Maiden Ride on the Durango 29er!

I took the new Jamis Durango on a two-hour first ride Saturday morning and had a blast.  Lots of you reading this probably know plenty about road bikes but might be a little out of the loop on mountain bike tech.  Here's the rundown:

Any decent mountain bike now comes with disc brakes, and they rock.  There's cable and even hydraulic.  They perform much better than rim brakes and also look very cool.  Weird fact - This eliminates the need for rim braking surfaces, so your rims may not even have them.

• 29er wheels are much taller than standard (26 inch) mountain bike wheels.  This allows you to roll over stuff like a monster truck.  Gives you a larger contact patch as well.  You can easily feel the difference when riding.
• The taller wheels also makes bumps less jarring, so lots of people feel no need for rear suspension.  
• All the extra wheel material does make the bike weigh a little more.  But perhaps that is outweighed by the performance gain or simple joy brought by riding something different.

I've spent two days riding absolute top of the line 29ers and they are amazing.  I'm not in the position to shell out $6000 for a bike right now, so I picket out a Jamis Durango for less than $1000 and I'm going to ride the wheels off of it.  I'll replace stuff with better stuff as those things break.

First two mods:

1. Take all the reflectors off.  Bike shops have to put them on by law.  Unless you're riding on the road, that's just dead weight.
2. Put anti-flat gel in the tubes.  There's different brands of different types, and I put Stan's brand in the front.  I thought better of it afterwards and decided to put Flat Attack in the rear (similar to Slime).  Stan's will have to be replaced in a few months, but Flat Attack lasts for years.  I rode with Slime in my old mountain bike for many years and was shocked at all the flats it stopped.  I pulled the tubes out of the tires and saw they were riddled with green specs from all the punctures that self-sealed.  I know, I know, it adds weight, but I'd rather be riding than fixing flats.

 So the biggest news is that I signed up for an epic, 85 mile mountain bike race on January 2nd.  I'm riding rollers at least an hour a day to make sure I can handle it.  I've never ridden anything like that distance off-road, so I'm just going to ride it, not race it.  

It's part of a mountain bike racing category called "Marathon Distance."