bikes are changing, riders...

i ride a steel px fork (that i dont like) with a big ol front wheel and fatty tire. my bike right now weighs like 27 pounds but its a heavy prototype frame to test gemetry and a px fork obviously. i ride almost all natty but its good to get out on the urban stuff every so often. for comps my bike weighs about 21 pounds with a brisa alu fork and a big ass front tire/rim set up.

i am in the same boat as you where i started riding not quite three years ago and i too have noticed a huge leap forward in bike design. i think the thing is that we are seeing the demand and market for two different styles forming with competition and street. it seems like some companies are catering to the street aspect of trials (not really street so much as trials in an urban setting) and building shorter, burly bikes at a cheap price. in contrast the UCI style of riding is taking off all over the worlds where it seemed to be mostly focused in europe before. now that the rest of the world is jumping on the uci bandwaggon companies are filling the demand for that by making long, low, light bikes built for natural riding and competing. i think this is good for the sport since it is forcing faster progression from the riders. specialization is a good healthy thing for the sport i think. we have two schools of riding getting progressing incredibly fast from the euro uci riders (coustellier bro's) to the urban setting stuff (trialskings type riding).