Stoked on Transition Bikes

Our family now has four Transition bikes – a TR450 and a Double for me, a Syren and a Bank for Jess.

Jess had her Syren for last season up here in Whistler and loved it. While I might make a few changes to it before this Summer, it will essentially stay the same bike. It’s the perfect bike for a beginner, and a shame that it’s gone from the Transition lineup, but I can understand why they stopped making them.

We had a pump track in our backyard at home for a year or two, and Jess and I would always chase each other around the track. Given the small amount of riding that she did back in Australia, she really impressed me in the Whistler Mountain Bike Park last season. I’m confident that riding our pump track was a great help to her. Jess wanted to hit the local pump track this Summer, and now she has the Bank to do it.

As for me, I’m a big bike person when it comes to downhill. I rode a Trek Session 8 last season, and while I was really happy with a lot of things about the bike, the 2010 Rockshox Boxxer Race and “DH race tuned” Fox DHX 4.0 just weren’t up to the challenge for me. I spent a while pricing up everything that I’d like to replace, and realistically it was going to be cheaper just to buy a new bike complete. I rode my mate’s TR450 a few weeks before last season ended. It was a Large – huge for me, but one lap of B-Line had me convinced that aside from my skill, improved suspension would make riding more enjoyable. I’m not a great rider by any means, but when you’re riding every day, bad suspension really takes it out on your body. So I decided on a complete TR450, and while I’ll still make a few changes to it, the basics are pretty much how I want them.

The Double is for me to get better at dirt jumping. I’ve always been a pretty average jumper, but after heading to the Air Dome last year to jump into the foam pit, I figured it’s something that I should work on. It’ll help my park riding for sure. It will also be the perfect bike for me to take home to Australia. We have a few four-cross tracks at home, and often they are in places where there are a range of trails – flowy cross country and mild downhill, so it seems as though I can have some good fun on that bike.

So it looks like there’s some bike building to do!

For more information on Transition Bikes, take a look at their website at www.transitionbikes.com.