down to town. Great Indian food at the Eldo for dinner. I wanted to demo this bike:
After a great celebration of Carrie’s birthday in town:
We did the work week, kept up with kiddos busy schedules, and then left the kids behind and went up to Crested Butte. We drove the EV (Nissan Leaf) up and just stopped in Alamosa to recharge – time for a good bike ride exploring nice trails along the Rio Grande:
Then back on the road – we stopped in Gunnison. Great to charge up a little – and even better, catch up with Curt and Alice over delicious dinner downtown!
Made it into Crested Butte, found our (great! super convenient – one block from Camp4 Coffee), unpacked, got the EV over to the (great! but slow) charger for an overnight charge up, and went back to the AirBnB. We feel happy to be here!
Welcome to Crested Butte. Be Kind.
Up early, EV charged, Camp4 Coffee, then rode my road bike up from town to the Ski Hill. A good warm up to sign up and get in line for the start of Outerbike! Three days of unlimited lift rides, unlimited demo bikes, lunches, happy hours, and loads of bike nerds! What fun!!
First bike – a sweet Canfield Jedi. No dropper, small cluster of gears – pure downhiller. This was tons of fun.
Instead of my usual approach of trying to explore all over the mountain and try every trail, I decided to ride each demo bike on the same few runs to get a good comparison/feel for each. I did Frequency on every bike, usually Lower Avery. I enjoyed upper Avery, Luge, and the “back around” cruiser route of Primer then Painter Boy / Teaser / Awakening. Too much fun.
Bike #2 was the Yeti SB 160. Fun bike – this is the one I realized I like the Pivot suspension geometry that spreads out the bike rather than compressing the bike. Both bike #1 and #2 felt “small”/tight (and I was on a L that fit correctly) – figured out why talking with other bike nerds. The Yeti:
Met Carrie for lunch, then bike #3, the Fezzari La Sal Peak. This was my favorite bike of the day. Really sweet ride:
Day 1 of riding in the books. Meet Carrie for Happy Hour, enjoy the scene, sad we didn’t win any of the awesome raffle prizes.
Then ride our bikes (down!) back into town, hunger strikes so we go to Secret Stash Pizza – the crack fries are out of this world as always and the pizza was awesome.
What a great birthday celebration for us both – and this is only day 1 of 3 for Outerbike!
