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Driving home at 9pm and its raining in south austin. To quote slayer: "god hates us all".

Welp, ill be riding an XC rig but will try to keep an enduro state of mind 🤣 Thanks for organizing this Seth

We were considering going there last weekend but did pedernales instead. Theres some areas that stay pretty muddy on the north side of the trail and but no way to know for sure as the ride reports on the trail apps are a few weeks old. If its wet, some of those rocks would be brutal out there. considering this but a bit of a drive for more of the same https://www.facebook.com/BanderaBike/

I built a new bike in mid august and last weekend was the first time it saw dirt. I was amped for the cooler weather to come but wasn't prepared for all of the rain. Dont get me wrong, im glad we have it and the lakes are full but cabin fever has definitely set in. Ive actually resigned myself to selling some bikes and putting money away.

THIS^ "“Money is like manure; it's not worth a thing unless it's spread around encouraging young things to grow.” If Austin is going to pitch itself as alternative for techies in norcal to relocate to, we need to act accordingly when it comes to our public servants who keep things together behind the scenes. My wife has been in education for 16+ years and we have been looking to relocate to the PNW after our freshman graduates. If she took a lateral move to a district in the seattle/bellingham area she'd earn 40% more than she does here and have a better retirement. 40%!! Furthermore the COL in bellingham is about the same as in Austin. Teachers make more in WA than ADMIN do in the Austin area. APD is asking for more officers and cant get it, but we can build a riverwalk?? Red river and dirty sixth is a f@cking mess to deal with when you want to go see a band or catch a movie at the ritz. The homeless issue is truly embarrassing and the city should be ashamed that it has gone on for so long. Get the arc out of downtown and spend the money to house these people so we're not doing the bum gauntlet every time we go down there. The traffic issues will hopefully begin to sort itself in the usa as autonomous cars become accessible.

Does make it hard to sit around and wait months to ride trails you were already bored with. Gonna have to hit the road and shake this off soon.

SOLD!

I have a bigger problem with the corporate welfare system in this city and state than any public works project. Besides, your assessed "value" is the biggest factor in paying too much in property taxes, and yes i live in austin. Take the good with the bad in a booming economy.........

Was splitting time on a super 2 mips and giro xc/dork helmet. Bought switchblade for a killer deal but it's a bit much for basic trail riding. Hopefully montaro will fill the spot.

Just bought one of these to use as a lighter alternative to my switchblade.

aluminum

Built an XL sentinel with carbon hoops and full XTR. Weighed almost 36lbs

I'd be down for this.

The short offset CSU on the transitions is a total game changer. I'll never go back to 51mm

X2 @tomreeceGlad you made it down there and tried one out. Built a sentinel not too long ago and can say transitions are bomb proof. A Smuggler will be just as comfortable at brushy as it will be hauling ass in the mountains. They run long and slack for their size, so it'll be super-stable at speed with the tradeoff of needing a little finesse in the tight stuff. Nice thing is, you'll be on the front end of where the trends are currently headed geometry wise.

Money for hobbies is always tight and I want to maximize my buying power. I'll buy small stuff at lbs when needed, but that's usually because of an emergency or poor planning on my part. People on this board are probably the exception to the average mountain biker and can work on their own rigs. I've been into working on bikes since I was a kid and was an auto mechanic and fabricator. Bikes are super simple to work on in comparison. The big S, trek, Norco, and others are going to be the same price online as they are at the LBS. In that situation, ill absolutely buy from a LBS.. As a whole, all brick and mortar retail is going away.

Anyone ridden since Halloween rain? Assuming it still G2G.....

$3000-4000 is a the sweet spot for most "good" bikes. As others have said, you can get some really nice deals on leftovers for 2-2.5k right now. Anything over 5k in my opinion, is an exercise in diminishing returns, particularly in the flatlandia that we ride in. The upgrade-itis comment reminded me of the latest from IFHT. THIS^ You picked a perfect time to buy a bike. I bought a 2600.00 frame for 1550.00 delivered this time last year. FYI, Jenson will discount their advertised prices further if you call them and ask if there's any room left on the price. They usually give me a minimum 5% off for using a CC over the phone rather than paypal online. They buy these bikes and frames as bulk leftovers from distributors and manufacturers and get them cheaper than your LBS can. Basically bikewagon, but with bikes you'd actually want to own. Bought my wifes process 134 complete from The path in tustin and only took a minimum of fuss to get it going, but im an ex mechanic. Dont rule out cambriabike. I bought 4 kona frames from them and pay 30%+ off with free or reducing shipping. Id rock a used bike off pinkbike for sure, but only ones with aluminum frames. Good thing is it sounds like you've narrowed your selection to a shorter/mid travel 29 FS which will make the process WAY easier. Assembly is easy enough and the benefit of being cool to fellow MTB riders and people on the forum is they'll be willing to offer help if needed. You'll be good on assembly. Lastly, you might consider some of these offers on devinici. The Django and Marshall would be rad bikes for central TX, and as i recall theres a few people on the board that have them. https://www.evo.com/shop/sale/bike/bikes/mountain-bikes/devinci?utm_source=Pinkbike&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=Nov-18-Monthly-Deals&utm_term=Devinci&utm_content=Devinci

It did have the floating shock and we made a special hail mary trip back to the shop to try and get the bike tuned before inevitably giving up. to us, it just felt like an overpriced fun removal machine. He finished the weekend on a borrowed slack 29 hardtail and said he had way more fun. No hating on BSS. If they'd mark down their 2-3 y/o inventory more than 20% i might actually do a little more business with them. The tallboy and hightower are great bikes for texas. Again, if you're cool with online purchases, jenson cannot be beat. Id imagine theres quite a few evil followings to sample around here. https://www.jensonusa.com/Evil-Following-V1-GX-Eagle-Jenson-Bike

Don't want to dogpile on this but yeah, a lot of better choices. For a lbs sourced bike similar to the trek, I would suggest going to see AJ down at peddlers in CP and try out a smuggler. F*cking rad bike. If you are open to online sales, nobody can touch jenson on their closeout pricing. I'll also throw in a test ride if you want to try a kona hei hei.

Buddy of mine rented the 27+ version in bentonville and turned it in early because he hated it so much. When he brought it back to the shop the rep he said "yeah we get that a lot". At the time, my buddy had a salsa horsethief and intense spider and went on to buy a sentinel. From what i rode of it, felt dull and and a bit cumbersome, the exact opposite of poppy. It was the carbon version i believe but it had HR2s on it with tubes. Sorry to be so anecdotal. His thoughts: "A solid bike that feels grounded for good and ill. Feels far heavier than the lbs would lead you to expect. like the hand of god was holding you down admonishing you for trying to have fun. For as much of a tank as that felt, I'd go with a Slash. Might as well have a bomber if its going to feel like that " Your experience as well as others may be completely different. If you're gonna buy from LBS, might as well demo, demo, demo. Good luck

Ah the old crapstacktacular. My favorite was when the wind would pick the hoods up that were "stored" on the roofs and blow them onto the ground. good times.

Looks like present day san antonio..........sorry had to

That resembles the current state of my rolling cart.

Yes and no. Agree the exposure to Ebikes in the USA through UCI events will bring more interest to the sport. The manufactures know that if given the choice of two bikes, both costing $5k, one with a motor and one without, cost driven consumers will choose the one with the motor. I was just listening to a industry podcast about this very thing. In TX, the biggest issue will be the lack of available public land and a state that has historically, ranked at or near the bottom in funding of its parks. That leaves it up to the local counties and governments to fund bike trails, which they have little to no reason to when they can develop it and gain the tax revenue. The local municipalities and governing bodies seem to be reluctant to move forward with, or have any clear plan on building on land that cant be developed anyway. Austin, unlike other cities doesn't have an issue attracting people to move here, so the possibility of building bike trails for a completely niche hobby, leads me to believe we are indeed stuck with a finite amount of official, sanctioned trails. You'd have to ask the local trail builders if more people on existing trail networks is a good thing. I can say that once people get access to trails with e-bikes there will be issues with speeding on crowded trails and riding places they have no business. Its human nature to do dumb sh*t when you can. My theory comes from when we were 4x4 trail builders in Utah. There were very few land usage issues until side by sides became popular. Those vehicles granted the novice access to trails their stock wranglers wouldn't go. They drove around obstacles (features in MTB speak) widening the trails, stacked rocks, cut down trees, drove way too fast and were generally in over their head. The 4x4 community eventually fractured over these things since we all wanted access to public land, but the 4x4 guys were doing ALL the work building, maintaining and cleaning trails while the side by sides were on the news driving through streams and getting in accidents. We eventually went rogue like the MTB builders do here and built secret trails that we kept to ourselves. I see a very similar situation brewing with the addition of E-bikes into our sport/hobby. Disclaimer. I left utah in 2012 so things may have changed a lot since.