I love my Jabberwocky. Really, I do. It’s fun, fast, sticks to the trail, has all the handling characteristics that I totally love. I also like that it’s a frame that retails for only $429, and it rides as good as it does. It’s a great bike. However there is one problem. The bottom bracket is really, really low. Even with careful pedal management I’m constantly striking, smashing, bashing into the obstacles on the trail. Here in New England these obstacles are many. Now, a couple of caveats, riding this bike in GA and AZ and CO the bottom bracket height was a non-issue. Different sort of trails. Also, it seems to only be a problem with the small frame. So, if you can ride a Medium frame or larger in some place that is not New England - this is totally the bike for you.

George has been pushing me to try something new. Well, a lot of folks have been pushing me to try something new and I’ve been reluctant because overall I’m comfortable and happy with the jabber. I demoed a Gary Fisher Superfly 100 (yes, full suspension and gears) and it was fun, but I didn’t really love it and you couldn’t fit a bottle in the cage (though apparently with a side loader cage you can get one in). I don’t really want to go gears and suspension. So an opportunity came up to try out the Niner One9 and George made it happen.

It showed up the other night on the kitchen counter.img_0492

img_0493Looks fast and slick. Within the space of a day he had everything transferred over from the Jabberwocky. Apparently there was much cleaning involved and as far as I’m concerned that’s a good thing, it just shows that I’ve put a ton of time and many miles on that bike. And voila! Here it is in the garage ready to go.

Problem is, winter has arrived and 8″ of snow blanketed our trails yesterday. As soon as possible I’ll be figuring out a way to get to some non-snow covered trails to see how it rides.