Conference noted::bicycle

1686.0. "My first ride on a FAT" by SVCRUS::CRANE () Mon Aug 06 1990 10:34

    
      Had an interesting opertunity this weekend.  Bicycle Alley had
    a Supersale that started on friday, as  part of the sale there
    was an organized mountain bike ride through some trails in Auburn.
    the ride was highlighted by the presence of Christy(Chris) and Wendle Chance
    of Fat Chance Bicycles.  They brought with them a "not yet available
    to the public" Team Fat "YO Eddy" Top of the line Mountain Bike
    with an also "not yet available to the public" Campagnolo Mountain
    group on it.  Well the neat part is he let me take the bike for
    a VERY hard run for a couple of miles on some fairly hard and technical
    trails.  Let me comment about the frame first.  "Its a Dream"  the
    balance and handling of this frame makes it highly stable and
    wonderfully solid.  This particular bike had 2.5 inch tires that
    floated over just about anything.  the Bike climbed better than
    my Trek and was more than quik enough to make the hairpin at the
    bottom of the decent that claimed more than one person.
    
       Now the components.  I don't know what the name of the group
    is but the main feature is a Grip shift style shifter.  the entire
    grip rotates and clicks from gear to gear.  The obvious question
    is of course dosn't that tend to cause shifts when you hit bumps?
       The answer is yes, it does.  Wendle showed me a technique where
    you hold the bar at the collar of the shift/brake and then shift
    with the palm/heel of your hand and this does work but I didn't
    like having my hands so close together on the bars.
    
       The deraileur itself shifted flawlessly in back under the heaviest
    of loads. (believe me I put it through its paces)  The front deraileur
    also shifted very well.  The brakes were good except that the material
    used in the pads was very soft.  As a matter of fact it was soft
    enough so that on one particularly hard braking episode I managed
    to pull (the properly adjusted) pad all the way under the rim and
    had to dismount and force it back to the normal position. I saw
    one other person do this as well so its wasn't just my over zealous
    braking technique.
                                   
       From what I was able to gather the "YO Eddy" will retail for
    around $2000.  A lot of money but I might consider it for a bike of
    this caliber but with different shifters and brake pads.
    
      All in all the ride was a blast!!
    
    John C.