Do you need a Dirt Jumper?

[jscottyk]

For your consideration.



I dig what Alex is doing with his channel, "Joy of Bike".

[zachateseverything]

This tracks. I have a dirt jumper. It was $400 and when I decide to sell it, I'll probably be able to get $400 for it pretty easily. I bought it for use mostly at Ray's and doing skill stuff in my driveway. The trips to the park are super engaging. I'm hopeful that once the pandemic is over I can go back to hitting it up one night a week.

but if I didn't live near a pump track or dirt jumps I probably wouldn't ever ride this bike.

[kdawg]

I bought a 24” bmx for the same reason - great fun for mucking about on. Gets the least use of my bikes though.

I once rode it the 2 miles to work so I could get the wheels trued across the street - nearly died. Not made for distance that one...

[Bewheels]

...

I dig what Alex is doing with his channel, "Joy of Bike".

Not sure a dirt jumper is in my future but I certainly agree that he is doing a good job with his video channel. I think it is partly due to the fact that he is roughly the same age as I am so it has less hype and more reality as I know it.

[jscottyk]

Not sure a dirt jumper is in my future but I certainly agree that he is doing a good job with his video channel. I think it is partly due to the fact that he is roughly the same age as I am so it has less hype and more reality as I know it.

Same here, and I've been on a similar journey to update my MTB skills. Adding a DJ a few years ago was definitely a plus. I am fortunate and have easy access to pump tracks and jump areas. I try to grove skills on it (ok, really just goof around like a 10 year old) a few times a week. Sometimes that's as simple as bunnyhop drills in the street, and other times hitting the pumptrack of DJ spot. It's taken awhile, but the pieces are falling into place. It's fun to see the skills transfer over to the MTB out on the trail too.

[suspectdevice]

For people who dont live in areas with municipal dirt jumps and large scale paved pump tracks, a bmx bike is a lot cheaper, and makes pump tracks, skate parks, curb cuts and banks and your driveway more fun than an expensive but still bottom of the barrel 26” bike. For people who have never ridden a 26” fun bike or a 20” bike, there will be a learning curve for either.

I have 3 custom 26” fuck-around frames(back in their day we called them slalom bikes) in the basement, but i can’t remember the last time I pulled one out except to prep it for a specific event that 120mm of appropriately tuned rear suspension would be overkill for(that’s not very many events).

Just spend half an hour on yoga and warming up before you start messing around on a bmx.
Smaller bike, bigger core strength and coordination benefits.
Taking the time to adapt to a bmx bike will teach most people a lot about the fundamentals of weight distribution and steering geometry.

You can eek a giant amount of stability out of a little bike if you put your ass in the right place.
Learning to find stability in chaos is fun!

[lumpy]

The guy makes a good case. We're getting a grant for a pump track/jump line and the parks commission is on board. I'll have to think hard about this.

[jscottyk]

Mickey, I have been thinking about stopping by Empire (just around the corner from my Austin location) and picking up a 20" bike of some sort to keep pushing my skills training.

Speaking of rigs for slalom, what's you go-to these days? And why in the world, are these races not more popular??

[rec head]

You guys are the worst. Now I want a dirt jumper or BMX. Luckily Craigslist doesn't have anything in my area.

[suspectdevice]

The guy makes a good case. We're getting a grant for a pump track/jump line and the parks commission is on board. I'll have to think hard about this.

I saw you guys got a new NEMBA chapter just to help facilitate that! Pittsfield needs more cool stuff!


Check out complete bmx bikes from Fit, Kink and Sunday.
22” wheeled and 24” wheeled complete bikes with high quality parts cost about half as much as entry level complete 26” dirt jump bikes.
22” wheels are what i’d buy if i didn’t already have a great 20” frame that i’m attached to.

Big ole 9”+ rise bars and 21”+ top tubes make modern bigger bmx bikes not as scary as mid-school bikes. The tall bars make it easier than ever for creaky old folks to drop into and pop out of manuals and generally make the “rider compartment” feel much bigger than back when 7.25” rise bars and thoracic herniations were de-rigeur.

[suspectdevice]

Mickey, I have been thinking about stopping by Empire (just around the corner from my Austin location) and picking up a 20" bike of some sort to keep pushing my skills training.

Speaking of rigs for slalom, what's you go-to these days? And why in the world, are these races not more popular??

I use the same mtb for almost everything right now. The majority of my riding is just ripping corners for fun, so basically i ride a slalom bike everywhere.
27.5” Marin Riftzone(nee Hawk Hill), Medium. A reach number(445) that you’d see on a small trail bike(or size Long dj frame) from many manufacturers these days, suspension tuned firm, progressive and poppy.
Full blown chainguide, “narrow” 11-36 casette, massive brakes, light casing tires with inserts. 50mm rise bars cut down to 750mm, big stack of spacers under the stem.

The “jump hardtails” on the market these days have chainstays that are too short for my preferences for turning on loose ground, and are basically freestyle bikes, not race bikes.
Sub 16” chainstays suck for grip unless you also have a super short front end.

If my bike isn’t going to have any directional stability except from the wheel size, I’d rather just have smaller wheels so i can get sketchier, easier. Parking blocks become serious obstacles on my 20”!

With a “play” bike as my primary mtb, there is just too much overlap to justify building up my custom 26” hardtails, especially since the hardtails were built around fork lengths that aren’t available from my suspension partner.

IF there was a paved pumptrack or bmx track near me, i’d build the old battlewagons up, but since i ride on dirt, not pavement, i’m very happy sticking with a full suspension bike and chromo bmx race bike.

People should snap up the remaining small 120mm travel 27.5” fun bikes before they are gone for good, because they are definitely about to go extinct, even the venerable Santa Cruz 5010 has been stretched and smoothed into something without the raw edge it used to have.

[lumpy]

I saw you guys got a new NEMBA chapter just to help facilitate that! Pittsfield needs more cool stuff!


Check out complete bmx bikes from Fit, Kink and Sunday.
22” wheeled and 24” wheeled complete bikes with high quality parts cost about half as much as entry level complete 26” dirt jump bikes.
22” wheels are what i’d buy if i didn’t already have a great 20” frame that i’m attached to.

Big ole 9”+ rise bars and 21”+ top tubes make modern bigger bmx bikes not as scary as mid-school bikes. The tall bars make it easier than ever for creaky old folks to drop into and pop out of manuals and generally make the “rider compartment” feel much bigger than back when 7.25” rise bars and thoracic herniations were de-rigeur.

I'm a heavy 6' 2" 53-year-old dude who feels increasingly "ground-bound" compared to what the people I want to ride with are doing. Day before yesterday I pulled a muscle cross-country skiing. If I could get a dirt jumper with training wheels I would. I was perusing Pinkbike last night.

The NEMBA and now IMBA people here are awesome. Good things are happening. Land managers like the projects (up to a point, they've got a lot of user groups to balance). We haven't always cultivated good relationships but we're getting on the good foot. The riding here is super, but it's always been unmapped, alegal, and inaccessible. With Strava and Trailforks, that's changing. Also a local nonprofit runs kids races and training races every Tuesday nights in a city park, and the parks commission sees that kids from every economic class are coming out for it, which helps a ton. Sorry for the OT.

[suspectdevice]

I finally watched that video.
factually, his history is all wrong, and someone needs to hand Lee some zipties.

Trials and Street riding just as much as dirt jumping is what pushed my friends to start building production 26 and 26/24 heavy duty frames circa ‘96. Mountain bikers, especially downhillers and trials riders wanted shit to ride that wouldn’t fail. Adding ashtabula bottom brackets so you could run Profile cranks was the first step. Making the bikes easy to run singlespeed was important, but back then NORBA mandated that both trials riders and slalom riders needed gears, so almost everyone built their bikes with at least 3 cogs out back.

BMX bikes were heavy ~50 pound tanks at that point, and the rider owned company movement was just getting going. BMX riders and brands thought we were all dumb then with our flimsy, light weight hyper expensive big wheelers and we were literally building their bmx frames for them! BMX dirtjump at that point was in its infancy. Still a lot of pedaling hard in a straight line, but it was an Xgames and MTV Sports and Music Fest event, so the major brands started getting into “dirt” so they could get some money from deodorant companies to pay their team managers.

Interest from the BMX world in 26” frames didn't pop back up until long after the Real Bike Industry dialed in multiple skus at multiple price points from 2001-2008 ish and BMX racing all but died, economically
After trek and cannondale and giant and specialized et. al stopped producing wide lines of price point pro rider signature models big wheel BMX became an Eastern European thing(because Democratic Socialism means dirt parks and healthcare!!).
With 4x racing’s removal from the world cup circuit after 2011 the market fully, fully balkanized into what you see today, with the BMX race companies making “dj” frames for dad’s to race cruiser class on, and companies involved with the Crankworx world series still making some aluminum “pump and jump” bikes for the idiotic chainless dual parallel pumptrack race format.

Brooklyn and Spooky were first to the game, DMR and Planet X in the UK were the first to start ripping Spooky and Brooklyn off in Taiwan. By Eurobike 1998 tiny aluminum frames were on every stand.

[jscottyk]

I finally watched that video.
factually, his history is all wrong, and someone needs to hand Lee some zipties.

Trials and Street riding just as much as dirt jumping is what pushed my friends to start building production 26 and 26/24 heavy duty frames circa ‘96. Mountain bikers, especially downhillers and trials riders wanted shit to ride that wouldn’t fail. Adding ashtabula bottom brackets so you could run Profile cranks was the first step. Making the bikes easy to run singlespeed was important, but back then NORBA mandated that both trials riders and slalom riders needed gears, so almost everyone built their bikes with at least 3 cogs out back.

BMX bikes were heavy ~50 pound tanks at that point, and the rider owned company movement was just getting going. BMX riders and brands thought we were all dumb then with our flimsy, light weight hyper expensive big wheelers and we were literally building their bmx frames for them! BMX dirtjump at that point was in its infancy. Still a lot of pedaling hard in a straight line, but it was an Xgames and MTV Sports and Music Fest event, so the major brands started getting into “dirt” so they could get some money from deodorant companies to pay their team managers.

Interest from the BMX world in 26” frames didn't pop back up until long after the Real Bike Industry dialed in multiple skus at multiple price points from 2001-2008 ish and BMX racing all but died, economically
After trek and cannondale and giant and specialized et. al stopped producing wide lines of price point pro rider signature models big wheel BMX became an Eastern European thing(because Democratic Socialism means dirt parks and healthcare!!).
With 4x racing’s removal from the world cup circuit after 2011 the market fully, fully balkanized into what you see today, with the BMX race companies making “dj” frames for dad’s to race cruiser class on, and companies involved with the Crankworx world series still making some aluminum “pump and jump” bikes for the idiotic chainless dual parallel pumptrack race format.

Brooklyn and Spooky were first to the game, DMR and Planet X in the UK were the first to start ripping Spooky and Brooklyn off in Taiwan. By Eurobike 1998 tiny aluminum frames were on every stand.

Good stuff Mickey. Thanks for that. Love knowing the history.

And thanks for the words on 22". I had forgotten about that wheel size. I was just looking at a Pedal Driven Cycles 22". Dave was at Spooky for awhile, yes?

[suspectdevice]

yeah, Dave drove me to MY first day of college.

Not THE first day of college, because i spent that day digging jumps out behind the Spooky shop in Putnam County, NY.

[jscottyk]

Just spend half an hour on yoga and warming up before you start messing around on a bmx.
Smaller bike, bigger core strength and coordination benefits.
Taking the time to adapt to a bmx bike will teach most people a lot about the fundamentals of weight distribution and steering geometry.

You can eek a giant amount of stability out of a little bike if you put your ass in the right place.
Learning to find stability in chaos is fun!

Mickey, you motivated to go looking. Found a SMOKIN' deal on a very lightly used S&M ATF "22. This thing is fun!

IMG_9448.jpg

[suspectdevice]

JEALOUS! Whatcha wearing for shoes? I'm trying to get better at 180's right now and i've sacked out yet another pair of vans. A nice supple shoe for feel that also has heel impact protection is an eternal quest.

[jscottyk]

JEALOUS! Whatcha wearing for shoes? I'm trying to get better at 180's right now and i've sacked out yet another pair of vans. A nice supple shoe for feel that also has heel impact protection is an eternal quest.

The basic FiveTen Freerider. It's been my go to for flats on MTB (although MTB is now clip pedals) and DJ. I find them supple enough to really bend around the pedal, sticky sole, and descent toe and heel protection.

This bike is going to be a great tool to help bet my bunny hops higher, activate my manual more predictably, and learn to ride the ramps. And just generally playing around the streets popping off whatever I can find. I've got decent body position on the bike and don't find the wheel size to be crazy sketchy. Definitely quicker than MTB wheels of any size, but not scary.

[Chad]

I would kill for a pump track and some progressive dirt jumps. Last time we were in Breckenridge I made the kids stop with me and watch the folks on the dirt jumps. Doubt I could go big right away, but I'd love to give it a try.

[jscottyk]

I would kill for a pump track and some progressive dirt jumps. Last time we were in Breckenridge I made the kids stop with me and watch the folks on the dirt jumps. Doubt I could go big right away, but I'd love to give it a try.

I bet you were at the Frisco bike park, which is awesome. The jump lines there are great. Very progressive from full beginner on the right to full X-Games on the left. The area above the jump lines has three slopestyle lines and dual slalom course. Great skate park there too.