2008 Specialized Stumpjumper S-Works
by: Admin
Posted on: Wednesday, November 7th, 2007 at 4:36 pm by: Admin
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When my buddy Q tells me something is good, I usually sit up and listen. A champion downhill skier, mountain biker, and all around extreme sport maniac, Q\’s level of skill usually — nay, always —eclipses the capacity of the gear he is using. So when he told me that not only had he found a bike that was, and I quote, \”flawless\”, but had access to a couple of them and wanted me to come up to Burlington, VT to give the bikes a spin, I quickly cleared my schedule.Arriving at Camel\’s Hump, Vermont\’s third highest peak and home to some of the nastiest backwoods riding in the state, I saw them. Two 2008 S-Works Stumpjumpers sat in the parking lot, glistening like anodized ponies in the mid-morning sun. Whoa. For a couple of months I had heard whispers in the mountain bike community about these mythical steeds. Bikes with the power to turn mere mortals into trail shredding gods. And now here they were. Could it be true? Could this bike live up to the hype?For the next 8 hours this question was answered over and over again with a resounding yes. This bike is amazing. Flying down rutted trails I was blown away by the responsiveness of the suspension. Specialized utilizes the Future Shock S120 fork on this bike, a suspension system that becomes active only when you hit a bump. And man is it active. Shocks and jolts that would have sent me to the chiropractor at the end of the day were absorbed magically through Specialized\’s \”Brain\” technology. With suspension this good I feared that climbs would be soft and exhausting. Not the case. The bike climbs like a goat, accelerates super quick, and has no problem going from a leisurely cadence to a power climb in the blink of an eye. And the handling? Think Formula 1 racing.Using the Magura Marta SL disk brakes to bring me to a retina-detaching stop I lean over the Sram X. O carbon/aluminum trigger shifter equipped handlebars to catch my breath. Q skids to a stop next to me, a mile wide smile plastered across his face. \”Can you believe how trick this bike is?\” he gushes. \”I\’ve been riding this bike as aggressively as I can and haven\’t even begun to touch this thing\’s limits!\” And he\’s right; this bike is like confidence in a bottle. No matter what your skill level is, this bike makes you better. If you like to fly down hills, rail around corners, and still climb up the other side of the ridge without breaking a sweat, this bike is for you.At the end of the day, muddy, exhausted, but thoroughly satisfied, Q and I agreed that the only issue we had with this bike was its exclusivity. With a vertigo-inducing $7400 price tag, it\’s the Ferrari Enzo of mountain bikes. But hey, what\’s a couple mortgage payments between you and mountain biking perfection?
