Compliance Junction, What’s Your Function?

When you think “boring bikes,” you often think well-nigh hybrids, but I am of the opinion that the most wearisome type of bicycle by far is the full-suspension mountain bike:

Please note that I don’t midpoint they’re wearisome to ride–obviously people get up to all sorts of shred-o-riffic gnar-tastic douchery on these things and requite us unabated adrenaline facials via their many, many videos. I moreover shoehorn that they make unrepealable types of riding easier, and therefore faster, which in turn ways they’re technically “better” equal to the criteria used by the cycling media in particular and by shallow people with no souls in general. And yes, obviously, I completely understand that you might find them unremittingly fascinating and marvels of modern engineering. Still, every time I squint at one of these things–me personally, curator of this blog and the last word on everything in it–all I can think of is “BO-ring!!!,” and I find them well-nigh as inspiring as this office chair:

I have no doubt that, like its two-wheeled counterpart, this Editor’s Choice winner is “better” than regular chairs. It has willowy arms, and wide headrest technology, and wheels, and you can plane move it up and lanugo which ways that technically it has a dropper post. But it’s not any less wearisome for any of those things, and I’d oppose there’s nothing contradictory well-nigh supporting its technical features while simultaneously whereas that nobody goes to Staples to drool over the office furniture. Considering it’s boring. Boring, boring, boring.

Recently I noted my feelings well-nigh modern full-suspension mountain bikes on Twitter, mostly considering I enjoy upsetting mountain bikers, who are extremely touchy, expressly when you make fun of their equipment. This prompted one user to share this in response:

The thing they undeniability “mountain biking” today is many things, but wieldy is not one of them. Consider this video, which YouTube happened to serve me at virtually the same time, probably considering the algorithms are trying to propagandize me into compliance:

Granted, I did not watch the whole thing, but what is wieldy well-nigh trails with “no room for error,” or riding wideness a weightlifting belt?

Is it fun? Exciting? Exhilarating? Absolutely, if that’s the sort of thing you enjoy doing. It’s sure it’s moreover sick, and rad, and gnarly, and all the other things people named Tyler say it is. But it ain’t “accessible.” Riding over obstacle courses on high-tech equipment is the word-for-word opposite of accessible. In fact, whenever I criticize full-suspension mountain bikes, I can count on people suspension-splaining to me how I can’t possibly be a “real” mountain biker or properly enjoy the worriedness if I don’t use one of these things, and that unmistakably the type of riding I must be doing doesn’t count. And there’s nothing wieldy well-nigh that.

Still, I figured I’d requite the Twitter thread the goody of the doubt, but I had to ladle without it personal that mountain wanderlust had wilt increasingly wieldy considering of…crabon frames, which somehow make you climb better:

I don’t plane think Bicycle pretends crabon helps you climb anymore. This person must be reading some very old propaganda.

But what I find most witty well-nigh the “accesibility” treatise is that mountain wanderlust went from a handful of proto-brahs bombing hills in Marin to a full-blown worldwide cycling craze surpassing scrutinizingly any of the stuff we’re now told we must have in order to participate in it was plane available, at least to the stereotype person. By 1989, mountain bikes were so popular that, for the first time, Trek put them surpassing the road bikes in their catalog:

And what was their most wide mountain velocipede in 1989? This:

Did mountain wanderlust “evolve?” Did riders alimony pushing limits, and did velocipede companies provide them with equipment that unliable them to push those limits further? Am I doing that thing where I alimony asking rhetorical questions again? The wordplay to all these questions is: “Bruuuh.” But that doesn’t make it “accessible,” it just makes it increasingly technical. If mountain wanderlust had remained genuinely wieldy then gravel wouldn’t be a thing and they wouldn’t be reinventing the pre-suspension mountain bike:

See, people like stable, robust bikes, and they like to ride on dirt trails where there are no cars, which is why mountain bikes went mainstream in the first place. But mountain wanderlust left them overdue and became an adrenaline sport that’s only tangentially related to cycling, and so the industry had to go when in time, retrieve it, and undeniability it “gravel.”

Speaking of stuff left behind, the front derailleur is once dead, but Specialized is making damn sure it never comes back:

Upside-down Softride? Certainly not! This is the “Compliance Junction”–which is incidentally what they moreover undeniability their legal department:

Yes, like hacking off a gangrenous limb, Specialized have excised the lower half of the seat tube so that the hated front derailleur may find no purchase–all in the name of “comfort.” Meanwhile you’ve got SRAM doing substantially the same thing at the rear end of the bike to make sure you can no longer use a traditional rear derailleur. Don’t you see what’s going on here???

That’s right: cycling is well-nigh to get a lot increasingly “accessible.”