The first few months of biking in Cape Town introduced me to two new aspects of riding that I hadn't come across in Natal- the curse of the (amazingly well designed) devil thorn and hectic bone rattling trails. The constant punctures were fixed pretty easily-bigger tyres and sealant. The crazy technical, rocky trails however, convinced me that I needed a new bike. Replacing my bottom bracket/headset at the end of every ride was becoming tiresome!
Eventually the measly savings were starting to look good and I had found a bike that looked like it would do the job. The only problem was that if I bought it that month, I wouldn't have enough money to feed myself for the 2nd half of the month. The only solution was that I would have to just starve. That bike was mine! So I proudly went and bought the worst bike and fork I have ever had the misfortune of owning.
It was a Wheeler 5900 with Manitou Mach5 Comp forks. It was absolutely beautiful to behold- metallic midnight blue paint job, big beefy looking aluminium tubing, clean welds, industrial looking silver fork. I was the happiest student on the planet! That was until, I took it onto my favourite trail.
The straight gauge aluminium tubing (even the seat/chain stays!) made the ride so harsh that I might as well have been picking up the rocks on the trail and beating my spine with them. The Mach5 forks 'springs' were 6 inch pieces of rock hard elastomer that resulted in about 2cm of travel, if I was lucky (only on+ 35 degree Celcius days!). To make matters worse, I still had to face the fact that I was going to be starving for the rest of the month!
Well, starving is a bit of an exaggeration. I did manage to sustain myself just fine. During the 3rd week of the month I was eating Weetbix cereal with water and no sugar for breakfast, lunch and supper.MMMM!
Monday & Tuesday of the last week was spent eating spaghetti with tomato sauce for breakfast, lunch and supper and for the rest of the week I was forced to tantilise my taste buds with plain old spaghetti for breakfast and supper (not enough for lunches!)
Besides all this moaning about the Wheeler, I did grow to love it in some weird way. I won my first race on it and it taught me a few valuable life lessons along the way-
(a) Never buy something without trying it out first (no matter how much you've read about it and no matter what the reviews say)
(b) Food is important! Not so much for sustenance, as mental and physical well being
(c) Steel is real!
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