john riley wrote:
> As I mentioned over at BROL, since Larry _owns_ a TE I
> thought there might have been some comparison to it.
> Larry's defense was that the TE was an older model and
> thus not representative of the current line.
>
> I would submit that the TE is something of a living fossil
> (hey, when its right, don't mess with it) and that its
> handling and performance envelope haven't changed
> significantly in oh, say, 20 years. ;-) A newer bike might
> have different components, (although even there, TE is not
> famous for jumping on the latest trends), but I think
> speed and handling impressions might be fairly compared.
>
> The Easy Racer bikes are more or less the gold standard in
> this class, and are more expensive than anything in this
> class, so when any new bike enters this class, I think the
> question of how it compares to the ER bikes is going to
> come up.
>
> John Riley
To clarify this a little, part of the reason I didn't
compare the RDX to a TE is that I like to restrict my
comments to the bike in question, and not open the can of
worms that would result in comparisons. For instance,
there would be bikes that I might not mention, and people
would want to know about. And really, I would rather a
bike be judged on its own merits, and not on how it
compares to another. And comparisons can be awfully
subjective, unless actual, objective tests were done to
each bike, at about the same time. Otherwise, a
comparison of handling, speed, braking, etc., would be an
exercise in memory, in how we suppose that other bike
would be doing. Would a TE have gone down the hill faster
than the current bike just did? Would it have handled the
bumps better? Hard to say. Well, no, it's not hard to
say, but it's hard to say it with anything objective to
support it, usually. It would be really neat to get
together a bunch of bikes and do a real comparison test,
like we see in some of the car magazines, with each rider
swapping bikes frequently, making notes, etc.
--
Larry Varney Cold Spring, KY
http://home.fuse.net/larryvarney