RobynE 🚵‍♀️

I personally love my Magura MT4 - I think they’re an older version but the stoppage is on point and I’ve not had to do any adjustments or work on them since I bought the bike in 2023. My bike is pretty light (Giant XTC carbon) and I weigh *cough* 80ish. I do mostly red route type stuff with the occasional route oopsie when I end up on black and I’m neither fast nor slow 😊

Smooth peanut butter removes most adhesives

Must be honest it’s not something I’ve seen - I don’t see too many mtbers out in groups near me, but living close to Cedar Road and working from home, I see masses and masses of group and solo roadies and all of the publicised incidents in my area have been roadies (on road bikes) with the occasional commuter. Of course most of the two wheel incidents around here are Checkers60 and Takealot 🏍️ 🛵 In fact just yesterday a Takealot dude drove into the back of one of my vehicles and broke the left taillight. Rider distracted in stop-start traffic and crunch. Thankfully no-one injured.

Tar and gravel quickly becomes less tar and more dirt 😂 As your confidence increases the paths you choose, change, and eventually the A line becomes the only line and the B line (easier) option is forgotten. Air forks are the only way! Coil forks are a thing of the past. Some bikes still come out with them but that’s simply to bring costs down and has nothing to do with reliability. Again though - not all forks are created equal, but for your purposes a Rockshox/Fox/SR Suntour air fork will serve you just fine and are all serviceable. I honestly don’t even know if you can service coil forks anymore 🤷‍♀️

Can’t say I agree here. I think you notice things if you are a defensive driver. I am constantly scanning my periphery for hazards. I am about as far away from a runner as you can get but I notice all joggers, walkers, etc. The ones wearing bright colours or using lights, I notice first/faster, and likewise with cyclists. I also put my phone down in the car and don’t look at it, nor answer calls. As a rider or pedestrian I’m defensive as well. I never stop scanning the environment and I need to do it for my child as well. Maybe it’s some sort of trauma response 😂 My behaviour with the phone in the car comes as a result of several what I would call near-misses over 26 years of driving where my lack of attention could have caused someone else’s maiming or death. I try to do better now. Doesn’t make me infallible. I try to be fair to all road users by committing to focus on the road, and I hope they’ll be fair to me whether I’m in a car or self-propelled 😊 But I also know that many road users don’t commit to focusing on the road, so I turn into a mini lighthouse.

Do you mean on bike trails? I don’t use lights on trails but on road in daylight hours I use the lowest lumen front flash. At night I use a steady beam directed in front of me to see where I’m going. I end up lighting up a bit of my front tyre and the rest of the beam is in front of me lighting up the path. I can’t really see the point of using front flashing lights at night - I’d moer into a pothole or kerb from my own disorientation, so my own safety isn’t mitigated, never mind drivers getting blinded.

Lights don’t make me feel invincible - when in the presence of cars I still feel like I need to have crayfish eyes and have my own wits about me. Driver behaviour can never be predicted. Maybe it comes from a horse riding background where people literally don’t see a horse and rider on the road, and/or see a horse as a machine that doesn’t have its own mind and behaviours. Even at low speeds a horse/vehicle collision carries massive risk to all and horses, with their own brains, are never truly predictable. A horse may not mind a dump truck passing but a rogue plastic bag may make them leap in front of traffic despite the rider’s best efforts or the horse being generally rock solid. So passing wide and slow is really all we have and we need to be visible. I know lights and bright colours make me more visible. They don’t make lights for horse riding but there are quite a lot of hi-viz bibs, leg guards, rugs, hat covers, etc. These things definitely save lives. It doesn’t mean incidents don’t happen regardless but if I’m bright and/or flashy I hope it will catch the eye of someone who otherwise would not have noticed me at all. Whether on horses or bikes.

I have also noticed people passing impossibly close with a rear flashing light. Some people are just muppets I guess and get an obscene sense of satisfaction from being dooslik.

The clothing colour is also a daytime observation, as the reflective bits aren’t seen. The colour doesn’t matter but it’s really not easy to make out a daytime rider wearing black, with no lights, on an overcast day, on tar, with a dark or shadowy backdrop. Easier on a bright and sunny day or against a lighter backdrop, of course. I definitely see a rider in red or yellow or orange before I see one in black. If I look at publicised occurrences of riders down, they mostly seem to happen during daylight hours. I’m sure things happen after dark as well, but I’m specifically speaking about “us” who ride bikes for sport and entertainment and not as our sole method of transport, and who make a choice whether to use lights or not, not because of financial reasons but because we don’t want to 🤷‍♀️ Again, just my observations and own curiosity and it’s great to hear other people’s views and experiences. I myself have lights, and backup lights, and backup lights for the backup lights 😂 So we always have enough lights charged to head out for a few hours without worrying about going dark.

People on their phones is a massive problem, true, but I definitely know that if I’m headed towards you with flashing lights, you’d have had more opportunities to have noticed “something” than if I was just a shape.

I’m talking about daytime lights, yes. They make a massive difference to me as a driver, and because I know this, we always ride with lights. They aren’t even big lights. When we ride at night, we use our proper night lights (such as Extreme Lights) so that we can see where we’re going. Riding in the dark with a flashing light isn’t going to serve much purpose in terms of lighting the riders way. But during the day even a low lumen flash improves visibility massively whether the bike is heading towards you from the front or you glimpse the flash in one of your mirrors or even the reflection in your window. You can get a small light and mount it anywhere - even on your fork, or the front of your helmet (most of them come with rubber straps). One of my best lights is half the size of a matchbox and weighs just about nothing. It lasts like 10 hours on flash mode and charges in 1 hour. You can even get cheap (but ugly) solar lights that you never have to worry about charging. I’ll see a group of 10-15 roadies, maybe half will have rear lights and not one will have front lights. I don’t see it much differently to riding without a helmet. It’s just a cheap way to mitigate risk.

Just my local ride but I’d rather be out there than inside!

Genuine question. Why do so many roadies not ride with front and rear flashing lights? Some ride with no lights at all 🫤 Some ride with rear lights 🙌 I very occasionally see a roadie riding with both front and back flashing lights 🏆 Many roadies ride in black kit 😬 I feel that lights save lives and no-one in my family is allowed to ride on a public road without front and rear lights. Even though we mostly ride on the pavements (mtbs) if we do coffee rides etc. Some mtb people ride with front and back lights when on the road. Not a lot, but more than roadies. I am genuinely curious as to why so many people don’t ride with front lights?

If you’re buying from the internet you will fall short - try them out and see which one is “your” bike. If the bike is uncomfortable and doesn’t inspire confidence it’s not a good buy.

Here are some Cape ones that look nice. Remember all prices are negotiable 😁 Willing seller, willing buyer and all that. Signal S910 with Shimano components (the fork is decent and serviceable too) I like Signal frames and geometry - with the Shimano bits this will be a very decent bike. Small frame Momsen with good components Worth noting that it has 29” wheels - a lot of size S have 27.5 wheels - might be a bit too small for you though. If you feel scrunched up on it you know. Titan Drone Dash Not sure what components it has but it’s a nice looking bike and you might be able to transfer the warranty. I would definitely negotiate on the price of all of these bikes.

Where are you based?

Coil forks are heavier and can feel unforgiving. Very different riding experience to an air fork.

All bikes have got different angles (geometry of the frame) and then there is the actual fit (how your body works with the bike angles) as well as the stem length etc. At your height you’re at the end of the spectrum for a small frame but may feel like you’re reaching on some medium frames depending on the stem length etc. Some 27.5s ie 650b can be picked up at good prices, small proviso is that tyre choices are more limited than both 29 and 26 bikes, and more expensive. The rest is the same from a spares perspective. I ride 3 bikes - ie I have 3 bikes to ride at home, in my family. All are medium frame. I am 1.66cm. All 3 bikes feel TOTALLY different to ride. Obviously I’m most used to my own one which is a 2014 Giant XTC carbon frame. The others are a Trek X-Caliber and a Titan Elite 27.5. The Trek makes me feel I’m on top of the bike. The Titan makes me feel like I’m in the bike - think cruiser motorbike. The Giant feels like the exact happy medium. Gives me lots of confidence especially on technical descents. I would pick the Giant every day but if push comes to shove I won’t hate my time on the others. So opinions don’t mean much unless you feel right on the bike. But opinions do matter in terms of components as there are things that are just tried and tested and known to work. Like SRAM or Shimano Deore or Rockshox. But then within the brands there are good and bad variants. So SRAM NX - great. SRAM GX - better. SRAM SX - no. Deore M6xxx series - great. M8xxx series - better. Rockshox - serviceable forks. Unbranded forks - not serviceable. All these things come together to make a reliable bike. But none of it matters if you don’t like the bike and feel like riding it. And you can like a bike and then go for a professional bike fit and turn a nice bike into a lekker bike with just a few tweaks to saddle position, stem length, angle of hand controls, etc. I am on Team Second Hand but then I buy my bikes from Robert Whitehead (who commented about the 26) and trust him infinitely and have never been let down. I am not a tweak person and don’t have enough skill to work on my own bike, so they must just work. However, our first bikes were all new at the 10k-14k mark, and there was constant tweaking, and even with all the tweaking they were not as strong and reliable as my good quality second hand bikes. Quick tip: the first thing that will go on any 10k bike will likely be your rear hub, and it will go quicker than you would imagine. This is a pricey (relatively speaking - let’s say 2k ballpark) repair as it essentially involves a wheel rebuild - the hubs that come with these bikes are generally not serviceable. So if you buy a bike that already has serviceable hubs, that’s already money well spent.

There’s a Norco Storm, couple of Scotts and a few more in the Sales section that are all much better specced than the new SBs you are looking at. Don’t dismiss older bikes - the big brands are just about bulletproof. NB if you pay R11k for the SB Deluxe know that you won’t get R7k for it the day after you buy it. Go ride a few and see which one you love. You definitely can’t buy a bike off the internet.

The Deluxe is significantly better specced than the HD but I would honesty sooner buy a second hand Trek or Titan or Giant etc. As much as the Deluxe is better than the HD it’s still really meh IMO.

You have absolutely nothing to worry about 👍

Well that’s unlocked a whole new world of possibilities in my mind 😱

No imaging of my worst bike injury which was broken big toe doing slowest OTB ever on my own driveway (my brain said GRAB THE FRONT BRAKE FOR NO GOOD REASON and I did). Horses though - I have one of these in my lower back (2022) and two in my neck (2021) as a result of smashing my discs to smithereens over the years. Elected for surgery in my early 40s. I’m a VIP at Spine Africa 😊 Also no imaging but I currently have a fabulous calf tear because horse and I parted ways and horse stood on my leg as he galloped off. Also stood on my back right at my disc replacement site but thankfully his full weight was on my leg instead.

I have the same bike and it’s a solid medium for sure and I can ride it. You’re 10cm shorter than me so I imagine it’s a little more tricky - the geometry of the frame puts the rider “on” the bike which is awesome in some ways but can be disconcerting in others. I also have a ~2014 Giant XTC carbon medium hardtail and the two bikes are totally different to ride. The Giant is, for me, a lot more confidence inspiring especially on sharp, rocky descents. The Trek makes me feel a bit like I’ll go over the bars if I’m not careful so I tend to second guess myself. Ascending on the Trek though, or putting in distance - it’s fantastic. As others have said the wheels won’t make a difference. You could probably sell your X-Caliber and come out with a small frame 29” or a medium 27.5 (also known as a 650b) and a bit of change. I just bought my kiddo (she’s 1.40 with long legs) a medium 27.5 Titan and she rides it so incredibly well. I paid R8500 for it second hand. You could probably sell your X-Caliber for R10-R14k (realistically) depending on condition.

Mitch at Mellow Velo is great 👍