Ibis rolled their Van of Goodness into town on Thursday to give our customers a chance to ride some of the best mountain bikes on the market. “But wait!,” you say. “Timpanogos doesn’t sell Ibis.”  Uh, we do now!  Yup, we’re Ibis’ newest dealer.

As I rolled into the parking lot of Lambert Park’s Bowrey area, I saw none other than Chuck Ibis (Ibis founder and mastermind Scot Nicol) setting up a tent and unloading bikes from the van. If you ask me, it speaks volumes about the company that the founder would be hitting the road on a demo tour. It shows how much they care about their customer’s opinions.

Dan, wondering which Mojo will get his Mojo going.

As I wandered over to the van, Chuck smirked at the site of my 29er Single-Speed. Little did he know that I was still reeling in the pain that the SS had dished out to me the night before.  He and Ryan both pushed me to the Mojo HD for my first ride.

Ibis Crew prepping each test bike - Perfectly!

I headed down Rodeo from the Bowrey for a few minutes while I got a used to the bike. I then turned it around and rode up Middle just short of the rodeo grounds parking lot. I flipped the pro-pedal lever on at the start of the climb – felt pretty good, but a little stiff. So after a few minutes, I turned the pro-pedal off, barely any movement in the rear end – and if anyone can get a rear suspension to bob – its me (my smooth cadence on the road doesn’t transfer over to the trails – go figure!).

The real pleasure was the descent down Rodeo – pure bliss.  The bike handled like a dream, soaked up the ruts and handled my horrible choice of line selection like a champ! It’s a shame that Clay wasn’t behind me again like last week to see just how powerful the Mojo HD’s brakes were.

As I began rolling up to the van, Ryan and Mark convinced me to turn around and do another ride with them. OK, twist my arm (sorry to everyone that was waiting to ride a Large Mojo HD – time just slipped away from me). Mark and Ryan were gracious enough to keep the pace uphill nice and slow. They got quite selfish, however, when we got to the switchbacks – they didn’t walk like I did. At the top, we rearranged positions for the descent (ie, I moved aside and let Mark and Ryan get in front of me again).

We were making short work of the descent down Rodeo when I heard someone say, “Behind you.” Now, I thought I was going plenty fast, but as I came to a clearing, “On your left, please”. I obliged and pulled right  for a second then watched Judd fly by. He picked off Mark and then Ryan in short order. Funny, Judd and I were on the same bike – but he was so much faster?

I’ll spare you the rest of the test ride review – but suffice it to say, the Mojo SL rides just as well as the Mojo HD (for me at least – Judd may argue the point since he’d be able to actually make use of the extra travel provided by the HD). I was much too tired to take a spin on the Tranny, and certainly don’t have the skills to ride the skinny-tire Hakkalugi cross-bike.

But check out these matchy-match triplets…

Matchy Match - so cute!