So, today we spent the morning playing in the dirt with great friends.
However, our 2002 47lb, 26″ Ventana with its rear suspension-induced pedal bob was less than ideal and we were decidedly outmatched by our friends and their lighter weight, 29″ Fandango hard tails on our 30 mile dirt & gravel road ride today.
Our 2002 Ventana is still an awesome, single-track shredder… make no mistake about that: ground clearance is way underrated as is 4″ of front & back suspension travel. But, it doesn’t translate well to grinding out miles of dirt roads with lots of long climbs or even flat dirt / paved roads when your riding partners are rolling on 29″ wheels and tires!
A huge thank-you to our friends for inviting us to join them for this pre-Dirty GTR work-up ride. It was our first-ever, true “gravel-grinder” ride on hard-packed dirt and gravel-covered roads and we learned a lot and are better-off because of it! Post-ride pizza was also a perfect lunch and a HUGE thank-you for the ice-cream “dad”. Apparently, there’s a law that says in you ride a tandem near Covington, Georgia, ice-cream must be consumed. Now, that’s a law I can get behind!
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