It is not often that a wrong weather forecast works out for the better. Today was one of those days. It was supposed to rain the whole weekend, but instead it turned out to be a perfect day for riding. We discovered that Yeti Cycles had a demo of their mountain bike fleet at Fairfax Cyclery, just a stones throw from the Boy Scouts trail at Tamorancho.

I went there with my son and a friend of his and we got treated to some great eye candy. Yeti build some 250 special edition bikes to celebrate 25 years in the cycling business. The picture above shows the special paint job on these bikes. This specimen belongs to Nick, the Yeti person handling the demos.

Nick prepared and fitted a 575, an AS-R 5 and an AS-R Carbon for us and we were on our way to Tamorancho. Following the rains of the past couple days, the trail was in perfect  condition. It was wet, but drained and not muddy. The weather was just perfect to enjoy the mountain. And then there were the bikes.

I had the Yeti 575 and it came with Shimano XT brakes, derailleurs and shifters and a Fox equipped suspension. It took me a little while to get used to the feel of the RP23 shock. It felt very stiff at first but the feel on the trail was very secure and the bike stuck to the trail as good as anything that I've been on before.

My son had the AS-R 5 and even though it is supposed to be more of an XC bike, it was able to take anything that we threw at it, just see the pictures.

The $4000+ AS-R Carbon was just the same. Our friend was the lightest of us and enjoyed the bike so much that he started to scheme on how he would convince his wallet bearer (AKA dad) to combine his birthday and Christmas presents ....

These bikes handled surprisingly well and is worth a serious look.

Don't miss demo days.