LazyTrailRider

First up: My 2019 Stumpy Expert. Fairly stock, but pimped with the following touches: Upgraded Guide R brakeset to Code RSC. Ridiculous power.Replaced stock 50mm stem and 31.8 bar with a 45mm Lyne AMP 35 with a 780mm AMP 35 Carbon bar.Ditched the front Butcher, running Eliminator Grid 2.6 front, Ground Control Grid 2.6 rear. Rolls faster, corners more predictably.Rebuilt the rear rim onto a Roval Traverse SL (DT Swiss 350 internals) hub with its amazing star ratchet. Zzzzzzzzz.Most of the high-impact areas have been carefully wrapped.I hate clatter, so my cable management is OCD. Note the foam wraps at strategic points to eliminate noise.

I found that every time I went for a 57 minute ride (one of my regular loops) I'd ride around the block 3 times to get to 1 hour so I can get 300 points, or my Fitbit Versa would for some reason not sync completely, or I forgot to start it or whatever, and then I'd be pissed at myself. So, a few weeks ago I unlinked all my devices from sending data to Vitality. It's going to cost me a fair bit in lost incentives over the next couple of years, but I'm willing to pay that with pleasure in return for 1) not being constantly aware of what data I'm sending to them and 2) the pleasure of knowing that they have less data to profile me with. I've effectively purchased a bit of privacy and relaxation. Yes, I'm happier at the end of rides these days. It feels good.

I'm able bodied, but I'll be honest, pedaling bikes around under my own steam if really good electric assistance is available is becoming less and less attractive and seems a bit silly just for the sake of being a purist. I'm on a bike to enjoy the trails and the thrills they bring, not just to build watts and chase uphill strava KOMs. I haven't worried about an uphill segment in years, it's the tech downhill segments which tickle my fancy. More competition results in more viable e-bike options becoming available in more refined forms; I'm all for being able to smash more trails in an hour or two's outing than I currently am able to.

In my experience, Ground Control (rear) Eliminator (front) is one of the most well balanced combos available. The GC rolls fairly fast and is a great do-it-all, and the Eliminator provides a serious amount of gnar grip without being overtly slow. This combo is still on the aggressive side of the scale though (you could race enduro with it), so may be overkill for what you have in mind.

As someone on Pinkbike said: "There's nothing new with SCs offering here that wasn't available 3 years ago, on a Levo."

Granted, but at the cost of looking like a Giant or - heaven forbid - a Merida. Blegh. Look at that massive, silly downtube! (Yup, I'm a bike snob)

Too little, too late.

Yes, we've been told that new things change the game many times, fully agreed. Also fully agreed that most of the time, the gains have been mostly hype. At its core, even though geometry, suspension, drivetrain and braking have improved substantially from my first 1989 Nishiki Alien to my 2019 Stumpjumper, they're not worlds apart. Continents maybe, but not worlds. What I think most of us who have been riding bikes for a long time fail to realise is just how rapidly tech progresses in some areas outside the bicycle industry. Now that electrification and electronics have joined us, we're seeing a pick up in pace unknown to us up until this point. I think we'd be foolish to underestimate just how much the game really will change over the next couple of years...

Yup, it's new. I've been running one on the rear for a few weeks now, it rolls way faster than the Eliminator even in the bigger size. I also suspected that the 2.3 choice had to do with making the SL feel as efficient as possible, something which is clearly very much the aim here...

Thank you for swopping so regularly, I will quite likely end up buying a Levo SL from someone like you in 18 months' time What's crazy is that it will still be a R100k excercise...!

@Nick, one thing I found interesting is the 2.3 tyre spec, bearing in mind how narrow Specialized tyres are. I run a 2.6 Eliminator/GC combo on my Stumpy and wouldn't think of going back to 2.3, was the narrower rubber not noticeable?

Spot on. My wife rides a Levo. I've given it a proper spin or two but it just doesn't work perfectly for me, so when I sold my Enduro recently I got a new Stumpy without seriously considering a Levo. This however...

I'm with Duane on this. Previous-gen metal Intenses were heavy, unreliable and poorly finished (while masquerading as "boutique"). The move to carbon has brought them in line with what they've been selling themselves as being all along.

As much as I dislike franchises chains, Seattle does actually make good coffee.

It's a common thing. Many a franchise was financially built knowing that the market wants this. People are hungry, apparently.

Absolutely. Speaking of Kloof Street, we did Janse & Co on Saturday. Dayum. It's officially 4th on my personal list after a 1st-place tie between Test Kitchen, Chef's Warehouse at Beau Constantia and Fermier (which, believe it or not is in P-Town).

It's like that dude who came down to the Cape last year for his anniversary and wanted advice on where to get the best steak. All fine, except he wasn't interested in any of the so-called "cuisine" recommendations with "not enough food on the plate" and settled for something like Cattle Baron. I went to school in Pretoria (worthy of mocking) and have Facebook friends who still live there. They vacation in Cape Town and then eat at places like Ocean Basket while down here. What's with the Gautengers and their love of franchise/chain joints?

https://fee.org/articles/imf-head-predicts-the-end-of-banking-and-the-triumph-of-cryptocurrency

Correct. Note however that I used the word "entities".

Not always a simple thing. Some people have wallets belonging to entities in multiple countries...

It's an Ohlins STX22, which is air.

OK, was wondering whether it was mesh-based, there are quite a few esoteric (read "green") filter options out there once one starts doing serious research. My sieve works well, it's only really a problem at the moment because there are two inlets, one from the shower and the other from the bath/basin. The bath/basin one doesn't run through the sieve and decreases the water quality enough to cause clogging on a weekly basis. Kitchen water is generally (as you'll know) classifed as black water, due to this I have a separate pump set up on the washing machine which feeds a single flower bed via a drip line. It's manual so doesn't catch all the water, I still need to set up a float switch. The problem is that my wife washes the guinea pigs' bedding in the washing machine, so there's quite a lot of hair which obviously destroys any pump at a rapid pace...

I considered them before going with a cheap builder-installed system which I've now had to invest 2x the cost into to maintain, taking into account what my time costs. So you learn. My primary issue is filtering: my setup had no inlet filter from the shower, only a standard wellpoint mesh filter (which is easily cleanable) on the pump's inlet itself. The problem is that crap keeps clogging the one-way floating valve at the bottom of the tank, so I've improvised a filter on the pipe running into the tank with a kitchen sieve covered with a knee-high camisole which I replace on a weekly basis. It works, but it's a pain to clean. What does the Water Rhapsody filter entail?

Yup. Exactly.

My wife has Type 1 Diabetes. On an average day, her blood glucose levels fluctuate between 2.0 and 20.0. For context, most charts rate below 4.0 and above 14.0 in the "seek immediate medical attention" category. She's in those zones several times a week. She can't excercise without taking emergency glucose supplies with, so we travel with Glucose gel sachets and sweets of all types at all times. She also happens to really enjoy cycling, but riding for longer than 30 minutes without stopping to check and top up sugar levels is not easy. As a result, getting fit to a level which most of us around here see as "in shape" is damn near impossible. But, we still try. We ride together as often as we can, we try to find singletrack with as little climbing as possible, and we generally really enjoy ourselves out on the trail, savouring berms and bumps and other fun trail obstacles. She loves it! At the moment, she rides a pretty nice machine (Specialized Rumor Expert with X01, Pike, dropper etc), but guess what? I'd get her a Levo in a heartbeat if my budget allowed it. Enabling her to gain enough vertical to enjoy more challenging singletrack would put massive smiles on both our faces. Do I care whether luddites wouldn't want us on the trails? Not even close.