Bike Advice?

[MootsMan]

With the appropriate tires, the Blue Ridge could handle some light off-roading, but I wouldn't want to be doing jumps or drops with it, mainly since it'd be set up as a "road" bike instead of a "mountain" bike. There are some pretty beefy cyclo-cross tires on the market, which would do for "lite" trail riding.

Go for Ti if there's any way you can work it in the budget. It's pretty much bulletproof as long as you stay away from the cheaper frames, such as Airborne, which were made of suspect-grade Russian titanium. If you go the Ti route, you should be ok as long as you stay with a good solid reputable mfgr.

Hope this helps !!

[ARCHINSTL]

It's pretty much bulletproof as long as you stay away from the cheaper frames, such as Airborne, which were made of suspect-grade Russian titanium. If you go the Ti route, you should be ok as long as you stay with a good solid reputable mfgr.

STRONG ditto on the Russian titanium - I forgot this.
Airborne had some really attractive pricing on ti bikes - but it used that ti source. I believe some other folks used this ti sourcing as well, but the names escape, and I do not want to guess and unfairly malign a brand - ask around/do a Google source. If you inquire of a company, it should be happy to quote a source.

Apparently the huge demand for ti in the Soviet airplanes dropped quite a bit when the Union broke up, so an alternative market had to be found. The story was that the Soviet airplanes were relatively unsophisticated and heavy, and compensated with a large amount of ti for performance equal to (or better) than Western planes. So there was a huge need for ti, whence the ability to produce ti cheaply.
Or so the story went...
Tom M.