The Link

The Link is what Giant calls there annual dealer meeting. Their top 10% of dealers are invited, which we have been for the last three years. We are in our second full day here, and after a morning of seminars, we have gotten another chance for some demo riding. Today, at A1's request, I took out a 2011 Giant Trance X1. I have to agree with A1 on this bike. It climbs, it descends, and it is quick in the technical stuff. I sort of had two different rides on this bike. First I went off by myself and climbed to the top of the mountain. I rode the exact same route as I did yesterday on the Anthem X 29er. I felt like I was able to climb faster, and the technical switchbacks were definitely easier to negotiate. When I got to the top, there was a pretty good lightning storm going on, so they had shut down the lift. I had planned on meeting Claire up there, but she had gotten stuck at the bottom. I chose to ride down to meet her, and got a pretty good drenching on the way. The ground was perfect with the dust being packed down by the rain. The thrill of hearing the lightning and thunder happening almost simultaneously added to the excitement. At the bottom Claire and I took a couple of minutes to walk through the product gallery which featured all of the 2011 bikes and accessories. Here is a link to my ride.

When they opened back up the lifts, we were one of the first back on. Claire was riding a Reign X and was very impressed with Giant's brand new seat post which raised and lowered with the push of a lever on her bars. Our first run down was pretty uneventful, except for Claire getting a little sideways in a couple of corners. She managed to keep the rubber side down and we both finished with big smiles on our faces and raced back to the ski lift. We got another ride up and headed out for some very cool single track around the other side of the mountain. Well, we got a little lost, thank you very much, but managed to finally make it back only about an hour after the demo stuff was supposed to end. Both of us were a little bit on the dirty side, but we were in great spirits at the end and ready for a sit down dinner with a bunch of other dealers.
Here is a link to our ride.