[bentmettle]

I managed to stick with 26" up to 2018 when I got my 27.5+ Chameleon w/ 1x11 GX

Most of our trails are reasonably smooth woods trails without a lot of elevation. Bike is a lot of fun.

Also last spring got a Ripley and rode it all last year on 29x2.6" I'd last ridden Porcupine Rim on an old 26" hardtail I built from scratch (welded the frame myself) back in 2002 and the full suspension obviously was an insanely different experience. I think I missed the worst years of shitty 29" wheelsets by avoiding them them well into 2020. Fucker rolls over anything on 2.6" and still manages to be able to pick through some of the sketchier bits.

That bike is more fun this year on 2.4" tires that weight about a pound less each. Folks kind of gave up on riding uphill it seems like.

It's taken me 3-4 seasons to start using my dropper post. I keep telling people I didn't need one for 20 years, so I'm a little slow to insert some extra step into the ride.

I haven't ever been able to throw down mad anything in the air, so none of the new crap is messing up my trail style.

Also concur to avoid SX "eagle".

 

[bentmettle]

The oddballest thing about getting the Ripley was that it didn't feel all that amazing coming off the hardtail.

And maybe that was the amazing part - it didn't feel mega-shitty on climbs like the old FS stuff did. If I went back to back, I could tell, but it wasn't a flat tire feeling.

I want to try one of the mullet Chameleons, but I can only ride one at a time.

 

[bentmettle]

I'm kind of one of those people that doesn't do media - but in what I've seen online, the UK and US have significantly different land use policies driven by how the government or managing entities interact with the public.

The kind of rutted trails I see on a lot of videos from the UK, or in the US on private land, aren't "acceptable" in the central states. We don't really have the elevation for one thing, but the long standing land use conflicts with hikers and horses didn't leave a lot of political tolerance for any kind of erosion, and to a large extent, even riding in the rain locally.

I don't know if this is a fair assessment of all or some of what's popular in the UK since I can only see it via videos, and I know within the US, trail design varies regionally due to both land availability and geology, but if a person travels enough within the US, there's a variety of riding styles and bikes that tracks what works locally.