Marin Bike Demo @ JPL Trail Head

As we ususaly do on Saturdays, Blowtar and I went on our weekly mountain bike ride. We decided to hit up one of our favorite local trails, the Brown Mountain/ El Prieto Trail Loop, which starts off with a great climb up a steep fire road, and ends with some super fun single track through lots of different terrain. Anyways, when we got to the parking lot there just happened to be a Marin Bikes Demo going on!!! Since I'm never one to pass up the chance to test ride a freshly tuned and high priced bike I immediately jumped at the offer! (The clincher on this was that if I crashed and smashed the bike up I held no liability for any damage whatsoever! SWEET!) So with the chance to push a $4000 bike to the limits for free, on one of my favorite rides, away I rode... First of all I noticed that this bike climbed like a champ. It didn't have a rear shock lock out mechanism (as far as I know) but the Fox Float RP23 had the "Pro Pedal" mechanism (please forgive my lack of technical description ability) on it that made the shock basically find a point at which it stayed put all while i was pedaling. I felt no dipping and wasting of energy on the climb, just a rock hard feel on the bike's tail which made me feel like I was climbing at an incredibly fast (for myself anyways) rate. Also the tires on the bike were super grippy, and grabbed the sandy parts of the trail with ease. I don't think the tire slipped once as we climbed the fire road, which is pretty rare when you have gravel, loose sand, and a bunch of rocks in addition to the hard packed dirt. In record time we reached the summit, took a quick breather, and began the descent. Since the bike had to be back to the van at 3:00 I decided to ride as hard and as fast as possible. I bombed the fire road at top speed, and this bike rode over all the divots and ruts with ease. I didn't even bother to adjust the fork before the descent and it still powered through everything. Finally we reached the single track, where the real testing would begin. And wouldn't you know... the bike passed with flying colors. The disc breaks were solid and I rode through every switchback with ease. The tires rode through water stream crossings, dirt and rock gardens and always felt extremely grippy. But, most importantly, the shifting on this bike was off the hook. Maybe my bike just needs a tune, but this bike went from one extreme to the other when i cycled through the gears going from a fast flat part to a super steep uphill section of the single track. I never once had to step off the bike due to the gear being to low for me to climb on, and when this bike switched gears it locked on and held like no other. It was ridiculous. Basically this was as rock solid of a bike as I have ever ridden. Although I've only really ridden a handful of nice Mountain Bikes. Either way, when I get a new bike, a Marin Wolf Ridge will definitely be at the top of my list. Oh yeah the guys running the demo were super cool. Not only did they hook it up bigtime with the awesome bike to ride, but I forgot my drivers license with them and they tracked me down and got it back to me before they left town for the next demo. THANKS!
This Bike Was Insane