Mountain Bike Website

I’m in Saint Louis visiting my sister, who took off to visit someone in Memphis, so I’m surfing the internet. I came across a site called www.mtbreview.com which had a lot of trails listed and reviewed by actual riders. There are directions to the trails…One good one is a stone’s throw from my home in Boone N.C. Now if my sister Would kindly bring my nephew back I could continue his unicycle training … A bored and wheel-less carjug.

That board is a wealth of inormation. It’s as beneficial to biking as this is to uni-ing. (you can find me there with the name…Sofa)

however, that site is full of flames and personal attacks. Alot of immaturity. This site is great, as soon as someone starts misbehaivng, they are scolded.

On the other hand, I’ve met and ridden with as many people from there, as from here, and they’ve all been fantastic.

How many men can I meet on the internet and go into the woods with them at night ?!?

ps…the product review setup on http://mtbr.com/reviews/ is incredible

While I agree that some of the reviews on mtbr.com are incredible, shameless plugs by manufacturers, the vast majority appear to be genuin user reviews of merit.

:wink:

-Christopher

I used to hang out in the singlespeed forum before I got into unicycling. I still post there from time to time. I check out the trials forum too. There was a post there about unicycle trials the other day. The product reviews and trail reviews are great! Although, peoples opinions can be very different for the same trail. I’ve posted some trail reviews in the past, but I can’t remember if I have since I’ve been muni’ing.

I’ve ridden with some of the folks from the passion forum. Real nice people. Reading Sofa’s unicycle posts there a long time ago helped persuade me to get a muni. Thanks Sofa.

Mojoe

I actually meant the layout of the review board.

The reviews themselves generally suck.

Good reviews: Someone just bought something that they wanted for a long time and it cost a lot 0/5

Bad Reviews: Someone abused a product and it broke 0/5

Invite to join the Mountain Unicycle (MUni) Social Group on MTBR forums

Resurrecting this old thread to let you know that I have created a new Social Group over on the MTBR forum called Mountain Unicycle (MUni) and I would like to invite everyone here to join. I know I’m probably setting myself up for a lot of childish ridicule but, now that I am adding the MUni discipline to my repertoire, I am finding our two sports overlap quite a bit in many areas including the gear we use and the trails we ride. So, if you are already a member of MTBR or if you go to set up a new account, please feel free to join my social group instead of just lurking around (which is what I’ve always done until recently) over there. It would be interesting to see how many of us frequent those forums. Should be an interesting experiment. Probably an epic fail. Worst case scenario, I delete the group.

I’ve had an mtbr account for 8 years but I don’t go there much anymore - where are these “Social Groups”? I went over there and I can’t find anything like that.

I looked in my profile statistics and saw a link to social groups over on the side.

Here’s the link to the muni group.

That site was amazing! I used it to find some pretty sweet trails near me. I’m at Vassar right now and didn’t even know that there’s a sick trail 5 minutes away :smiley:

Thanks for providing the link that I had omitted. Our group is 5 strong! Way to represent people.

Good to hear! You might also find more trails near you on the SingleTracks website. Good luck! Now go MUni!

Mtbr is a very rich forum, tons of knowledgeable users doing everything under the sun, including the development of a 36" off road tire :smiley:

I post there once in a while, usually on product reviews, but in terms of interacting, the forum is so large that you either need to be a big gun or have a lot of buddies who use the forum, otherwise your posts are overlooked :roll_eyes:

I can only handle one forum at a time, still breaking the chains from the last “immature” forum I joined. There’s that old saying about the kitchen being hot, well, sometimes it’s not the kitchen so much as the tools who use it…

MUni is hard (I’m easily breathing twice as hard as when I’m riding a Mountain Bike on the same trail) but given the right conditions, it is more fun than anything I’ve ever done in the woods. And this coming from a guy that spent much of his childhood riding a Suzuki RM125cc and then a Yamaha YZ250cc dirt motorcycle on Muhlenberg County’s endless miles of coal mines which doubled as some of the best deer hunting in the nation. I am also (to this day) an avid disc golfer. MUni wins all, hands down! More fun than a barrel full of monkeys!

By “right conditions” I mean relatively flat single-track with what a bicyclist would call “good flow” where each slight uphill section is preceded by a slight downhill that gives a freewheeling bicycle enough momentum so they barely have to pedal. Mostly, they are just working the brakes. It’s really not a very intense workout because they get to “rest” often. This is simply not the case on a MUni where we can’t freewheel to get enough momentum to climb that next hill. I’m getting better at it but I still have a lot to learn which is why I’m going to Asheville this fall to see how others manage it.

So, when I pull into the parking lot of an unfamiliar trail, I ask “Where is the flat stuff?” and “Where is the longest downhill run?”. I’ve started packing my mountain bike (Raleigh M80) so that I could scout my lines and find the perfect place to ride my MUni. Here locally, I’ve joined a MeetUp group and gone on several “beginner, no-drop” group rides to learn the trails by following people who know them. But, I’m constantly keeping an eye out for a good spot to MUni. I myself have been guilty of prejudice against our two wheeled brethren going as far as putting an * in the word b*ke. Well, no more! I am hereby embracing the sport of Mountain Biking because without them, I would not have as many fun places to ride my MUni.

Here in Louisville Kentucky, the KyMBA has built a couple of really nice trails. Waverly Park has the advantage of an asphalt road that you can ride up (I can climb most anything on my KH36G as long as it’s smooth pavement. But, one little bump and I’m off) then hop on the trail and roller-coaster all the way back down to the parking lot. Rinse and repeat. There is nothing flat at Waverly Park but using my disc brake all the way down the hill is great fun! Cherokee Park, on the other hand, is up and down all over the place! It is fantastic on a bicycle but certainly not purpose built for MUni.

If you’ve read this far, I apologize for rambling all over the place but I did want to share my new found use for my old Mountain Bike. This is my first summer of MUni (distance on a KH36G has always been my primary uni discipline) and I’m beginning to understand why all the pictures that I see of MUni gatherings have a bunch of guys pushing their MUni back up the hill. Find a good downhill run and ride it several times. And, after around ten MUni outings, I have more (if that is even possible) respect for people like Kris who came in 4th in the 7 day British Columbia Bike Race. Dude is a beast!

How do you get you kids to want to ride with you? Buy them “high end” equipment!

What’s the difference between “high end” kids mountain bike and a Walmart special? About 5 pounds and $200. I talked my CraigsList friend down to $150 (MSRP $349) for this 24" Trek MT 220. The kids (age 9 & 7) love it! It’s like “Honey, I shrunk the Mountain Bike” a real deal hardtail (front shocks set for her 50lbs) with Trek’s “dialed” system which means dual hole cranks, adjustable handlebars and brake levers, and 21 gears to get them to climb that hill with Daddy! We took it out to the Levee trail (super flat asphalt down by the river) and Miles park (more of the “paved” Louisville Loop) today. Her bicycle pace is just about right for my 36" unicycle (until I kick it in high gear:D) My ultimate goal is for the kids to join me off-road on unicycles so I am going to ease them into it with bicycles and hope they catch the bug. So far, so good.

Me to chap I loved riding SS and that was a fantastic sub forum, but like you since moving to one wheel I rarely check back there