Rekindling a long-forgotten interest in 'cross

At lunch today, Matt and I headed over to the Parkway to test out some 'cross bikes for an upcoming online feature.

Matt was riding a highly unusual bike, a Boo with a Gates Carbon Belt Drive. It was fortunate that we didn't come across any pandas. Had we, I'm sure they would have been all over Matt's bamboo bike, like, well, pandas on bamboo. Unfortunately for Matt, the Edge (must have been an older model) tubular wheels were glued with Challenge file treads, which proved to offer slightly less traction than the medium treaded-clinchers on the Fulcrum wheels that came on the Focus Mears CX I was testing. Combined with the relatively poor braking of a carbon wheel, he was sliding all over the place.

We only rode for about an hour, a pretty standard lunch ride, but it was the first time I'd ridden off road in quite a while. There was one, very brief moment of epiphany that rekindled my interest in 'cross, and in riding off road in general. It was a very small moment, and I'm quite sure that Matt didn't notice, but as we were riding down a gravel path, a foot-wide rut ran diagonally across a small descent. The roadie in me wanted to stay to one side, hoping to ride around the rut, but a latent instinct form somewhere deep down took over and I steered toward the rut, lofting the bike up and over.

The brief flight, combined with the bike's shocking lightness and the sturdy feeling wheels was revelatory, and pretty fun.

Of course, I still managed to stumble all over myself when I attempt a running re-mount, but it didn't take much of the hour-long ride to remember that 'cross bikes are pretty awesome. The big wheels and drop bars let you go pretty fast, while the extra traction and powerful brakes let you tackle a variety of terrain. Best of all, instead of a heavy mountain bike to lug around, 'cross bikes are only marginally heavier than their road-bound cousins, so there's less to throw around, and just marginally more maintenance.

I've spent these fives grafs talking myself into racing 'cross this year. Bring it on!