Here's the fancy Maverick fork. It makes the bike look like a miniature motorcycle. And if you squint, you can see on the head badge, where my friend Frank hand-engraves the frame's creation date and it's individual name. My frame, Basilisk, was born on June 8, 2006.
My very first ride with this bike turned out to be the huge King of the Rockies final race in the Winter Park series. It's 26 miles, with a lot of climbing and technical singletrack. I love it. This race turns you into quivering mush in the best of circumstances; riding a bike that you have not had any opportunity to dial in or have fitted can be a recipe for even more pain.
Here's Cindy getting ready:
Here's me and Basilisk:
I was very happy to feel good and have strong legs. Most of my summer has been lost in a weird bog of fatigue, low heart rates, and subsequent lack of motivation. So I was psyched, for sure. I was climbing well (for me, that is... climbing is not my thing), but the bike was really helping in that regard. It goes uphill so well, with little excess movement in the suspension. And when you stand up, it feels even better. Bubba's one drawback was that standing up tended to feel worse and frequently cause rear-wheel spinout. I always thought that was just pilot error, something I could never figure out how to do right, but with Basilisk it's a cinch. Sweet.
But then on the downhill, the Maverick's suspension was surprisingly harsh compared to the GT. I'm not making any judgement on that yet, though, since I've had zero chance to tweak the suspension. The idea behind the GT and Maverick suspensions are very nearly the same, so I should think that with some knowledgeable help, I can get Basilisk to feel just as good going downhill.
At about the halfway mark in the race, my back started to hurt. This race is so long that it always hurt, even on Bubba, so I wasn't surprised, but I could tell it was going to get a lot worse, since I haven't had a bike fit on the Maverick yet. Sure enough, several miles later I was in some major pain. I had to keep standing up and trying to stretch in every direction. When I got to the final climb, I was so buckled from the pain that I could barely pedal. Luckily, the final, twisty, rocky descent was a total blast, and I cruised to the finish line in 7th place out of 15, a very good result for me, considering how crappy I felt for most of this summer.
I had to strip the final parts off of Bubba today, which was sad. But there's no denying that Basilisk is cool! I'm psyched! I've got one more race in Keystone, but most of my weekends now will be filled with fun rides with friends, my favorite part of mountain biking.
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