{"id":241155,"date":"2026-04-30T11:42:49","date_gmt":"2026-04-30T11:42:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/30\/i-driving-me-crazy\/"},"modified":"2026-04-30T11:42:49","modified_gmt":"2026-04-30T11:42:49","slug":"i-driving-me-crazy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/30\/i-driving-me-crazy\/","title":{"rendered":"i-Driving Me Crazy"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Yesterday I showed you my new testcycle<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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And no sooner had I done so than I clipped in and scampered off to that most formidable of proving grounds, the forbidding Trails Behind The Mall:<\/p>\n

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[The beguiling mall behind which the forbidding Trails Behind The Mall are behind. Photo not by me. The REI is long gone.]<\/p>\n

I was looking forward to receiving this bike as sort of a guilty pleasure, for I\u2019d enjoyed the last testcycle<\/a> quite a bit, even though I\u2019m a staunch advocate of rigidity in bicycles:<\/p>\n

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And now that we were in that ideal trail-riding season when the snow is long gone but the mosquitos have not yet taken over I was eager to zip around in the woods on a fully-suspendered fin de si\u00e8cle<\/em>\u00a0mountain bicycle with aggressive geometry and tiny wheels once again.<\/p>\n

The heart of this particular bicycle is of course the so-called \u201ci-Drive,\u201d which sounds like a great name for a self-driving taxi service:<\/p>\n

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While I was certainly familiar with the i-Drive as a thing that existed, I also didn\u2019t really know how it worked, since for the past 30 years I\u2019ve gone out of my way to to not own a fully-suspendered bicycle or learn anything about them. But now that I was the custodian of one I looked it up, and here\u2019s an explanation from an old review<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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The i-Drive concept is a way of creating a very active suspension system with minimum pedal feedback by using a bottom bracket subframe that \u2018floats\u2019 underneath the mainframe. Theoretically, suspension feedback and chain growth on the i-Drive system counteract one another, leaving you to point, pedal and let the suspension do the donkey work. It works well, and each new i-Drive generation has worked better than the last.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Great, got it, donkey work, no problem.<\/p>\n

Leaving my home, I darted into the park and onto the first stretch of dirt:<\/p>\n

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The bike felt fast and nimble like the AMP had, but also more plush and refined thanks having more suspension and newer drivetrain components, plus it\u2019s a little bigger than the AMP was and has wider bars wider, so overall it was more comfortable.<\/p>\n

So far so good.<\/p>\n

One can, if one is so inclined, make it almost all the way to the forbidding Trails Behind The Mall on that dirt trail, but in the interest of time I soon merged onto the paved trail instead. This is the one on which I\u2019d had my recent wino encounter<\/a>, though fortunately the route I take to the forbidding Trails Behind The Mall involves scurrying up the embankment on the right of the trail in the picture below in order to head over to the beguiling mall behind which the forbidding Trails Behind The Mall are behind, so I don\u2019t pass the spot on the trail where, for all I know, the angry winos are still lying in wait for me:<\/p>\n

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Before long, I was behind the mall behind which the forbidding Trails Behind The Mall are\u2026well you know the rest:<\/p>\n

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Everything about this bicycle is now obsolete, but don\u2019t tell me or the bike that, because we don\u2019t care:<\/p>\n

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Now that\u2019s<\/em> what I call a brake!<\/p>\n

Handling-wise the bike felt great. However, I was having one persistent issue, this being frontal shifting problems\u2013rubbing, not dropping into the smaller chainrings, etc.:<\/p>\n

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Nothing I did seemed to solve it, and I thought to myself, \u201cYes, I know the world has moved on from triples, and they can be a pain to set up with an indexed front shifter, but they certainly weren\u2019t this<\/em> bad.\u201d I also noticed that the front derailleur was moving along with the rear suspension travel, which didn\u2019t seem like something that should happen, but because it did happen it meant any adjustments I made to the limit screws or cable tension were futile. So I fired up my portable telephone and did a little more i-Drive research:<\/p>\n

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See how it moves?<\/p>\n

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