Me & my Marin

There will be more silly comics soon, I promise, they're in draft, they just need redrawing and scanning.

Meanwhile, I suddenly realised that I have a new bike and I've not actually reviewed it. Which is terribly remiss of me, so here's a review. Don't expect technical talk, I ride by feel and instinct, and I chose my bike the same way.

As a result of a much bemoaned theft of my previous bike, a GT Outpost with modded stem (bright red) and pre-loved Reba Races, I needed a new bike. I did some reading, got mired in the intricacies of Deores and Juicies and promptly forgot it all again the second I rode the Marin Eldridge Grade I currently own. I suspect I may be the only person to walk into a bike shop looking for a bike for the boyfriend (a Specialised Rockhopper Pro was acquired) to emerge with an entirely different bike to the one I went in thinking I wanted, purely based on riding it up and down the road behind the bike shop.

I don't believe in love at first sight with anything. But it was love at first ride. If bikes had personalities, this one would have been full of laughter. Light footed, whippet fast, quite bouncy and left me with the widest grin and slightly breathless. I had heard of Mazziochi forks but had no idea if the Bombers were any good, it had Hayes brakes which I'd never heard of, SRAM bog standard mechs. Nothing special components wise, in fact positively meh, probably. I knew that, but I also knew that no matter how fantastically specced the Rockhopper was, the frame geometry sucked for me. The Marin, on the other hand, felt like a racehorse, and I knew it was going to climb hills with a voracity I needed weighing as much as I do.

I put a deposit down on the spot. A week later it was on the roof of our car, coming home with us. I had just spent a thousand pounds on something I'd not researched, not spent weeks obsessing over and cost more than anything else I've ever bought in my life.

I'm still in love, even though I've only ridden it on towpaths, jumped it a little, ragged it as much as possible as you can on a mud packed bit of flat singletrack with a few compressions strung along it. It's everything I thought it would be when I rode it up and down a road the first time. The back end is skittish, and I need to change my weight distribution on loose shale and shifting dust. The grips are a different size, so I needed to get used to that. The gears needed a bit of switching up and down and up and down while cycling round and round in circles to bed them in a bit - now they're perfect and rarely skip (it's user error when they do, I freely admit), the saddle is perfect, the tyres needed a good dusting down but have stopped squeaking and started gripping beautifully and when I push, it responds instantly. Of all the things I noticed and still notice and will continue to notice, it's that. On the Outpost, I pushed and the energy transmission was pathetic. I push on the Marin and it's like (I imagine, I don't drive) comparing a 1.1 Fiesta to a Lotus. It doesn't matter what ring your on (and suddenly I'm spending a lot of time comfortably in the big one), it doesn't matter what terrain or slope you're on, it just goes. Instantly. No lag.

Then there's the brakes, where I could go on for hours about the sheer joy of being able to brake with one finger, the bar width which is wider than I'm used to but seems to give me more control, the slight hum of the tyres over the tarmac. And last, and somehow despite being very much a girl, very much least, it looks like it's built to chew trails. Glossy white, with a gorgeous green highlight, I will never be embarassed to ride up to a trail centre cafe again. It's so gorgeous I'm struggling to buy accessories because I don't want to ruin how it looks. Pathetic, yes. Necessary when female, perhaps - I'm sure not all girls are quite this obsessive. I am bordering on obsessive but really, honestly, I don't get attached to material things. I am really quite attached to my Marin. The bike is everything I ever dreamed a bike could be, and a whole lot more. So, despite intellectually knowing better, my next bike will also be bought based on its grin factor.