Mountain Biking - Mongoose ritual??

I am dumping a load, and flipping through the 04' photo annual of bike and I come across an ad for the Mongoose Ritual...are these bikes any good? For people who don't know what this is...its a cross breed of BMX/Mtb.

Features I know of:

-RST fork w/ lockout (RST?wtf?)
-Disk Brakes
-Chromoly tubing (okay i guess)
-Single Speed hub

I personally wouldn't like this bike, but I have friends that would love this thing...mongoose used to make good bikes back in the day, but I don't know if I can trust this, even though it is advertised in a popular mtb. mag...

Any suggestions?

here is a picture (http://www.chainreaction.co.nz/2005/mongoose/images/ritual-05-lg.jpg)

Looks like a cross breed of a bmx/mtb...what you said. I dunno bout mongoose but in Oct's issue of Mountain Biking Magazine they have an article about mtb's that blur the line between mtb and bmx. Pretty crazy idea but it would push tricks to the extreme.

Well I do a lot of what I call white trash downhill cuase I can't afford to buy the Gemeni of my dreams, and its hard for me to get up to the ski slopes. So I take the 5 mile downhill logging roads around my house. The roads are by no means easy, especially for a cannondale F300. There is track marks in the road and everything else you can imagine. I usually ride w/ a few friends who think I am an idiot as they are way behind me. But I rode with one particular person who says they refused to ride with an Mtb. bike, yet they like doing downhill, dirt jumping etc. I am thinking this has got to be a joke, cuase I don't know many if any people that ride downhills on 20" bikes, let alone a XC F300 of which barely absorbs any shock, and has the crappiest brakes. (About to change when I finally get my Gemeni) I meet him on the top of the road, and he is on a Redline RL440...wtf? I asked him, are you planning on killing yourself? We take off, and I continue to build speed, and am hitting about 35 and he is still by my side. I get to the strait section of which is so steep, you wont make it up with any vehicle during the winter. I am starting to hit 45, and my brakes soon become useless so I use the old white trash method of stopping which you will get a good laugh out of, putting your foot on the back tire! (Yes I know let the flaming begin) Still he is by my side, finally I get pissed enough that I just completly let go, and now I don't know what I am doing cuase I am to afraid to look up from the road, I leave him behind and start to brake for the U-turn when something feels soft and I can't figure out what it is, until I take the corner and realize...I have a flat at 40 mph! I nailed a rock supermanned and landed in the grass less then fifteen feet from where the downhill finally ended. I am waiting for him to come around and he doesn't, instead he comes running from around the turn spewing blood everywhere. After his 14 stitches, and the damage done to my bike, we both decided we had discovered downhill enough that we enjoyed it, and it was time to acutally get decent bikes, and do real downhill. (Not white trash downhill) I decided on The Gemeni, but he still doesn't want a mtb, so I figured this bike would be good for him IF it isn't the standard mongoose's that are out there. There is lots of bikes like this, but he wants it to be single speed, and small.

About the speeds...most people don't believe us on the speeds, but I am not lying those are accurate, unless my speedometer is off...

Possible, but still hell of crazy...

Damn man sounds like a load of fun I would try it, but about the bike I'm not to sure if its good or not, but GT has a few nice looking mtb/ bmx bikes and at least one of em have disc brakes and the range from $450-$550or $560 msrp. Hope that helps.http://gtbicycles.com/mountain/catalog/category.php?catid=3

two words: RST FORKS SUCK.....






(yeah i know....its 3 words....)

I've been looking at the ritual too. Given it could use a better shock, but it looks like it was built for the low-dollar bracket, being one of the few that are single speed out of the shop. The rest of the BMTBs or urban assault bikes, seem to have rear deraileurs.

You can say that agian, I saw a Gary Fisher the other day w/ one, and that fork is crap! There isn't even a preload on that thing.

does anyone know how long the top tube is on it? couldn't find it on mongoose's site

Thats unexpected from a mongoose, My bike religion says Nay to mongooses

I saw one in my LBS the other day... strange. They look a lot like a BMX but you still know they're MTBs. They look okay to me except the fork could do with a swapping before you leave the shop!