Bicycle Kitchen: New Whip

A week ago I sent in my employee purchase to Trek Bicycles for a new Gary Fisher Paragon. I had been planning to go with a Superfly but since their release somewhere around January they have been on backorder (super popular??) and now they are labeled as sold out until mid August(will probably see another long backorder). So because of the long wait I pulled the trigger on a Paragon which I am very happy with. It was delivered to the shop on Tuesday and was immediately stripped of all its parts and built up with all my parts off my old X-Cal. The frame, fork and headset are essentially the only parts I`m keeping which by the way all came in at their claimed weight leaving me with a bike that is 132 grams more than my old one leaving it at 21.51 lbs...Which I`m ok with at the moment.

My main reason for rushing the buy was the new G2 geometry, which Fisher claims helps the bike steer better while keeping the high speed stability.

What is G2 exactly?

Terms and Names:
Offset-(Blue Line) measured form the center of the steerer tube to the center of the drop out.
Head angle- the angle of the head tube in relation to a vertical line.
Trail-(Green Line) the distance defined by the vertical line from axle to ground and the intersection of centerline of the head tube and ground. What they did is increase the fork offset to 51mm from a normal 34mm and slackened the head tube angle from a normal 71.5 deg to 69.7 deg. When Fisher first made his 29ers he was using a normal head tube angle and a normal offset fork, 26" geometry if you will. When this geometry is paired with a taller wheel the trail increases. A bike with too large of a trail figure will ride nice at high speed but will feel sluggish and unwilling to change direction at slow speeds. The opposite will happen on a bike with no or very little trail, the bike will be very maneuverable at slow speeds and have a potentially very violent speed shimmy at high speeds. So as the industry went along with the whole "29er scene" they all adopted the same 26" geometry. Fisher then developed the G2 geometry which increases offset and reduces trail making the new 29ers have a more 26" feel but still retain the benefits of the 29" wheel. Currently Gary Fisher is the only company using this geometry on their bikes and in my opinion this makes them the best choice when buying a 29er.

On the Bike
I rode her to work the following day. The first thing I noticed was the bottom bracket is way stiffer and the speed shimmy that I did get on my older frame was gone indicating that the top and down tube have stiffened up. Another noticeable difference was the lower bar height which was 9mm lower than my old set up. This came as a surprise to me as the head tube is 12.5mm taller than the old frame. My only gripe about the on pavement performance was that it is a little harder to steer my wheelies.

I got her on the dirt on Saturday (lots of rain lately) and the bike preformed very well. Corners were noticeably easier to make and the bike responded better to small body inputs. The front end though heavier on paper felt nice and light and very flickable on the dirt. Descending was noticeably more stable and the rear end felt less wishy washy. When climbing in the saddle the bike tracked better and the front end stayed planted. When climbing out of the saddle the front end felt very weird, almost twitchy, but not bad, just unfamiliar. The trail was pretty slick in spots (Maze Ville) and the bike handled the slippery mud better than the old one. After one lap I made a few more adjustments to the fork and went out for another lap which was slightly faster than the first. Over all I really like the new bike, the G2 geometry surpassed my expectations and I can’t wait to get dialed in on the bike.