C-dale Demo

While eating breakfast this morning I received an email reminding today is the Cannondale demo day at Mohican.  A demo ride sounded fun but a ride was not in the plans for the day... until two kiddos nap crashed in the afternoon and I headed south to Mohican.

Cannondale demo day, Mohican MTB parking lot.

Having never ridden a bike sporting a Lefty fork I was excited to see what it was all about.  The Cannondale guy eyed me up and pulled a carbon Flash 29er from the line of bikes for me to demo ride.  After a quick setup to fit the bike to me I headed out to ride the short loop.

Test ride #1: Flash carbon 29er 2.  $5000 of fun.

Link to Cannondale's web site.

I immediately noticed the bike was light and stiff.  Pedal strokes resulted in propulsion, no wasted flex detectable anywhere.  Most interesting to me was the feel of the Lefty fork.  Somehow it had attributes of both my Paragon's Fox fork and my Karate Monkey's rigid fork.  Like the rigid fork on the KM, it felt really efficient with no wasted compliance, and like the Fox fork it gave plenty of cushion as needed.

Fairly obvious why they called it a Lefty.

Coming down the last mile of the course I was having a lot of fun on this bike.  In addition to being stiff the carbon frame was soaking up the trail.  It was a softer feeling hard tail than I'm used to.  I arrived bike at the parking lot with a big smile.  I'd say that was the fastest mountain bike I've ever ridden.

Now the Cannondale guy wanted me to do a loop on the full suspension Scalpel 29er.  I mentioned not being too interested in rear suspension for the riding we do around here but was more than willing to take another expensive bike for a ride.

Test ride #2: Scalpel Carbon 29er 1.  $7600 of fun.

Link to Cannondale's web site.

Once again I tore out of the parking lot for a run of the short loop.  This time I kept my rear on the saddle as I bounced through the potholes on the way out the drive.  Yep, there's some squish back there.  At some point, after the opening climb was done, I realized I was riding it like a hard tail and focused on staying seated more often.  No doubt the extra suspension would have you feeling less fatigued after a long ride.

Full suspension, full of fun.

Back to the climbing, I tried to pay attention to how the Scalpel climbed.  It was also very efficient but I did feel some pedal bob from rear end a couple times.  It's just a different game on a full suspension bike.

Two short loops and $12.6k worth of demo bike later I headed home.  It was a good time riding bikes I cannot afford.