We employed two of our friends’ sons—ages 6 and (a very short) 7—to help us test our tester bikes, along with a 5-year-old who had just learned to ride a pedal bike and gave us a good sense of what works for an early stage pedaler. The kids tried out the bikes along the winding streets of their suburban Charleston neighborhoods. My 8-year-old son and his neighborhood buddies (ages 6 to 8) were also naturally drawn to the bikes as they went from box to assembly, beckoning like little alloy sirens.
Training wheels are also dangerous because they don’t teach the skill of leaning into a turn—in fact, they teach the opposite, which can result in a fall with some momentum. John Bradley points out that once you take the training wheels off of a child’s bike, they are back to square one. They may know how to pedal, but, again, they don’t know how to balance. I interviewed John Bradley, until recently the editor in chief of VeloNews magazine and a former editor at Outside magazine. Bradley has a son named Max who at the time had recently graduated from a Strider balance bike to a 14-inch Islabikes Cnoc pedal bike, which we didn’t review because it was north of our price parameters.
The Croix de Fer comes in three steel options (10, 20 and 30) as well as a titanium model. At the entry-level, the Delta is an aluminium frame and carbon fork road bike with endurance geometry that comes with rim brakes and provides a comfortable ride. Because hand brakes are superior to coaster brakes and allow kids to have more control over their stops, we lamented the REV 16’s lack of a rear hand brake. If this is important to you, check out the Priority Start F/W 2.0—you may have to wait to receive it, though, because this popular bike is often on back-order. All of the bikes we chose are kid-size for learning and improving on; they’re highly adjustable, so they’ll last for years; and they don’t compromise on safety—a pitfall of buying from big-box stores, we’ve found.
However, they didn’t find any witches; just mellow trails and tasty… My sincerest apologies for mentioning the ‘C’ word outside of December, but I have reasons. The Genesis warranty coverage exceeds the typical term limits for the luxury segment.
Since then, Genesis has gone from strength to strength, producing some of the UK’s best loved bikes for all occasions, and has been the bike supplier and title sponsor of the Madison Genesis road racing team since 2013. At Genesis we have a history of doing things our own way, whether that’s making bikes we want to ride, or heading in a direction that might seem a little crazy at the time. It’s who we are and we embrace that as we share our latest range.
The model number can be found on the lower portion of the seat tube just above the crank on a black and silver decal. Your bike frame & fork are protected under our Lifetime Warranty policy. The Equilibrium and Equilibrium Disc are also endurance/sportive-focused bikes, and come with a steel frame and carbon fork.
The Advanced model makes a combined 314 horsepower while the Performance trim makes 429; that number can be temporarily increased to 483 horsepower by engaging the Performance model’s Boost driving mode. With that mode activated, we launched the GV60 Performance to 60 mph in just 3.7 seconds. The GV60’s road manners are quite refined, the genesis bicycles Performance model’s adaptive suspension and electronic rear locking differential give it handling qualities reminiscent of the Porsche Macan. When cruising, the cabin remains whisper quiet; encounter a stretch of winding road, and the GV60 offers enough athleticism to entertain the driver and enough sure-footedness to inspire confidence.
The REV 16 comes with training wheels that are a snap to install, though as we’ve pointed out, we don’t recommend training wheels, in general. The Montane Icemen (Pete Sissons and Paul Cosgrove) underlined the bikes capabilities as they used a pair of Croix de Fers to circumnavigate the 1600-mile coastline of Iceland in 14 days. The store’s website currently lists new bikes from Trek, Electra, Salsa, All-city and Jamis.
Advertised as 80mm (3.14″) of travel, most couldn’t get more than one inch of movement. Having a non-progressive spring rate means that it’s unlikely they’ll ever get the full travel out of either end. Compression isn’t adjustable, and rebound is exactly what one might expect from a spring. Out back, the four bar linkage looks the part, but the actual path of travel is an arc that wants to move the wheel forward as it goes upward. This results in poor handling, as the wheel cannot track over rough surfaces properly.