The answer depends (and also doesn't depend) on your strength/attitude and the strength/attitude of the riders-of-carbon to whom you aspire to keep up with. I pass lycra/carbon surprisingly often when climbing with my forty-bespoken atlantis wearing chacos and a t-shirt. I would never consider myself a fast rider, but ride for practical uses daily and on longish rides 3-4 times week. My point then--if you don't care to race to the point where you're counting seconds (minutes are ok) and your friends ride recreationally-but-on-carbon, get a rivendell. If you do want to race or your friends fancy themselves lance, get a rivendell, ride a lot and you'll be fine. In both cases you'll be better off than 99% of folks who ride carbon because they heard it was the best. It will be some time before you'd be winning races on any bike, anyway, if you're getting started.
And of course, it'll be hard for anyone on a carbon road bike to follow you on the fire trails/singletrack/camping detours which is where you'll find yourself more and more as you explore. For your purposes, an AHH is a great match. It all comes back to that 3 pound frame difference only being 1.5% of total rider+bicycle weight. There's no reason to sacrifice safety, versatility, comfort (looks too) to imagine you'll be going any faster up the mountain with your friends. On Mon, Aug 31, 2009 at 9:02 PM, R Gonet <richard.go...@earthlink.net>wrote: > > All other things being equal, I don't think you're going to be able to > keep up with your friends on carbon when riding an AHH. But I think > you'll have more fun than they do if you poke around some gravel or > dirt roads, which would not be accessible to them. > > My experience with the AHH is limited to using the Jack Brown 33.33 cm > tires and I think they are good all rounders. I use them on pavement, > gravel, mud, and dirt and they work as advertised at the RBW site. > > > -- berkeley, ca bikenoir.blogspot.com --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
