Chris Porter is one of the most interesting and most opinionated figures in the mountain bike world, and we’re very pleased to announce that he’s back on Bikes and Big Ideas this week. There was a lot we weren’t able to cover in our first conversation a few months ago, so this week we discuss the Geometron G1 & how Chris chooses to set up his personal bike; dual-crown Enduro forks & how we both wish they were more common; EXT suspension, including the Era fork and custom G1-spec Storia shock; & much more.
TOPICS & TIMES:
- Nicolai / Geometron G1 & G1-spec EXT Storia (1:10)
- Chris’ bike setup (4:35)
- Mullet bikes vs. 29ers (6:16)
- Dual crown Enduro forks & bikes as fashion pieces (21:52)
- MORC 36 dual crown conversion (22:30)
- Formula dual crown prototype (38:08)
- Development with EXT (42:06)
- EXT Era (56:32)
- Chris’ Big Idea (1:08:28)
RELATED LINKS:
Gimme that MORC’ed ERA Chris!!!
More Chris Porter please! Great conversation David.
Chris is always entertaining. You could possibly just have an entire episode with him on his opinion of gravel bikes. However, I did think a couple of things in regards to Geometron. There might be a comparison made between the Geometron configurators and the swapable componentry of Guerilla Gravity. In some ways they are the same, but in other ways different. And differently marketed. My impression is the configurators work to dial in a bike while GG wants to give the impression of getting a multi bike. Chris P will never dial it in because he’s a natural tinkerer, but it would be interesting to hear a Blister take on those systems. Let’s say a person wanted to not buy a bike every year but have some leeway in terms of adaptability. How do those systems compare.
And my final tangential thought was thinking of buying a new (or an additional bike) verses adapting a bike. It’d be curious to have a Blister bike quiver discussion. DH to Trail. Obviously you could leave out BMX and likely dirt jumpers. But what would be a two or three bike quiver? I often wonder if I should have a DH bike. Could I get away with the various enduro+ bikes. And at the opposite end, what would cover the bottom end. Hard tail or is there a burly low travel bike that isn’t for XC racing that could get away with rough trail, or even dirt jumping. Food for pod cast maybe.
I think that framing is spot on. They’re both highly modular frames, but with fairly different goals. The G1 is all about fine tuning and getting the setup exactly dialed for the obsessive tinkerer; Guerrilla Gravity makes it relatively easy to convert the bike into something fundamentally different. There’s no “right” or “wrong” answer really, they’re just aiming to do different things.
And on the bike quiver thing… stay tuned.