As a result, the mis-mitered tubes could be used to build a fun bike to be given to friends, and after some happy accident, I ended up with one—a steel, single-pivot, long-travel trail bike or, perhaps, a slightly sketchy enduro bike. While I’m not going to pretend to have ridden enough trail bikes or enduro bikes to be able to make nuanced observations about suspension kinematics, I have ridden enough hyper bike bikes over the past two decades to have a good idea about what worked for me and how the bike felt to ride. It’s a bold move to build a deliciously dynamic and forgivingly flexy steel trail bike in Germany, the heartland of stiffness being touted as the grail of bicycle manufacture in cycling media. I stripped the bike down to the carbon frame (2 pounds 13 ounces) and rebuilt it from the ground up.
The HALKA is built for the biggest bucket-list goals whether you’re an expedition mountaineer or in the role of a guide, with just the features required to safely summit and return to the realms where the rest of us live. With UCI World Championship XC titles in both long and short formats, Vittoria is proud to finally offer to the public what factory racers have trusted for the past two seasons. When designing the Peyote, simply going fast wasn’t the goal. Instead, we viewed success as the reduction of time from point-A to point-B, taking speed, grip, control, dependability, and rider fatigue into account. That said, the first thing is to start with a bike that can be upgraded.
I was overbiking for sure, but simultaneously, I was pushing myself to ride new things rather than pushing my fitness as I’d expected. The lack of anything fun to ride locally and my deep desire to ride the bike all the time instilled a sense of being lost and bored, which seemed to always result in play. I’d cruise around looking for things to ride up, down, off, or onto. I could go out for a ride with no aim and no idea where I was going and have a great time just repeatedly trying to hop over a log or riding down a set of steps fast enough to be able to ride up again on the other side; just playing around by myself, having a nice time.
As for the dropper, I fiddled with it a few times at the start but otherwise just got it out of the way so I could ride. The dropper is designed for super quick and easy bleeding, which refreshingly takes significantly less time to do in reality than it takes to watch the 18-second video on their website about it. It’s nothing about the effects of tires, suspension, and steering geometry, but the stiff bars worked nicely in the context of this bike. The BEAST rims also felt incredibly stiff both vertically and laterally, but again complemented the dynamic handling characteristics of a big squishy bike quite well. They were very light and felt incredibly solid, sustaining zero permanent damage from being repeatedly smashed against rocks when the tires bottomed out.
Remember, we’re all ambassadors for cycling, so be polite on the road and the trails and observe the leave no trace principles. The bike started life with Berghaus flat pedals, because I felt like that was what I should run. However, a couple of months in I gave up on learning to hop things properly and switched to Hope XC pedals, hoping that they’d help me get some air. In fact, they didn’t as the sensation of jumping through the suspension was completely new, and my poor technique bunny hopping did not translate to a bike with suspension. Regardless, I did continue to run the Hope pedals because I felt more secure clipped in, which inspired greater confidence which in turn improved my riding, even if it was for the wrong reasons.
I ride it every week on the local mountain bike trails. And I shopped around for a month or two until I found deals on all the parts. The reality is that each new feature has to either increase price or take away from something else to compensate. That’s how bikes end up with a front disc brake and a rear rim brake. Most people don’t ride on mountain bike trails, so make sure you avoid bikes with features you don’t need. The Day Pack Collection covers a broad range of single-day activities whether it’s a few hours outside, all day off-trail excursions, peak-bagging, bikepacking, summit pushes, or your day-to-day adventures between home and work and back.
The RD-1 rear mech is by far the best-looking out there, but more critically, it’s unfussy about what other parts it works with, meshing equally well with 11—or 12-speed SRAM, Shimano, or even Campagnolo shifters. In practice, that translated to the bars feeling significantly stiff. Regrettably ill-equipped for the scientific process, I’d estimate deflection over their ample span to be within the acceptable deflection tolerance over the same span for a rolled steel joist designated for constructing a skyscraper. The 35-mm clamp diameter carbon risers that the bike came with have an anti-crush hyper bike zone where they be clamped, as well as a soft, high-friction coefficient lamination on the outside in clamping areas because over-tightening of stem bolts is often a reason for handlebar failure. In this way, the bars don’t move, even with less-than-the-ideal torque, and won’t get crushed with more, so the risk of crush-based failure is mitigated. My SRD’s life began as a pile of mitered tubes destined to be an iteration of the forthcoming enduro-focused Sour Double Choc during the middle stage of Sour’s onshoring process when tubes were still mitered in Taiwan and welded in Germany.
The Hyper eRide mountain bike has been hailed as the perfect companion for younger cyclists looking to get out and explore. At an affordable price, it’s equipped with a powerful electric pedal-assist motor and a 26-inch mountain bike frame. This cutting-edge equipment provides a great way for riders to travel faster, farther, and more comfortably than ever before. The real stars of the show were the grips, which were super comfortable, amazingly durable, had integrated bar ends, and were designed to be rotated with wear, which is unusual for lock-on grips.
All the while being simple and, in my experience, maintenance-free with four sealed bearings between the swing arm and the frame. It weighs in at 356 g and is machined in two parts, a heat-treated steel part for the first nine smaller cogs, and a hard anodized aluminum part for the three largest cogs to save weight. It offers amazing and consistent performance throughout its 520% range.
Bikeyoke is relatively obscure outside of Germany but I hope that changes, as everything they specced on the bike looked great and was a joy to use. I’ve always been a fan of Dresden-based Acto5 and their absurd CNC-machined frames. Conceptually wild and, in the flesh, a sight to behold. I will never need the performance that they offer, so thankfully, they make cranks for fanbois.