3/18/2023 0 Comments Santa cruz chameleonAll she wants to do is ride - anywhere, anyhow and anytime. But one thing's for sure: She took the most abuse. The Chameleon isn't the lightest, trickest or quickest bike I've ridden. I tackled singletrack, doubletrack and no track. The Chameleon was the same way - she kept asking me to try something new. I was never as good as that Mongoose deserved, but it didn't keep me from trying. Riding the Chameleon brought back memories of trying to BMX out behind McLain Cyclery back in the day. I haven't ridden anything so simple, yet so beautiful, since the Mongoose I had as a kid. Dirt jumping? Cross-country? Hucking about? She'll do it all. She'll take a fork with anywhere from 100 to 160mm of travel, so whatever your plans, the Chameleon is game. She's got an eccentric bottom bracket, which makes it a breeze to run either gears or a single-speed setup. They'll never understand the beauty of the Chameleon. People who think she's ugly are the same people who walk their bikes down stairs, ride around obstacles on the trail, worry about helmet hair and wipe down their bikes after every ride. And she just wants to go: She doesn't care where, she doesn't care how. "She," in this case, is a Chameleon: A go-anywhere, do-anything hardtail mountain bike from Santa Cruz Bicycles. "Funky." But the comments that sting the most are those saying, "She's a little ugly." When not riding he can be found at the climbing wall, in his garden or cooking up culinary delights.Everyone teases me about the new love of my life. He’s also worked out that shaving your legs saves 8 watts, while testing aerodynamics in a wind tunnel. Outside of testing bikes, Tom competes in a wide range of mountain bike races, from multi-day enduros through to 24-hour races in the depths of the Scottish winter – pushing bikes, components and his legs to their limits. With more than twenty years of mountain biking experience, and nearly a decade of testing mountain and gravel bikes, Tom has ridden and tested thousands of bikes and products, from super-light XC race bikes through to the most powerful brakes on the market. He is also a regular presenter on BikeRadar’s YouTube channel and the BikeRadar podcast. Tom has written for BikeRadar, MBUK and Cycling Plus, and was previously technical editor of What Mountain Bike magazine. He has a particular focus on mountain bikes, but spends plenty of time on gravel bikes, too. Tom Marvin is a technical editor at and MBUK magazine. While I rarely felt the front wheel tucking, that extra slackness makes a difference when tackling steep chutes and stepped rock gardens. This would put the front wheel further ahead of the handlebars, making it more surefooted on the steepest tracks, though it might slow the handling on flatter, twisty trails. On woody tree-lined singletracks, the nimble handling makes sinuous terrain an absolute hoot to ride, with the tyres’ tread digging in, helping you carve corners through the dirt.ĭuring testing, the bike handled my steeper test tracks well, though I’d have been more comfortable with a couple more degrees chopped off the head angle on the steepest terrain. It’s quick to change direction, and easy to loft the front wheel when needed, making it fun hitting natural gaps and jumps, and pumping through trail-centre rollers. Santa Cruz hasn’t gone radical with the bike’s shape, giving it well-balanced, all-rounder handling on descents. Hitting jumps in the woods aboard the Chameleon is a lot of fun.
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