On The Pedals
By Jason Giacchino

Survival of the Fittest

I’m a self-admitted technology junkie. Blame it on human nature if you must but let’s face it- it is our ability to adapt that has kept our species on earth this long. If we weren’t constantly progressing as a society you would likely be trying to build a fire through friction just to stay alive another day and I would be carving this edition of Mountain Bike Tales on a cave wall somewhere. Sure it’s easy to reflect upon the big steps forward but what about the small advances that so often go unnoticed? You probably don’t give much thought to the fact that the calculator that costs a buck at the dollar store today has more computing power than the navigational system that sent the first man to the moon. Or that your cell phone is more advanced than the satellites orbiting the earth in the 1980s.

This endless advancement finds its way to all facets of life and specifically in the microcosm of mountain bike devotion. Never has this fact been clearer to me than after a recent viewing of Billy Savage’s mountain bike documentary Klunkerz. So much of the technology that we tend to consider standard fare today is the result of years of insufficiency and the creativity/ingenuity that intended to remedy it. I can’t even begin to convey the hours, days, and sometimes weeks spent here at MBT with a notebook, pen, and poorly printed manufacturer guides in effort to dial in forks and shocks. There is no denying that suspension today comes with a variety of knobs, dials, levers, and clickers but do we ever stop to ask the question why? The idea behind all these adjustments is the ability to fine-tune one’s bike to perfection; to be able to reach areas that were previously out of reach. It’s easy to just accept this at face value, to assume life must have been miserable before the invention of all of these conveniences. Klunkerz does a nice job reminding us of how the pioneers of our sport were tickled pink just to simply blitz down the smooth fireroads of Mount Tam. Often times onboard a pre-WWII balloon-tired Schwinn at that!

The irony of today’s bikes, of course, is that in the hopes of making life simpler for the modern mountain rider, things got a whole lot more complicated. Skeptics and hold-outs argue (and often successfully) that once more of your riding time is spent worrying about your equipment than actually sailing down the mountain-side, the experience is a failure. Worse yet is that there are others who feel the need to seek more and more difficult terrain to master on account of the simple fact that their latest bike is designed to handle it. Who wouldn’t notice their favorite old hardtail-intended loop just got a whole lot less challenging aboard a 10 inch travel full squish rig? Or that the same corners that were literally boiling away the grease right from the rear coaster brakes of the Klunkerz are pretty boring for today’s 8 inch rotor, hydraulic disc equipped models? In this situation the rider has only one choice: To seek out hills with steeper grades and corners so sharp that they actually loop back onto themselves, right? Not exactly.

The beauty of advancing technology is that it’s a two-way street. While advancements can be slow in coming and take place over years of slow evolutionary change, going backward is usually much quicker. If massive hydraulic discs are making your favorite trail a yawn-fest, there’s nothing stopping you from running v-brakes or even a coaster if you’re really daring. If your suspension is turning that technical loop into a walk in the park perhaps you’re next bike will be a hardtail or maybe even a rigid. Ever wonder why there are riders out there getting excited about single speeds over 24 and 27 gear combos or why good old fashioned chromoly frames still go toe to toe in sales figures with uber materials such as carbon fiber and scandium year after year? While technology may be endlessly advancing, there is nothing forcing riders to adapt at the same rate. Best of all the technology from yesteryear typically becomes more and more affordable as time marches on. Call those who refuse to advance hold-outs, retro, old fashioned, or throw backs if you must but stop to think about it for just a moment. There are certainly situations in life where simplicity is favored over complexity and there will always be riders out there who live by the credo that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

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