Back in January I purchased a titanium Beachcomber frame kit on pre-order from my friend Matias after about six months of humming and hawing. So this bike was a fairly long time coming, not unlike the Rambler I just built up – but the timing just happened to nearly overlap and both were built up this month.
I finished running cables on my lunch break this day and got out for its first ride after work. I met up with Mara who brought her titanium Beachcomber as well, and fittingly we met at the skate bowl.
Why so many new bikes when I already have such nice bikes, you may ask. Rest assured I ask myself this question repeatedly, but I believe the logic is sound: The recently built Stooge Rambler is my all-surface adventure bike, built for long rides with a bit of everything as well as camping. This Beachcomber is now my play bike and ATB, built for my Bike Portage Club type rides where there’s everything from road to technical trail, along with hike-a-bike: hence going titanium to minimize weight to carry.
Where do I fit all these bikes, you ask? Rest assured that I’m on a ‘one in, one out’ basis as I’ve long since maxed out my storage capacity, and the Crust Evasion has already moved out to make room for one of these two new bikes. The other one to go, that’s still being debated. I’ll be storing one bike disassembled in the meantime. It’s worth noting that I haven’t ridden the Stooge Scrambler in over nine months now; I just don’t get out to MTB very often anymore.
This was a 27km ride in the end, not too ambitious, but it had a bit of all the things this bike was intended for, including hike-a-bike:
We had come down a steep slope only to hike up the opposing one, but the pay-off was this lovely trail with some pretty impressive hemlocks.
We finished the ride where we started, with a few more loops of the bowl. Here are the two bikes together where the similarities and differences can be seen.
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