I’m normally a fan of flex everywhere but in this instance, the super stiff BEAST parts kept the bike feeling positive and surprisingly efficient on climbs. And surprisingly, he often finds a diamond in the rough — or at least a salvageable build he can later modify. (In fairness, he finds total lemons too.) So I caught up with him to find out why he loves box-store bikes, whether it’s ever a good buy, and what you can do to make a 200-plus-dollar Walmart bike a respectable ride.
Suspension is just not something I’ve ever felt that I needed, so this is my first bike since owning a 1995 Pro-Flex 855 that has had suspension, and needless to say it’s a completely different box of frogs. I set the suspension up to the letter of the manual for my weight and rode it for a month or so like that to get used to it. Having never owned a proper bike with suspension and only having ridden one in anger a handful of times, I had very little to compare it to, but I do feel like 160 mm of travel on the front and 155 mm at the back are beyond my riding for sure. Overall, I increasingly rode a fairly niche bike relative to my location for normal stuff and having a great time.
Contrary to my belief that it’s a bike for riding trails, I found out later that it’s instead a bike for riding at trail centers, which I guess is proper mountain biking. But in reality, I only spend a fraction of my time on mountain bikes. With few exceptions, we all like to think of ourselves as hardcore mountain bikers.
Embark on a journey with our smart, sleek, and incredibly engaging children’s electric motorbikes. I consent to the processing of personal data for marketing purposes through newsletters sent by email. By taking innovation to the next level and creating the world’s best tires,we’re on that journey too. Let’s find you the right gear for your next adventure. If you do buy one, be sure to learn how to maintain a bike. Most of these bikes have little-to-no lubrication from the factory, and that can greatly impact their usable life.
As for the dropper, I fiddled with it a few times at the start but otherwise just got it out of the way so I could ride. The dropper is designed for super quick and easy bleeding, which refreshingly takes significantly less time to do in reality than it takes to watch the 18-second video on their website about it. It’s nothing about the effects of tires, suspension, and steering geometry, but the stiff bars worked nicely in the context of this bike. The BEAST rims also felt incredibly stiff both vertically and laterally, but again complemented the dynamic handling characteristics of a big squishy bike quite well. They were very light and felt incredibly solid, sustaining zero permanent damage from being repeatedly smashed against rocks when the tires bottomed out.
There were perhaps three weeks after I’d brought the bike home, it sitting in my living room, where I just looked at it a lot, half in disbelief that I owned a real mountain bike and half worrying about not riding it properly enough. After three weeks, I took it out for the first time on a familiar route to try to ride it up and down some sets of stairs or to drop off street furniture to get a feel for it before taking it out on trails. Chris took one of ten tubesets that didn’t work out as an opportunity to redesign the swing arm to accommodate a simplified single-pivot suspension design with just enough room for a 29×2.5″ tire and some mud clearance.
Joining the esteemed ranks of Mazza, Martello and Mota, Mostro assumes the mantle of the “M,” offering gravity mountain bikers … Plus, a local bike shop is also a great place to find your next bike — something to work up to. A friend got tired of hearing me talk about riding and decided he also wanted to get into cycling. A few days later, he showed up at my door with a $99 Hyper Shocker full-suspension bike from Walmart.
I was overbiking for sure, but simultaneously, I was pushing myself to ride new things rather than pushing my fitness as I’d expected. The lack of anything fun to ride locally and my deep desire to ride the bike all the time instilled a sense of being lost and bored, which seemed to always result in play. I’d cruise around hyper bike looking for things to ride up, down, off, or onto. I could go out for a ride with no aim and no idea where I was going and have a great time just repeatedly trying to hop over a log or riding down a set of steps fast enough to be able to ride up again on the other side; just playing around by myself, having a nice time.