The better weather brings all sorts of people out onto the streets with the bikes they’ve dragged out of the shed and dusted off for a week or so of riding to work before they get bored again and get the bus.
This can have downsides, in particular people who just haven’t been riding very much, but think they know what they’re doing. It seems that they’re the worst for jumping red lights and dragging (no smooth bunnyhops here) bikes onto the kerb to overtake on the pavement and generally acting like they have something to prove, while the riders who’ve been doing it all winter just keep doing what they’ve been doing.
However occasionally there are some gems to be discovered on the roads. Bikes that are being dragged into service as they’ve sat unused since they were originally cool. They are the expensive bikes that would have been replaced if the rider was still serious about their mountain biking, but is now getting use again, or the second bike used for the work-dash, saving the new one for the weekends.
One of these I came across on a trip home was a Manitou FS. Hailing form the 90s this was literally at the cutting edge of mountain bike development, with seatstays replaced by fork legs it gave a different slant to full suspension from the one that has continued to be used. I’m pretty sure you would have wanted one there and it still looks ace today, albeit not exactly what you might rush out and spend your money on for a top end mountain bike.
Let’s hope there are more classic bike designs to be overtaken this summer. It brightens up a commute.
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