Giant OCR C2 : First Impressions

I joined Princeton FreeWheelers' regular Friday evening ride around the Pennington - Hopewell area.

I had actually tried to join this ride before, but my Garmin had suggested the wrong meeting point in Pennington on a previous occasion. Apparently, I wasn't the only one this had happened to ...

Anyway, I lined up with quite a large group of local cyclists just south of Pennington. I recognised Marilyn and Geoff from my regular Griggstown Grind gig and others from the Frenchtown and Sunday morning rides.

I lifted my new Giant OCR C2 off the car's bike rack and was immediately struck by how much lighter it is than my old Trek 1200.

The orange and black paintwork makes the bike a bit of an eye-catcher and elicited several positive comments from other riders.

The ride was very enjoyable. The bike was light and responsive. The riding position was a little more upright than I'm used to and I'm not certain that the setup Jason of Halter's Cycles did for me is exactly right. However, I'm sure that on the level I was a mile or two an hour quicker than I normally spin at.

Hills were quite a bit different. I no longer have the luxury of a granny gear to bail me out, but there were no hills equivalent to those in the Sourlands on the Griggstown circuit. I'll have to wait until the next Grind before I can say if I can handle the gears on an extended climb. I did find the bike rather more twitchy when I stood on the pedals, but I think it's more a case of me getting used to it. I don't think it's attributable to the shorter stem and narrower handle-bars.

The saddle also was rather unforgiving, although I don't normally have a problem in that area. I'm going to set the nose down a degree or so and see if that improves things. If not I might just swap the rather comfortable Bontrager saddle off the old Trek.

However, none of that detracted from a very pleasant ride and the confidence that I would soon get the Giant dialed in to suit me perfectly. In fact I positively flew on the way back.

Thanks to Andy for leading the ride.

After the ride several of us went to Vito's for a slice of pizza or a sub.

Very nice too ... but I do miss a good old British pub ...