New bikes are faster. Right?

After a successful demo of a Transition Bandit last weekend, I made the rather impulsive decision to buy one, well the frame at least. I've been hankering after one of these for a while, and I always wish I had demo'd one much earlier. So on friday afternoon I popped back to Edinburgh and back to http://www.pedals-edinburgh.com/ to pick up my rather bright yellow Bandit frame, and a few extra bits to help with the new build.

This weekend I took it for it's first two rides. On Saturday I did a simple lap of Whinlatter blue to check shock set up and overall build quality (it was a rushed build job friday night, quickly finished saturday morning). Then on Sunday we did our own version of the Borrowdale Bash, a classic Lakes route.

Chilling at Whinlatter

Initial impressions of the bike are good, with the three positions of the Fox CTD shock, it climbs well, has a nice inbetween state for just general trail ambling then a rather soft setting when in it's descend mode (I only used this on the rough castle crag descent as the Trail setting is pretty good). Sizing felt good also, I went for the medium frame (18") and a shortish 60mm stem, combine this with 750mm bars and I felt comfortable with the overall size.

A detour to Black Moss pot, bit cold for swimming today mind

So far I'm pretty happy with the build and how it rides, it has quite a playful nature about it and feels more manoeuvrable than the Nukeproof Mega frame that this will be replacing. I wasn't 100% sure on the yellow of the frame in the shop but once built up I actually think it looks pretty cool. Looking forward to more rides out on it.

The not so surprising view at Surprise View.