I think 29ers are stupid. There, I said it. There are those who don’t, which is fine. They are wrong.
I have never thought,”Gee, I wish I had a little more rotational mass to contend with.” Or, “It sure would be nice if my wheels were as delicate as my road bike’s”. Yes, I’ve ridden them, no, I don’t want to ride yours.
I know people will argue, that the men’s and women’s XC world championships were both won on 29ers this year. To that I would say Ned Overend won with Moose Handlebars one year, and several championships were won on Tioga tensioned disk rear wheels.
All qualitative analyses aside. Some people(Jake,Kerry, etc.) seem to like them. Go figure.
The most devout of all 29′er evangelists are the Dailey brothers. Ron and Randy. They both ride
LenzSport Leviathon’s. If you haven’t heard of LenzSport, they make two things, 29 inch bikes, and
skibikes.
Recently when we were down at the 24 Hours of Moab, I got a call from Ron saying he’d be down there riding with the factory guys for LenzSport. They were checking out the new big travel 29′ers from the company. We weren’t able to get together, but after they rallied the Whole Enchilada. Ron stopped by the race to say hi.
He was telling us how great the big-wheel-big-travel bikes were, and mentioned that he had seen something bigger.
BEHOLD!!!!!!
- Yes, the bike is that big and Ron is that small.
Ron’s girlfriend was giggling about how when he rode it, he looked like a little kid. Ron knows I love him, so I can say, that Ron kind of looks like a little kid whenever he rides a bike of any size. I wasn’t able to get the full mental picture until he posted the pictures on Facebook. Thanks for posting them Ron, and sorry for poaching them.
Shortly after Ron left us, the 36er showed up at the rider check-in tent. I didn’t get any pictures, but let’s just say it was easy to pick out of a crowd.
The bike is made by Black Sheep Bikes out of Colorado. It’s called the ZAMer(?). It is available as a Ti frameset, with custom fork. There is no mention anywhere on the site about where in the hell you could possibly buy 36 inch wheels, rims, spokes, or tires.
I like to think that this points out the silliness of the 29er, but I think the truly converted will strive towards this being the next, next big thing.
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Probably not the best thing to be knocking on 29ers on a “shop” blog. Just sayin…In 10 years or less, any shop that doesn’t actively pursue the 29er market will be losing a big chunck of revenue. I’ll go out on a limb here and say the 36er won’t catch on any time soon with the MTBer crowd. Maybe for the bike path enthusiasts? Can you imagine how fast you could get going on that thing? I saw it at the 24HOM and it blew my mind, it was like watching a circus freak walk by, everyone was pointing.
Comment by Jake — October 29, 2009 @ 9:51 am
Luckily,…..no one from the shop ever reads this blog.
Maybe I should have “The opinions expressed are not necessarily, those of the shop, it’s employees, or it’s management.” Somewhere in the title.
Nah.
Comment by josh — October 29, 2009 @ 5:13 pm
Nice, After riding the Lenzsport 6 inch travel 29 inch wheel bikes on the Whole Enchalada trail this is the only way to go. The bike handled very well and was a total blast to bomb porcupine rim on. If you could test ride one of these you would see the difference. My vote goes for the 29er’s.
http://www.mtnbikeriders.com/2007/05/08/lenzsport-lunch-box/. Nice pics.
Comment by Ron — November 8, 2009 @ 9:32 am