Bike Stability Feeling vs. Rider Position

I had an interesting ride the other day. I was on my Black Mountain Cycles Monstercross, on my way to see my mom. The BMC has a pretty normal cross geo, which in itself is pretty close to road bike geo going back before I was born. I had it setup with a Velo Orange Granola handlebar:

What was interesting was how bad this all felt.

Half Off Sale!

No, I'm not selling my bikes for half price. I'm getting rid of half of my bike fleet.

One day as I was tripping around stuff in my garage, I looked around and realized I had two of everything, bike wise:

- two 700c, steel frame, fixed gear bikes (Rivendell Quickbeam and Trek 610)

- two 700c, steel frame, medium tired all rounds (Black Mountain Monstercross and Surly Straggler)

- two 29er mountain bikes (Cotic BFE Max and Giant Trance)

- two 20" folding bikes (Bike Friday Crusoe and Bike Friday New World Tourist)

In the interest of freeing up some space and funds, I decided to unload half of my bikes. Since I had two of everything, this was theoretically simple, but some decisions were harder than others. Let's look at them, from the easier choices to the more difficult:

Round 1: Mountain Bikes: Cotic vs. Giant

The Saga of the Bike Friday Silk

 Regular reader(s) of my blog may recall I briefly owned a blue Bike Friday:

I bought this bike off eBay, hoping to fix two issues with my Bike Friday Crusoe:

- I wanted a better fold, and

- I wanted more tire clearance

This BF was interesting because it was the New World Tourist front frame (a bit heavier duty than my Crusoe), but with the Silk rear end. The Silk rear end folds the bottom bracket with the rear wheel, helping to keep the chain on the chain ring and fixing the #1 aggravation of folding a Bike Friday.