No kids.. full squish first, then dirt jumper, then hard tail, then ebike. The squishy bikes get ridden the most.
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Just turned 50, only MTB I own is a 1x1.
Everyone I know that rides a full squish has ended up in hospital, some for extended periods. Can’t imagine dadding while recovering from busted ribs or leg.
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Can confirm it sucks. But got the busted leg commuting so ¯_(ツ)_/¯
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All expenses paid vacation*
*health insurance dependent
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yeah that is a “plus” to the rigid or HT - less confidence that your rig can just handle you sending it on whatever
My FS has saved me from cases that would have sent me to the ground on a HT.
The hazard of starting to MTB later in life is that we don’t heal as fast as when we’re younger. Those risk/reward circuits haven’t been written into our brains that tell us hitting a blind drop might be a bad idea.
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I know 5 people who broke a hip or femur in the last few years and based on my anecdotal experience, mtb is definitely not the high risk one.
- 3 were on road or gravel bikes on paved roads
- 1 was nordic skiing
- 1 was mtbing
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You also have much faster reaction times when you’re younger. Kids are slow to react, but in your 20s your reaction times peak and you can still develop skills pretty quickly. By your 40s, your reactions are slower and changing behaviors to pick up new skills or techniques is harder.
IMO there’s also often an overconfidence factor with men mtbing. Most of my riding friends are female and have a lot less serious injuries due to being more cautious, especially those who started later in life. Much stronger sense of self preservation. Neither is universally true, but still pretty common to see a big difference in risk taking, thus a difference in likelihood for injury.
I would agree that FS is also safer in terms of preventing crashes, but maybe it contributes to the over confidence issue.
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My cousin in Golden managed, in his 40’s, to smash out his front teeth on an MTB, but on his road bike, he broke his femur into about a dozen pieces!
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I’m on my new ATB specifically because I can’t handle sending it right now.
I’m not nearly as strong or healthy as I was before COVID, mostly due to sedentary living and depression eating, so now the rigid is my flat bar gravel bike, really. I don’t ‘send’, I ‘gingerly pick my way through’.
I’m hoping with another 6 months of weight loss and hitting the gym I get the strength-to-weight and balance to feel confident to actually mountain bike again, but I also just had my 56th birthday so I know there’s a clock ticking on how long I’ll be able to do it regardless of my conditioning.
My rigid stumpjumper got me through the trails thirty years ago. I can negotiate similar trails on a better rigid bike today. I may not be able to keep up with your fs but I also don’t have to pay for it or maintain it. I never got comfortable with trusting the suspension to place the wheels.
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Seriously all these people be out there mixing it up with cars while wearing very revealing helmets and absolutely no padding (or riding off-road on bikes that aren’t very suited for it). And mountain biking is the dangerous discipline? I mean you get some cuts and bruises every once in a while, but you’re not gonna get smashed by a car.
Also agree that sense of self preservation is something that you can dial in by using your dang brain a little. I look at some stuff for a long while (like passing it on multiple rides) before I even think about it. Works out pretty well for me tbh.
Undoubtedly I’m gonna eat shit next time I ride after having written this.
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I was already looking into this bike over the winter, and may pull the trigger on it in advance of tariff shitshows (though the price is already gone up a few hundred bucks speculatively)
https://www.pinkbike.com/news/first-ride-2024-propain-spindrift.html
Basic idea would be to “deprecate underbiking”
Instead of my 115/140 travel Norco Optic downcountry bike that’s overbuilt like an enduro bike but short-stroked For Reasons, get a playful version of an enduro bike and have it be extra leggy 180/180 travel maybe with a coil
To divide my destination trail riding into either ATB or FULLLL Suspension
lol I use my “downcountry” bike about never for about the same Reasons. Though it may be the extenuating circumstances of the only trails I have time to ride right now(straight out the door, no driving) being decidedly unpleasant on the short travel bike.
I want an emtb 
i rode my downcountry bike today. it was great. my son’s new woom off (the 26") is also sweet. he can mostly keep up with me now! what a game changer.
Short travel trail bike and ride within your limits? 
I don’t understand MTBs and don’t really want one. No idea what a short travel trail bike is or where I would ride it.
Every trail within riding distance of my house can be handled by the 1x1 or NFE, not gonna ride to trails, no sir.
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This is also true. However I felt like something clicked energetically for me in 2018 when I found what seemed like endless singletrack linking one town to another. There was a hardtail, 140mm of travel and a dream.
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This is the real reason I switched to a rigid bike. I liked the full squish I had before the Jones, but don’t ride mountain enough to make it work maintaining the squishy parts myself. I don’t like driving to ride and it turns out I really dislike having to drive the bike to a shop to get the squishy parts worked on and then another trip to pick it up. That turned out to be an actual point of friction to it getting ridden. I have as much fun on the Jones and don’t regret it for the handful of mtb rides I do a year.
None of them were even car incidents! Two were in bike races (road/crits) and one was just on a ride (though he does have a medical condition with low muscle mass so more prone to this).
Probably.
I had at least one guy who had some self-awareness in a private lesson last year who just told me he was an idiot and he was prone to just trying to ride as fast as possible. This is a problem when working on skills because you’re in “hold on for dear life” mode instead of actually being able to think about what you are doing and consciously apply new techniques.
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