Are you considering buying a new mountain bike that might even cost more than your car? If so, you might want to crank on the pedals before you put down the plastic.
When I bought my first mountain bike 20 years ago, it was common practice for the local shop to let you take the bike around the parking lot for a ‘test ride’. This was back when there were U-brakes; thumb shifters; no suspension; and a mid end bikes were $500 and high end bikes were seldom over $2000. You got the feel for the bike and if the frame fit you, but it was not a real good indication as to how it would handle on the trails.
With the ever increasing amount of technology being put into bikes today, it is not uncommon for a decent bike to be in the range of $1500 to almost $10,000 – more than some new cars! With front suspension, rear suspension, 29er wheels, disc brakes, 2×10 gearing, etc. the parking lot test course just does not cut it anymore. If you have only ridden 26-inch wheels on all of your mountain bikes, how do you know that you will like the feel of a 29er? This in fact happened to me a few years ago. I test rode a Cannondale 1FG 29er from a bike shop in Fairfax, California and absolutely hated how it handled in the parking lot. I own a 26-inch wheeled 1FG , but the 29er felt slow and seemed to corner like a school bus – I vowed to never own a 29er bike.
My mind was changed last Fall when I was able to participate in a large, two day demo in Boulder City, Nevada. Most of the bike manufacturers had booths with test bikes and there were multiple loops mapped out in the dry, rocky Bootleg Canyon trail system. I was able to take out bikes from Santa Cruz, Specialized, Spot, Moots and more. Though I rode some 26-inch wheeled bikes, I wanted to see if the 29ers were all they were talked up to be. Being able to ride quite a few on ‘real’ trails convinced me that they are not just a fad as they climbed much more easily over rocky terrain than the 26-inch bikes and really were not that much slower through the turns.
Demo Days
Though the two days we spent in Boulder City were for people involved in the bike industry, it is not uncommon for most bike manufacturers to have a local demo day at an event or even your local trail head. My friend and I stumbled across one such demo day when we went up to Annadel State Park in Santa Rosa, California on a Saturday last summer. We were finishing up our ride and noticed that Specialized had rolled into the parking lot with a large trailer and a fleet of bikes to test. We started talking with the guys from Specialized and I decided to take out a full suspension bike to see how it would handle the trails that we just rode on our own bikes. I left my bike along with my ID and I was off to hit the trails. I rode the test bike for about 25 minutes even though they would have let me take it out for longer – they wanted to limit the rides to an hour so that others could also have a chance to test their bikes. After the test ride, they answered my questions and handed me the current catalog to keep.
Most manufacturers will post on their website when and where a demo day will be happening near you. Sometimes they occur at a local bike dealer, a trail head or an event if they are a sponsor. Usually they prefer to be in close proximity to some trails to allow the potential customers to perform a real world test ride. On rare occasions, they will even offer a shuttle service to the top of the local downhill run if one is available . Demo days usually have no associated costs… of course unless you buy a bike from the retailer that day!