Last fall when I was walking through the aisles of Eurobike to get a peek at everything 29er, I overheard quite a few comments by European show visitors about how weird and unproportionate 29 inch wheels and the frames built around them look. This Sunday, I pushed the only 26er MTB I still own into the backyard to shoot the above photos. It’s a Merlin from 1994 with lots of awesome high-end bits from the good old early 90ies, most notably a 91 MRC Ti-fork and the one of a kind Hedgehog Hubs by none other than myself. I spent a lot of good hours on this bike, in places such as the Jura, the Swiss Alps, countless trails across California and the Moab region in the corner of Utah. A few years ago, I completely restored this titanium beauty and since then it’s been decorating the entrance to our apartment. I haven’t ridden it since I made the switch to big wheels some six years ago. Funny thing that Sunday morning. Carrying the bike down four floors and pushing it into the backyard I thought the same about this bike as the guys at Eurobike. This bike felt weird with its unproportionately small wheels. It’s all about one’s perception, isn’t it? The things that belong to our daily universe are normal. Everything else is strangely alien. Hop on a 29er and ride it for a while and a 26er will soon seem like a children’s bike.
★ collideous