The 'What's Your Coolest Feeling on a Bike Ever?!' Thread

Hitting drops!!! I love the free fall feeling on your bike. And More specifically, hitting the road gap at Mt Buller was one of the sickest things I've done recently.

Personally I love getting super loose in rooty sections, thinking you have no shot, then riding it out like no big deal.

Thrilling and scary all at the same time

Charging down the roughest steepest trail. No better feeling than being alive at the bottom

Biking in the summer is fun, and there are many things I love about summer riding, but biking down something really steep and technical icy winter trails has to be the most fun I have had lately. A hard packed foot path you get grip and speed on with studded/spiked tyres, and everything else is super loose making you lose control so easily. Feels like riding on the edge, even if you have lots of soft snow to crash in.

For me personally, I have to say getting back on the bike after a long winter. Don't get me wrong, I love my winter activities, and there is something extremely special about riding deep powder. But after 3-4 months of it, and only being able to ride a stationary bike, getting on for an actual ride is truly amazing. A sense of freedom i'd say.

For me hitting something you didn't think you could do. Whether its a short double that first time, riding down a rock face, or clearing a root section with speed. You feel invincible for a time and want to take on everything.

I agree! We actually drove about an hour south from here to get to clear (and a bit icy still) ground. Lots of pine needles & forrest fun.. Felt incredibly good to be back on solid ground again after winter! But now it's back to snow chaos here. :-(

Riding away from jumping the train gap from inside out! Never had a feeling even close!

I thought about this a while, but I just can't tell. It's everything. I love everything about riding down a hill. The speed, the jumps/drops, the technical part, the loose parts where you barely have control over anything and even the slow, unexceptional transfers where you can sit back and enjoy being out in the woods. Mountainbiking Is love. Mountainbiking is live.

For me it's when you find the flow of the trail and it feels like you can spend minutes at a time without braking or pedaling.

The extreme of this, and I only know a few sections of trails where I can make it happen, is when you are on a fairly clean and fast singletrack and it "feels" like you are hovering above the trail, pulling up for each undulation and doubling off every set of rocks or roots. That for me is the best feeling, when it feels like you are floating above the trail and only coming down when you decide to touch the ground in order to change direction or pull up off the ground again.

So many cool feelings when I'm having a day where I feel like I'm a fairly good rider. I'm not great at cornering so I really love it when I feel like I nailed a turn or series of turns. Leaned over, knobs flexing, sidewalls compressing, make sure you're pushing down on the bars to keeps both tires weighted and gripping. When things drift a bit , but not getting all loose and sloppy where I have to pull a spazzy save .Really awesome if you get a bit of a drift and hear the knobs make that ripping sound a bit. If the dirt will show tracks I have gone back to look at where all the knobs have gone just a little sideways through the apex of the turn. It feels good to know when you have pushed right to the edge of what you and your equipment are capable of. Hmmm? That sounds a bit fruity when I reread it. Oh well.

For me it has to be gettin steezy and losse o the slippery corners i love the feeling of my biking sliding underneath me and also when you go real fast and to that suuuper tight berm and fells the g's and hear that tread working its ass off

As some other said its the adrenaline having cleared a really techy section. We have one that's like steep roots in to drop to drop to steep roots to a last drop and once you hit those first roots you're committed or dead, coming out alive just feels awesome then power wheely the rest of the way out of the trail, massive skid, dump the bike, fight a tree, get naked and beat my chest while screaming "I'm the king of these woods". Usually.

Long manuals. Like, oh-I'm-still-doing-this long; full-speed, down a steep hill (dirt or paved), just hanging off the back.

Se

Sending it!

When everything you already do seems super easy, it's a good day

Corners, hitting the corners perfect

I think I'm with you on this one Zach. The super steep stuff is where I am least comfortable, but lately I'm just so stoked when I get to the bottom. Then I can't stop thinking how rad it was to go that fast on such gnarly terrain. I dig that.

But I will also say that winning my first downhill race felt amazing. The waiting, the run itself, the pain at the bottom, then stepping on the podium. I can remember the sound my tires made coming out of the rocks and into the open sections. It was almost silent and the build up of speed made the tires hum. Hearing that sound as I pedaled, I realized I really was the engine for a split second which then made me push harder. I felt like a World Cup racer! The whole thing coming together just did it for me. Pretty amazing feeling really.

Big old steep rock rolls. When you have that moment of, huh I really cant stop in this spot.

It's hard to decide on just one. In a close second would be getting to fly out to the Telluride World Cup race and hitting the big drop on the course as well as doing Trials demos on my DH bike.

But the absolutely coolest felling I've had involved a hit of nice clean liquid acid. I was again on the DH bike and was railing single track while holding onto the fork legs between the triple clamps. Ripping turns, manualing and jumping all the way down. Magic.

Steep and deep on a rough, rooty, loamy trail. I feel most comfortable when it's a trail that you're hanging off of the bike at all angles, trying find points to take away speed rather than find speed, the suspension chundering underneath you, the tires struggling to keep their composure. Where you're in a semi-controlled free-fall down all the way down and you can get in a zone where you can't think about anything else but perfected timing, then nailing it all the way to the bottom. The kind of trail you 'walk' back up after riding it the first time and think, "I rode down this?"

Nothing like a good rut to get the juices flowing

The best feeling is when you hit a rough section just perfect and it feels like you just floated all the sketchiness underneath you.

Two-wheel drifting flat/off camber corners. There's not much better than sliding on a bike when you are (mostly) in control.

I love to find the the playful flow of the trail, where thoughts are erased and movements are telepathic and where the fun line unfolds in front of you like a roller coaster.

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I don't know about coolest ever but I just had a good high speed rip down a fairly wide trail with some buddies. All jockeying to be in the lead; laughing and giving each other a hard time. Sometimes it's about the company as much as the trail.

Coolest feeling ever has gotta be smoothly gapping decent size doubles. I'm really not much of a jumper but after a few days in the bike park I start to get the rhythm. So following my friends down something like Freight Train and sailing effortlessly from lip to landing is pretty much the best.

Lovin me some back wheel

For me it's either; Hitting a trail blind for the first time and relying on instinct rather than repetition, or just sliding around down some steep, loose natural local style trails with some good off cambers.

For me it's gotta be when a whole crew of your buddies are all ripping down a trail in a big train. Hearing the hootin' and hollerin' the whole way down, and getting to the bottom as people recall all the near misses, loose turns, and shredding that just went down.