Good Lord, how long have I been asleep?!?
Looks more like a candelabra:
“Feels more like a gravel day,” you can now decide:
The good news is once wireless electronic braking becomes a thing you’ll be able to swap bars in a matter of seconds. The bad new is it’s only a matter of time before wireless electronic braking becomes a thing.
Electronic bicycle suspension…?
Actually, that was around before I fell asleep, and I even got to try it, almost exactly three years ago:
I still think about how disappointed the SRAM people must have been that they came all the way to a mall in Yonkers just to show me their fancy new mountain bike suspension, and that all they have to show for it is a lousy blog post from some guy nobody cares about anymore.
Anyway, as someone who only rides rigid bikes, I was simultaneously very impressed by and totally indifferent to the electronic suspension system. It was like a big budget movie with lots of special effects that’s highly entertaining, and yet by the time you get home from the theater you’ve totally forgotten about it. However, it did seem pretty clear to me that sooner or later all suspension mountain bikes are going to have electronic brains, and now here’s Fox with the Live Valve Neo, which sounds like the name of an artificial heart, and which can do something like eleventy bazillion calculations per second so that there’s nothing to distract you from your bro-tastic mountain brah exploits:
It’s easy to see why a pro bike racer would benefit from a suspension controlled by a supercomputer. When you race bikes for a living, fractions of a second can mean the difference between winning and getting ground up to make tire sealant, which is what happens to bike racers when their careers are over–either that or they start selling CBD:
But does a normal person really need this stuff? According to Fox, the answer is yes. (Did you really think it would be anything else?) Here’s why:
[He looks like he’s thinking about a climb switch.]
“…for a casual rider it brings benefits just by letting you never think about a climb switch. Like, your suspension is always doing what it should be with no reaching down, no bulky handlebar controls.”
Huh. I never have to think about a climb switch either, and none of my bikes have bulky handlebar controls. It seems like another way to avoid having to deal with those things is to…not have all those things. Selling you lots of stuff that really just complicates your riding experience and then selling you even more stuff to “simplify” it again seems to be what the modern bike industry is all about–especially mountain biking, which no longer resembles anything I’d call cycling. Just look at the riding in the Fox video. It’s all about dominating the landscape while getting in and out of it as fast as possible. Teabagging the climbs:
Blasting off jumps like a porn star giving the wilderness a facial:
And just generally grinding and heaving and pumping frenetically, all interspersed with constant repetition of the words “firm” and “firms up” and “power through” and “make it do what you want”
You know, mountain biking used to have a little something called “dignity.”
Okay, fine, maybe not.
Apparently that show ran for five seasons, which is nothing short of astounding.
Meanwhile, on the road side, Rapha continues to overshoot dignity and plunge deep into dandyism, like Hans Rey launching himself off that pier:
Consider the debonair insouciance of the Pantana Bandani Pantani Banana Pantani Bandana:
[Mustache sold separately]
Say that 10 times fast.
It’s not just for cycling, either. It’s also perfect for riding a horse:
Flying a plane:
Or just penning morose poetry:
[Confession: I generated all of the above images using an incredibly expensive AI program. It’s the same one that writes this blog.]
And not to be outdone in the useless accessory department, I see Pas Normal Studios sells helmets:
Let’s zoom out for some context:
Cycling is the new equestrianism.