After more than a year drooling over lots of different bikes, running numbers, tallying up frame sizes on nearly 20 bikes, and running through every gearing permutation I could come up with, I finally settled on a little known (stateside anyway) brand of bikes called the Chiru. I've been on a steel Niner RLT 9 for a few years and it has been great fun. I've found I really enjoy riding long winding dirt roads and single track, with the best rides taking me through meandering canyons and over high ranges we find prevalant in the desert southwest. It was time for a new ride. Working with an amzaing guy, Marc Basiliere of Lindarets (
https://lindarets.com/), we settled on the Chiru Vagus as it ticked off all of my boxes.
- Ti (beautiful, timeless, strong, light enough, damped, sexy)
- 430 mm chain stay keeping things quick enough
- Clearance for 43 mm tires
- Compliant seat stays so as to not beat you up too badly over the long haul
- 2x compatible (really thought I wanted this)
- dropper post if I find the need
- mouting bosses on top of top tube for a bag
- rack & fender mounts if needed
Working with Marc I first test rode one of his other offerings, the J. Guillem Atalya which is a beautil well crafted frame, but it was too stiff for my needs though would serve those with the need for explosif speed (Kona faux pas?) with razor sharp handling well. Marc listened to my feedback and suggested the Chiru Kegeti which is a full-on monstercross bike that can accept a 100mm travel fork. Once taking a deeper look I quickly settled on the Vagus. Without further adoo...
- Chiru Vagus 55 cm frame and CEC fork
- Easton cranks with Absolute Black ovalized chainring - 44t
- SRAM AXS mullet build with 10-50t cassette
- Spinergy GX 650b wheels with Vittoria Terreno Dry 47c tires loaded with Stans
- Whisky Parts No. 24F bars with Lizard Skins 2.5 mm dsp tape
- Whisky Part carbon seat post
- Whisky stem
- Fabric Scoop saddle
- Terske titanium valve stems
- Wolf tooth bolts and seat clamp, just cuz
- ~19.5 lbs before I started adding more stuff like bottle cages, lights, a pump...
So far I have one ride on it, a 65 mile jaunt that covered every terrain type available to me locally at this time of year. Started out on pavement across town, through mid-day traffic. This served as a good reminder of why I don't ride the road any more. After about an hour and a half of stoplights, roundabouts, dodging cars, delivery trucks cutting me off, and riding through road side rubble I made it to our local bosque trail system (an area alongside the Rio Grande river covered in cottonwoods). There's about 25 miles of distance on both sides of the river with meaning schwoopty single track connected with bits of groomed ADA compliant multi-use trails with a total of about 400 feet of elevation gain running up the river. This is a super fun place to get in some winter training as the trails are fast - quick handling is a must. I had a blast whipping through turns as fast as I could go, blowing a few as I was getting to know this new ride. I also had to learn to keep the rear end down hitting little bumps and stumps as this Vagus was noticably lighter than the steel bike I am coming off of.
After about an hour or so of ripping twisties it was time once again to cut back out onto the pavemet and head for the climb up Tramway Blvd to reach the next section of trails. This is about a 40 minute climb that gets steeper over the last mile or so. With this gearing I was easily able to maintain a realistic climbing cadence in the 60-70 rpm range keeping my heart rate in the low end of my Zone 5, even over the last push through the neighborhood to the trails where it jumps to a 13% grade for a bit. Depsite all my months of worrying over how to set up a 2x GRX build I believe it was the right choice going with this SRAM mullet build which I chose primarily over GRX for the simplicity of having no wires or cables of any kind.
The next section was through our local foothills of the Sandia Mountains which grace the eastern edge of Albuquerque. The terrain is primarily decomposed granite (read tiny slippery marbles) with plenty of rocks, ledges, cactus, and soccer moms thrown in for good measure. You'd better be paying attention here as you never know whats lurking just around the next corner. Despite knowing these trails well I felt as though I was often out riding my tires. The bike's just so darn quick, in a good way of course. This is certainly a trait one can grow into. The Ti frame, carbon fork, and Spinergy wheels rode like a dream. Just enough dampening to smooth out the chatter while keeping quick responsive handling and plenty of punch when needed. I stopped to air down just a tad from 30 psi to 25 psi, which yielding just a bit more cushioning through the rocks and bumps, giving me slightly more confidence to push it when things opened up. The huge tire clearance for up to 2.1" 650b's are shown in the image below but I don't know why anyone would need more.
These 47's strike a good balance, though for pure road and hard packed dirt roads something skinnier like a set of 38 Gravel King SK's on a set of 700c wheels will be a nice addition.
The final push was a climb back out a section of rollers up about 1800 feet to get home. I was tired and thankfully had a bit of a tailwind to push me up the climbs. Wierdest thing was that the chain started skipping under heavy load and after riding 60 miles with zero issues this was pretty confusing, not to mention energy sapping. I contacted Marc and we took a look at it this morning. I'd never seen this before so I share it in case anyone else ever comes across this issue - the quick link some how got a bit bent causing a stiff link in the chain. Swapped out the link and good as new.
Bottom line: love this bike and I expect to be grining through thousands of miles and years to come. And working with Marc of Lindarets was an absolute pleasure. Came real close to purchasing a "plastic bike" online from one of the many faceless choices on the interweb but glad I chose to keep it local.
Thanks for reading and happy trails all,
Trail Incognito
