I may have gotten closer than ever to manifesting my “Road Bike Ideal,” but in this harsh, unforgiving world you need more than that, which is why I also have my “All Bets Are Off” bike:
I love the feel of pavement under my skinny tires and cork tape in my bare hands, but when the temperature dips into the teens and twenties on the American Freedom Degrees™ scale, that’s when I head into the woods on the Jones. And yes, I know for many of you these temperatures barely warrant putting on long sleeves:
But to me it’s pretty cold, what can I say? Sorry, I’m not from Greenland–though maybe I’ll move there when we annex it. Hey, the riding looks pretty good, and I bet the Jones would be perfect:
Whenever you see a Red Bull helmet you know something pointless is going to happen:
[“Hey, look at me, I’m on top of a rock!”]
Part of me finds trials riding impressive, and part of me thinks they just look like they’re humping and teabagging everything in sight.
In any case, now that winter’s here in earnest I’ve been leaning quite heavily on the Jones, and thanks to my strategic location I have trails pretty much right out my back door. So when it’s frigid and blustery and snowing like it has been this week, riding is still fun:
For awhile there it was also looking like it was going to be an all-Jones holiday break, because the first few days of it were snowy and cold:
Temperatures were barely legal, though thanks to the plus-sized tires I had no reason to be nonplussed:
Bike path not cleared? No problem at all:
Of course once that snow starts to melt things get messy, but with fenders the Jones would be positively unstoppable:
I really should do that, though installation seems like a bit of a process. In the meantime, my Designated Fender Bike is the Homer:
It makes sense for the Homer to wear the fenders in the family since I use it for everything from city transportation to road-type rides, so whatever I feel like doing if it’s wet I’m prepared. In a way the Homer is the stunt double for all my other bikes, since it can stand in for pretty much any of them in a pinch–except for the Jones, of course. The indomitability of the Jones is such that I got rid of all my other mountain bikes, including my custom singlespeed:
And its budget parts-bin counterpart:
Wait, I may have gotten that backwards.
Either way, while calling the Jones a “mountain bike” is like calling Rivendell “old school” in that it really misses the point, it can obviously do mountain bike things, and having dispensed with all its opponents it now stands alone in the wing waiting for another off-road bike foolish enough to come and fight it.
It will probably be waiting a long time.