Riding a bike used to be really simple. Like, ridiculously simple. Grab the handlebars, wheel it out of the shed, or the basement, or the garage, throw your leg over the seat, and go. Circles turning circles, a big wide smile leading the way.
And sure, riding a bike is still all of that. Will always be just that. It’s simple. It’s beautiful. It’s easy. But over the last few years, especially on a dual suspension mountain bike, the act of riding a bike has gotten a lot more, well, complicated.
When it comes to purchasing a medium to top-end mountain bike in 2011, there’s a sea of mega-tech-super-coded-info to wade through. PS5560GS tubesets, LEX-BB600 gearing systems, GNAR88MEGA Rocket suspension technology, MARS180 tire durometer, you get my drift. On most websites those dryly-named-digit-encoded acronyms get expanded into 3D animations, dorky interviews with industrial designers, inside looks into testing facilities and laboratories.
And more and more everyday, it’s presented in a language that’s harder and harder to understand—like teenage text dialect, but for bike nerds. And it’s industry-wide: from suspension manufacturers to frame designers, components, wheels, tires, and every other tidbit in between. And it only seems to be going deeper down the rabbit hole. Detailed explanations on exotic composites, arguments that breakdown super specific (and mostly subtle) performance differences between multi-pivot suspension platforms, custom shock valving, space-age polymer-infused aramid glass with nanotechnology (huh?), four-bar, Horst-Link, VPP, single pivot, magnesium, scandium, carbon, titanium, aluminum, cromoly, it goes on forever. And maybe that’s ok for the tech fanatics among us. Many of you are educated and care about how a bike works and why. But what about everybody else?
The potential problem with technology being used as the main selling feature of a bike is its undeniable complication. For most it's a different language. One they might find alienating. Especially those new to mountain biking. Let’s face it, most of us want to ride because the act of getting on a bike and going into the woods represents freedom. It’s simple. It’s away from the complicated day-to-day of modern life.
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| Illustration: moadesign.net |
Use the car as an analogy. Those intensely complicated machines we all spend shitloads of cash on. But do we really care about the details of that technology? Do we really need to know the inner workings of that suspension system? The alloy structure of the manifold? The composite of the brake calipers? Think a motorcyclist actually cares about the valving structure of their front shock?
Sure, we care about the features. And we care about how well it works. Does it drive nice, or bad? And yeah, we really care about what it looks like, how much it costs, and if the company is going to take care of us if our particular car ends up being a lemon. But all the millions of dirty details? Really?
Even the snowsports industry seems to have strayed away from quasi-coded techno jargon marketing speak. We don’t really care if our snowboard or skis have a triaxal weave, or if they’re balsam or spruce or monocoque foam core or not. We just want to know if it shreds. If it will shred for a long time. And if we’re getting maximum shred for our buck. Sure, the more advanced gear junkies among us will question flex patterns and sidecuts, but these are features, much like amount of travel, or pedal performance on a mountain bike. It’s more about “what” this thing can do, and less about “how.”
When it comes to medium to high-end mountain bikes in 2011, however, a lot of what marketers present as the selling features of the bike come from the how, not the what. You see tech call outs worked into frame graphics. Shocks have a wide variety of settings and adjustments. Bikes arrive in boxes with explanatory DVD’s and multiple 100-page manuals. Suspension isn’t described as sweet or plush but linear, regressive, and progressive. Relatively complicated phenomena like brake jack, wheel path and rising rate suspension are explained in lengthy, shoot-me-in-the-face-I’m-so-bored communications. In all reality, the bike industry spends many millions of dollars on materials focused on explaining complicated technologies and performance virtues to people who—for the most part I’m willing to bet—couldn’t give two aramid nanotech infused scandium shits.
How many of your friends never check the air in their shock? Who don’t even know the difference between rebound, preload and compression? Who just ride to have fun, and don’t care nor want to care how their bike actually works. They just want to it to work.
So what is it about our sport that’s driven us into this realm of deep, long-winded articulation of every part of the bicycle? Is it consumer driven? Is this what we really want? Or is this what the industry thinks we want? Are we making purchase decisions based on technology or innovation? Or are we buying bicycles because our friends who’ve ridden them say they work great? Hard to know.
It begs the question, is technology the essence of our industry? Is that what we’re all about? Is that why bottom bracket and seat post diameter standards change every year? Sure, marketers do produce materials focused on the freedom and fun of the bicycle, and some are amazing, super inspirational pieces. But ever-increasingly it’s the innovation and technology story that’s percolating to the top as mountain biking's most important. For a sport totally anchored in experience and emotion, is that really where we want it to go?
They are a little bigger now but it is still sad to see.
??? It's the inner tech-dork in all of us that leads us to like contraptions like tractors and bikes and what not that leads to this IMO. I mean in alot of ways it makes perfect sence to me, you have a THING, you need to call that THING SOMETHING to seperate it from other THINGS so you use an acronym like system to name it so you now have not only a NAME, but a way to CATALOG those things... yadda yadda yadda. Am I the only one who thinks this??? Anyway, I actually really liked the direction and the voice of your article though, just don't happen to agree with some of it per say.
