I have to hand it to the folks over at Trek. I was reading a review of the Trek 820 mountain bike. The reviewer was quite through and quite a bit.. odd. The review was not favorable and I commend Trek for publishing it and letting it stand. However, it was also a deceptively well written mad-man's fantasy, which was easy for me, a "veteran" cyclist to discern. On the other hand, I'm really not so sure that the people in the target audience, looking to buy a Trek 820 would recognize that the reviewer was mad.

It seems that the individual in question, a dedicated road rider, purchased the lowest priced geared adult bicycle in the Trek line-up to ride 140+ mile a week on the MUP. He begins by complaining that the bike doesn't fit him and that he doesn't like the front fork. He then attacks the 820s target demographic:

" but unfortunately, most people that ride very little dictate what we can buy.".

Somehow, this 6 and a half foot tall man who puts 140-200 miles a week riding his poor 820 at 20 MPH speeds all the time, rode the thing into the ground.  Who would have thunk  such a thing possible.  

I have some issues with this dude.

First, if he didn't want a bike with a front suspension fork, why did he BUY a bike with a front suspension fork? There are plenty of offerings, some from Treka dn nearly as cheep as the 820 that not only don't have a front suspension fork but have larger, narrower wheels and the road-bike components that he had such difficulty retro-fitting onto his mountain bike. Why 105 and not Deore for that back derailure? Hum? He summarizes his review by trashing the bike some ore, bragging about his riding habits some more and insulting the bikes target audience some more. He does offer the bike the back jaded complement as being as good as a Next bike, maybe even better.  

In closing, the reviewer, clearly, purchased the wrong product for the job and had difficult making it work for him from within the oddly narrow confines of his idiom. Then he published it.  As a diatribe. On the Trek Website. And the let him. And, here's the kicker, 16 

of 32 customers found it "useful". Useful for what?

Sorry Sir, I have said it before, and I'll say it again. I LOVE my Trek 820! It has ben a good trail bike and is a GREAT MUP bike/Errand bike. I have not broken or bent it. I have not ahd any issues with it and no parts have fallen off of it. It's near indestructible and I would cheerfully replace it with another one of the exact same kind if stolen. OK, that's not true. I'd replace it with a bike with no suspension in the fork and larger, narrower wheels and some of those 105 mountain bike components.  

It is significantly harder...

... to ride a mountain bike  off road (or on for that matter) than it is to ride a cross bike on a bike path! 290 calories my ass! 

Went Riding with the Wife

Ten miles ( a lot for me, it was killing her!) and two hot dog specials later, we are still alive.

OK, Usually my complaint with myself is that I don't have any pictures but this time I didn't write any words and that  shame because something needs to be said about the effort that my Honey put out keeping up to me and the incredible Hot Dogs we had for dinner. 

My wife has this Raleigh MTB that she got as a gift from her parents when she graduated High School. Last year she decided that she doesn't like riding it because the frame is too small. OK. Sure. Another Raleigh bike that was in her family was her dad's Marathon which got passes on to me a few years ago. I really enjoy riding that bike around and was very thankful to him for letting me have it as it replaced my too-small Peugeot. Last year I was able to get my hands on a matching mixtie version of the Marathon and I bought it and had the LBS fix it up. She rode it once and did not touch it again until this ride.

One of our favorite trails to ride is the Marsh Trail in Salisbury. It is not very long but we never fail to see bird life and little critters that often scamper right over the trail in front of us! On those occasions where we have our toddler with us he thinks that is pretty darn cool. We set out on this trail this evening and, before we even began she informed me that she wanted to go over the bridge and ride around Newburyport. So, that's what we did. She was a Brave Little Toaster but by the time we made it up and back the Marsh Trail and over the bridge, she was wiped out and hungry. I wanted to ride a little bit on the Clipper City Trail as it has a spur that connects to Cashman's Park that I had not explored yet. It was there that we came across a hot dog cart.

The people running it live nearby and had actually just gone into business that day! They were very nice and cart was spotlessly clean. The dogs were delicious and we even got fortune cookies for desert! Excellent first effort from those folks. I hope that they do well.

After our pick-nick meal she got her second wind and I got to do a little more exploring. We rode down to the train station, which was a lot closer than I though and cut back through the city. and over the bridge. Climbing the bridge was the biggest hill for sure, but there were a few other little hills involved in the ride. It was a challenge for me and definitely for her! She had some trouble getting the hang of friction-shifting her gears. She made it the whole way. I think that ten miles is a very respectable First Ride for her.

How is this for "tween" for you?

I have been reading about the The Emmaus Cycle for Shelter on line for a few days now. Because it's a Cycling event, I never associated it specifically with the homeless shelter that we have here in town. In fact, we have MANY (no, not "some" or "a few": MANY) homeless shelters here in town. This is NOT a cycling kind of town. It's a "twwen" space. Its "tween" a place where people cycle for transportation, like a "real" city and a place where people cycle for recreation, like a real suburb. I just assumed that Emmaus was an organization much larger than the one facility that we have here in town. I was wrong. 


So, this is a charity ride to support, solely, a homeless shelter in Haverhill MA. The Irony of this, of course, is that NONE of the loops are actually IN Haverhill, much less go anywhere NEAR the shelter, or it's environs. Yes, it does start in Haverhill, (in one of the nicest sections of town) but it make a beeline out of town for some of the "nicer" communities surrounding Haverhill.


I would like to urge all of you to NOT ride this ride or contribute in any way to this, or any other Charity based out of Haverhill or for the benefit of any individual reside in IN Haverhill. It is only by your staunch and unwavering inaction that we can make Haverhill an inhospitable place for the lowest classes of people and make it into the kind of community that charity bike rides DO go through!

"Read Me"

Go ahead! Click it!

I Worte about riding my bicycle yesterday

right over here.  I should be taking more pictures but I kinda forget when I'm riding....

First ride of the season? Really?

No? I mean, we have a vacation planned FOCUSED on riding bicycles. Ilove bicycles. I own a shit-ton of them! Sadly, it is true. Yesterday was the first time all year that I had the chance to actually RIDE one of them. In a way, it was good.

I have a new bike. I got it at the end of last year and never really rode it so much. It's a Specialized Tricross (just the base model). Being, as it is, a Cyclocross bike it is theoretically capable of not only riding on the road but on light trails as well. Of course it feels like a road bike, more so than it does a MTB. Having ridden neither in many months my body had no "muscle memory" of what a bike on the road "should" feel like or what a bike on trails "should" feel like so when I went off exploring yesterday, I was able to go on both with he same bike and not get wiggles out about having a "road bike" on the easy trails that I found and explored.

It wasn't a long ride by any stretch of the imagination, but it got my heart rate up and I burned more calories that I would have sitting at home blogging about riding, so I guess it was a "win". I went around Salisbury: the Marsh Trails and some random dirt roads and trails that I found that led down to the river. The one really interesting (and smelly) thing that I did find was a huge pile of clam shells, like a commercial clam-shel dump. Out in the middle of no-where. It was kind of creepy actually.

Hopefully yesterday was the first ride of a re-kindled love affair. Bikes are fun!