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This is a great exercise and trip down memory lane. According to my count, I've owned 43 mountain bikes (where "bike" refers to a distinct frame, even if parts were moved over from the previous bike) and 66 bikes total (which includes road bikes, gravel bikes, BMX's, and my original kid bike when I was 5). Many of them were amazing, some of them sucked, but all of my bikes taught me things and took me places. Puts it into perspective how lucky I've been to have owned and ridden so many bikes. And out of those 42 mountain bikes...

Many shit bikes. Bikes of note: Trek fuel ex 9.7, the 130/130 model loved this bike til the chainstay snapped during COVID Kona Hei Hei CR, great bike for my locals replaced the Trek. Specialized Enduro, only sold this as I got a great deal on the Meta Commencal Meta V5 Kona Rove Ti, the shit weather fitness bike

More than I can remember properly. And I'm a poor man. it's a sickness. Aside from the four that I made myself, two that stand out are a Hunter Cycles that I traded a used Boxxer for so that he could build a bike truck which he rode to a fourth place finish at Leadville and a '46 Schwinn that I mounted a Hannebrink fork and homemade bars and seat post to.

I won't give the years because I've honesty forgotten. Yeti SB95 - It was... Fine. Transition Scout V1 - Great bike, but I should have gotten the patrol instead Evil Wreckoning - Great that it was one of the first long travel 29" but as it turns out I'm not a huge fan of linkage driven single pivots. Scott Spark - Who knew light bikes could be so much fun? Sentinel V1 - Good bike without the cascade link, amazing bike with it. Much preferred it over my Evil Sentinel V2 - Still one of the best bikes I've ever...

Wow that's lit when I typed it out 🤯 plus it's been raining non stop wtf... 96 Gary Fisher Wahoo / 98 Specialized Stumpy M2 / 2002 Schwinn Straight 6 / 02 Balfa BB7 / 05 Giant DH Comp / O7 Sinister R9 / 08 Giant Glory / 2010 Specialized Demo 8 / 15 Scott Gambler / 2016 Commencal Supreme . That's high school to last full dh season in 19. Add in 05 Spec P3 / Chase DJ / 2014 Giant Trance 2010 Giant Reign / 15 Trans AM Hardtail / 16 Specialized Enduro Comp / 21 Commencal META...

just like half the DH teams on intense M1s back in 1999 : )

sorry, it's not ebike talk, but here are pit bits photos from leogang https://www.vitalmtb.com/forums/hub/pit-bits-2026-leogang-world-cup-dow…

and for everything electric it's just power, torque and battery talk. yawn.

Not the part of CT you are thinking of. That’s been e-bikes for years just like Westchester NY has. I’m talking the redneck eastern part of CT where the trails are in places shared with hunting and we have permanent deer stands built 20ft up in the trees at my local spot.

Charlie no

I haven't observed the same in NH, ME, and upstate NY. I see probably 80% analog bikes except for Wendsduro at Highland where there are more. I really wonder how regional this is, or if it's more dependent on the trail systems or days of the week people ride.

Pretty far from 97-3 ratio I'd say. The G-A-S region has always been an regional specialty when it came to performance mtb. They resisted 2x, 1x, progressive geo, real tires, to name a few things, well into the adoption phase in other markets. Being a leader in eMTB market penetration doesn't mean that they're early, more that the MTB culture is different there.

I'm sure this is the case in many other pockets of N-A as well but there are some trends that point to a balancing of the market. A return to a more analog world with Gen Z, combined with economic pressures that don't mesh with selling a version of MTB that is significantly more expensive would be two topical ones. Meanwhile, on the topic of MTB Tech rumours, I predict that we will soon see 1 frame design used for both eMTB and MTB, as packaging for eMTB has recently gotten considerably smaller. This is a logical way for any...

The German market isn't reflective of North America; and possibly other core MTB markets like Australia and New Zealand, however small they might be. The amount and quality of riding in North America, for example, fosters a completely different riding culture. Of course eMTB has a place here in North America, but we still have a large percentage or riders that want the analog experience. Squamish is a good example of a super core area for riders and, while eMTBs are seemingly everywhere there, my anecdotal perspective is that the split is still in favour of analog. My prediction is...

Do these numbers reflect ALL bike sales or just the sale of MTBs in Germany? Their cycling infrastructure is much, much better than most NA cities and cycling is actually a safe method of transportation. Are these numbers just being skewed as people switch to urban centric E-bikes as a preferred method of transportation? Also, it would seem that trail access in America is a concern that in some areas may steer people to analog MTBs still. Locally, it does seem like a DH bike and an emtb in the trail category is becoming more popular.

In the last two years my local New England observations of bikes on the trail went from, oh wow that’s the first time I’ve seen a big group ride off all e-bikes, to, oh wow that’s the first group ride of all mountain bikes I’ve seen in months. Even the number of old school solo xc ripper guys is down… Riding bikes in the woods has pretty much changed again, the last big change here was almost everyone “serious about riding” being on a full suspension bike.

I have to admit, I do not love the side profile of some of the 32" bikes that are coming out. They end up looking like XS bikes with cramped triangles and kinked bottom/top tubes. Hopefully more progressive geo will enable these things to look like something other than a 2010-2012 era niner.

Jeff, Thanks for using the term Memetic. The sociological concept of Mimetic Desire, as posited by Rene Girard, is pretty crucial to understanding consumer sentiment in these markets that have (de)evolved into near-perfect competition. In Girard’s conception of the Mimetic the inaccessibility of the desired object leads to Scapegoating, and has dark sociopolitical consequences. Mimetic Desire and Memetics(as conceived by Richard Dawkins)are related, but not the same, but the fundamental theme that connects them is desire. I posit that there just isn’t as much demand in the marketplace as the marketers of goods need to survive, so the churn, failure...

"Speaking to the eBike riders I see on the trails here, they're all shifting to lower-priced bikes as they've realized that they can without sacrificing performance." This lines up with a hypothesis I've been thinking about for a while, which is that I think so much of the weirdness of the bike industry and bike customers (obsession with grams and weight, obsession over granular differences in tire feel and suspension tuning, and willingness to spend enormous amounts to customize and upgrade a stock bike) comes down to the weakness of the human motor and the human mind. We only generate...

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