chris@canootervalve.com

SXSWTF?

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Mar 132012

The bicycle that shifts by reading your thoughts has surfaced again, this time at the South by Southwest “music, film and interactive conference” in Austin, Texas. I’ll admit to not fully understanding what the SXSW “conference” is, exactly, though it appears to be both a showcase for derivative hipster music and an excuse to write off travel expenses for tech nerds whose companies won’t cover travel to Burning Man. In keeping with the theme of information nobody gives a shit about then, I’d like to hereby announce that I no longer care how anybody controls his or her bicycle. Mind controlled bike done as a publicity stunt by Toyota to sell cars, battery operated suspension systems, four D-cells that pump water from a Camelbak directly into your mouth–whatever. I’m all for it.

Yes, it’s 2012 now, and I’ve decided there’s no place left for my usual neo-retro-grouch pose on this subject. Why be a critic? I like conferences. I like music you have to be drinking to enjoy and rooms filled with hotshit tech entrepreneurs who still live at home. Have a new web and iPhone app that lets me swap dryer lint with a person in Ohio? Nice work! Made a film that re-imagines Hitler’s death as the work of time-traveling Icelandic superstar, Bjork, who assassinates Nazis with sound before a grand finale battle scene with the ghost of Wagner? How creative! Do tell me more about your mash-up of dubstep, ’80s metal, and things Mike Patton would say out loud in a Whole Foods. Seriously, who says America’s best days are behind us? If this is what we make now, I’m all for it.

But let’s go all in.

If Toyota’s “embrace the green and figure out how to wedge an iPhone in there somewhere, too” hipster ad campaign helped pay even a small part of the development costs of a new Parlee frame design, then sure, add all the neuro crap you want, as long as we all get to see that new frame. Hell, I’d like to see corporate money going to lots of innovative small bicycle companies. We’re hip now, bicycle people. We can help sell Michelob Ultra. Work it.

Here are just a few of my dream announcements at this year’s SXSW conference:

PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi announces a “potential” new design project in collaboration with “genuine” frame builder Richard Sachs to develop a clear plastic bicycle frame that doubles as a habitat for endangered Beluga Sturgeon eggs, with built-in rear-wheel assist motor powered by “mass hatching.” Sachs, who does not attend the event, issues no comment, but a photo surfaces on Facebook depicting him emptying a can of Mountain Dew into a toilet.
Pabst Brewing Company owner C. Dean Metropoulos debuts a film and YouTube channel about the development of the company’s combination urban bicycle and home brewing system, featuring a bicycle frame crowdsource designed by “everybody in Minneapolis.”
In an attempt to build credibility in the U.S. market and citing “deeply waning interest in Jennifer Lopez,” car manufacturer Fiat announces a joint partnership with Nokia and bamboo bicycle guru Craig Calfee, to create “a stylish and modern take on the classic ‘Fred Flintstone’ human-powered vehicle.” Ashton Kucher is a rumored investor.
In a clear bid to return to his roots, Hollywood director Sam Raimi announces a documentary on the making of frame builder Erik Noren’s Evil Dead track bike, a bike that uses a chainsaw chain and is painted with genuine blood because Noren is, as Raimi announces at the movie premier, “Fucking awesome.”
Long-time sponser of events in which people are barely conscious of what snack foods they actually ingest, Doritos, announces a partnership with FedEx, Taco Bell and online retailer Competitive Cyclist. For a “very modest” additional charge, your Pinarello Dogma 2 with Super Record 11 EPS is now available shipped in its own impact-absorbing, environmentally friendly* and delicious Dorito-based taco shell. (*Legal disclaimer: some Dorito-based products have proven unable to decompose naturally under any circumstances, including human consumption.)

It’s a brave new world of corporate sponsored innovation, art and “interactivity” and I, for one, am ready.

Bicycle Superheroes

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Mar 122012

After the heavy talk and something like introspection going on here lately, I thought it was high-time for some meaningless pander to my demographic. I’ll also be packing up my family soon for relocation to Portland, and I plan to make the trip with wife, dog, and cat safely stowed inside the car and my three kids inside kennels strapped to the roof. No doubt the same “nurture nazis” who think it shows a deficiency of moral character to “Romney” the family dog will cry foul here as well “Oh, you drove three thousand miles with your kids screaming on the roof,” I can hear the parenting critiques now, “How could you do that? What’s wrong with you?” and blah, blah, and really how can you explain the necessity of this without meeting my kids, shown here uploading the source code to Norton Anti-Virus 2006 to The Pirate Bay?

No one puts baby in a corner, Symantec.

Or here, protesting what I was serving for dinner?

So to preempt the inevitable criticism, here is my official act of pandering: bicycle riders are so great!

Last Thursday in Chicago, Eric Puetz witnessed a mugging while riding to work at his bike shop, then stalked and pounced on a mugger. Quoth Puetz, “”The real thing that made this possible was the bike. I think we should nominate this bike as the hero.” A Redline Conquest? Abso-freakin-lutely! Redline’s been making badass, affordable ‘cross bikes for a long time now, and it’s about time somebody used on for crime fighting.

"Guilty as charged But damn it, it ain't right There's someone else controlling me."

No word on the quality of the dismount that took down ~~young Lars Ulrich~~Larry Bostic, the assailant, but I’d like to imagine it looked like the complete opposite of this.

And then there was last Monday’s story of Kevin Pratt, the cyclist who jumped into the Willamette river in my soon to be home of Portland to rescue a developmentally disabled man who’d misjudged the degree of difficulty involved in swimming out to a dock. Just a great story.

And the heroes in both cases. Bicycle riders. Just remember who brought you all this positive awesomeness when I need some of you as character witnesses.

Friday’s Human Struggle

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Mar 092012

Yesterday’s post was a little on the somber side, so in slightly less intense human condition news, I’m hoping for the best for Andy Parks.

Aren’t familiar with Andy? He’s an adventurous young man planning to ride his bicycle across part of the UK to raise funds for his favorite football team. Unfortunately, Mr. Parks does not have a particularly admirable track record when it comes to fund-raising endeavors. In fact, given his previous experiences, it seems every bit as likely that Mr. Parks will be killed by a falling piano on the morning of April 9th as it does he’ll complete his planned ride. (I struggled with the urge not to even post the link to the original article there in that earlier sentence, because the straight journalism is funnier than anything I can write here.)

Degree of difficulty is not the issue. While red-blooded American benefit rides usually involve pedaling two or three thousand miles while a distraught family member shadows you in the minivan, the sum total of Andy Park’s trip is a much more reasonable forty miles.

Yes, forty miles.

This, you might be thinking, is some kind of joke. Has the UK instituted some new variation of the metric system that twists our own (goddamn proper) American units of measure just to confuse us and make us look even dumber? Who schedules a fund-raiser to ride fewer miles than some of us commute to and from work each day? I’ll let Darlington’s Northern Echo news site explain:

Mr Parks, 20, hopes to raise more than £500 to pay for shares in Darlington FC 1883 Ltd – the community company set up to buy the football club and lift it out of administration. However, although the cycle ride is only 40 miles, he is mindful that previous challenges have enjoyed limited success.In 2009, when the club was last in administration, Mr Park and best friend Keirran Lamb attempted to walk 120 miles from Darlington to Lincoln in just over two days. But after about 90 miles, Mr Lamb began complaining of chest pains before collapsing of exhaustion.”

OK, so his first attempt, a long walk, was thwarted by the nefarious “walking” portion of the effort. That doesn’t bode well, but Mr. Lamb will not be accompanying Andy on his next effort, and clearly expectations have been adjusted here: we’re talking about a forty mile bike ride instead of a 120-mile walk. Easy.

To be overconfident in Mr. Park’s success this time around, however, would be a mistake. Consider his follow-up to the failed “long walk” fundraiser.

The following year, Mr Park set off to walk to Macclesfield ahead of another Quakers game to raise money for a wheelchair for a family member. After five hours, his torch ran out of batteries. As he was crossing the road to change them, he tripped on a kerb, smashed his head open and had to been [sic] taken to hospital.”

This apparently shorter walk also met with failure–and a kind of spectacular failure, too. If there’s one thing at which Mr. Park excels, it would seem to be undergoing grueling physical trauma under the least taxing of circumstances. Put into perspective then, for a gentleman who’s demonstrated great difficulty in walking across the street to plan a bicycle ride–of any distance–is pretty ballsy stuff.

Undaunted, Andy Park believes his changes to be better than ever on a bicycle, commenting, “Cycling is easier than walking and, fingers crossed, I will have no problems like I have had before.” You have to admire the courage of his positive thinking, even while being slightly terrified at how casually he discusses the act of riding a bicycle, a device that, in his hands, could well cause the death of untold millions.

One promising development is the inclusion this time of a seasoned support team. Park will be joined by two other fans of the Darlington team he’s supporting, Jake Craggs, and “businessman” Andrew Foulds, and they are more than up for the challenge. “Mr. Foulds,” according to the Northern Echo article, “has two false knees and will complete the ride on a 50 year-old bike.” None of this, Mr. Foulds believes, should present any problems. “I’m going along to make sure Andy gets over the finish line this time,” he is quoted as telling the Echo.

The article concludes with information about how to sponsor Mr. Park, which I’ll of course reprint here in order to help in any way I can, and some information about buying shares in the Darlington football team. Potential investors interested in owning a part of the team just like Mr. Park are urged to bring two forms of identity, “one of which must be a photo ID,” presumably to speed up the process of identifying bodies later.

Please consider visiting Sponsorandy.org.uk to support Andy’s effort, or consider saving the lives of potentially dozens of men in the town of Darlington, by visiting Blundelltosincil.co.uk and buying all of the shares of the team yourself. Should you attempt a fundraiser to assist you in this, please just make sure it involves bicycle riding, which is much safer than walking.

If Andy Park isn’t a testament to the indomitable human spirit–the ability of the mind to tell us we can push forward, onward, doing things that aren’t really that difficult despite how badly we always seem to screw them up, then I don’t know what is.

All the best on April 9th, Andy. You will be missed.

Not Winning

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Mar 082012

Today’s post is a bit of a downer, but sometimes I miss Laurent Fignon. I miss the man, sure–with the possible exception of Zabriskie’s occasional flourishes, you really don’t see anybody whose personal character gets priority over even aerodynamics these days–but I miss the idea of Laurent Fignon, too. Maybe it’s just the gray day outside, and I don’t know that I can explain what I mean, other than to tell you there’s a kind of beauty in not winning, too. One that sometimes matters more than winning.

To be sure, Fignon was a winner–not only a two-time Tour de France winner, but one of those guys who tended to win in spectacular, well-earned ways that include gritted-teeth and great story lines, like a kind of scrawny, bespectacled Jens Voigt. At the risk of alienating all the ~~Justin Bieber~~ Brothers Schleck fans out there, I’ll admit I’d rather watch Fignon install cleats than watch those guys race. But the defining moment–or what became the defining moment–of Fignon’s career is of course his eight second loss of the ’89 Tour to Greg LeMond, whose aero bars and spoked/disc wheel configuration made the Frenchman’s trademark Lennon glasses and “cheveux” seem like a boat sail. Even LeMond, himself no stranger to adversity and well-deserving of every win, seems to have felt a little bad about that one.

The thing is, there was always a kind of peculiar grace in Fignon’s demeaner and how he accepted defeat–a kind of deep humility you don’t often see in the age of Kanye West and other high-profile professional pouters. But it was Fignon’s other great loss, his death in 2010, and what he had to say about it as it approached, that has always stayed with me.

Despite treatment of more than seven months, my cancer had barely reduced. No matter how strong my willpower, if we don’t find a good treatment, the cancer will overwhelm me and I will die. I don’t want to die at 50, but if it’s not curable, what can I do? I love life. I love to laugh, travel, to read, eat well, just like a good Frenchman. I am not afraid of dying, it’s just I am not ready to die.”

At the time this was certainly a strong contrast to the yellow bracelet mania and power of positive thinking that was rampant in the world. I have deep respect for Lance Armstrong’s work to fight cancer. Like many superstar athletes receiving checks from the likes of Nike and Oakley, Armstrong could well have had what passes for a very meaningful life without any of the added responsibility and emotional expense associated with launching a full-scale assault on cancer. Anybody should respect Livestrong, and respect as well the dollars it’s raised and people it’s comforted. And yet–though it’s probably just me–the power of positive thinking approach has always seemed a bit like an exclusive club. I wish I didn’t think that, but I do, and I find that profoundly disturbing. While I certainly understand the value of staying positive, to imply that winners win battles with cancer is also to suggest its opposite: to die makes you a loser.

This was driven home recently with a very unfortunate death in our community. At the service I was struck by the burden the living tend to place on the dead, our expectation that they died to show us something or teach us, when of course their death was as deeply personal and incomprehensible as their birth.

It isn’t about us.

Fignon’s statement has always stayed with me because he refused to entertain us with his death. In the same way he never saw his eight second loss to LeMond as the defining highlight of his career, he didn’t seem to consider his death the defining moment of his life. While not a sentiment that translates easily into a yellow bracelet or ad campaign, there is something deeply reassuring and unconquerable about that.

And yes, I do just miss the glasses, too.

And Just Like That, Hydraulic Road Discs are Here

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Mar 072012

Get used to seeing the non-drive side profile of road bikes.

Thanks to Facebook, we have a pretty accurate idea of exactly when the next major change in cycling took place. Before Cyclingnews drove the point home, phone camera shots of Colnago’s C59 Disc had already begun to surface. Given the time difference between the U.S. and Taiwan, it was around 3:30am that my friend Chuck posted a few photos of the Formula hydraulic disc levers on the C59 and TRP’s Di2 hydraulic levers. So let’s call it: 3:30am Eastern, Wednesday, March 7th, 2012, disc brake road bikes arrived.

Volagi certainly called it, and they deserve a lot of credit for taking a risk and going off the front of the pack so early. It’s moves like that that give small companies a foothold and a chance to grow, and it certainly looks like Volagi has the wherewithal to welcome more and more companies aboard. Personally, I tend to think the Liscio frame design Volagi’s created is actually pretty unique even without the disc brakes and leaf-sprung top-tube/seat stay design Specialized liked so much. In some ways, the Liscio has more in common with “adventure” brands like Salsa than it does Colnago’s new C59–and that’s exactly why Taipei’s unveiling of hydraulic disc brakes on “pure” road bikes is so significant.

But what does it all mean? Should you panic? Rejoice? Hoard canned food? Here’re some things this will probably mean:

Electronic shifting will become standard equipment on all high-end bikes. Yes it will. You need the interior space of the hood for a hydraulic master cylinder and piston, leaving no room for the clock-like shifter mechanics we once knew and loved. Big Winners: Shimano. Big Losers: SRAM and Campy. (Campy made a valiant effort there, but everybody is going to design around the Shimano electronic shifting system.)
At least some crazy shit is bound to happen. Yeah, Tyler shouldn’t have been scrubbing his brakes so much on that descent, but the bottom line is that weird shit always happens when there’s a tectonic shift in the cycling industry, and there is a vague whiff of “let’s see what happens” out there regarding hydraulic discs on road bikes. Despite the best efforts of everyone involved, some small percentage of chaos will occur around this, likely including a whole lot of carbon fiber recycling. Despite all the amazing stress analysis and structural design programs out there, plenty of companies proved unable to build a basic ‘cross fork that didn’t howl like a banshee, and plenty of carbon fiber frameset manufacturers still find out the real durability of their stuff once the warranties start piling up. And let’s not even talk about wheels. Big Winners: Mayhem. Dentists. Big Losers: The unsuspecting.
“Road” techs are going to get their asses handed to them. Plenty of great mountain bike mechanics can’t set the angle on STIs or Ergos to save their lives, but I’ve met more than a few bike techs from highly regarded boutique road-specific shops whom I’d not let within a kilometer of my hydraulic brakes. Most of these guys are gifted bike techs who just happen to lack any mechanical aptitude whatsoever–meaning they can install the hairiest of power meter equipment and they never forget to unwind their torque wrenches after each use, but changing light bulbs around the house is a challenge, and they haven’t the slightest idea what makes an automobile go. With even the best instructions, there are just fundamental mechanical things you need to know in order to make hydraulic disc brakes work consistently, and genuine road bikes with hydraulic disc brakes are going to force the issue. Big Winners: UBI, Lennard Zinn. Big Losers: The unsuspecting.
Cyclocross bikes are going to be awesome. Seriously, electronic shifting with hydraulic disc brakes? A few possible cases of “rotor brand” aside, you’ll be able to tell the guys with the hydraulics, because they’ll be the ones riding one lap up on the field. At least until their bikes need serviced. In most ‘cross conditions, the differences will be dramatic. Big Winners: The 1%, sponsored athletes. Big Losers: Canti’s, “Suicide Levers,” people who race ‘cross in nice weather.

Now we sit back and watch each brand decide whether to adopt or not, and when. By this time next year, the road disc thing likely still won’t have sorted itself out completely, and we’ll be looking at the first waves of major 650b wheel size adopters. Sometimes, I’m happy not to be a product manager at a bike company.

The Bike Electric

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Mar 062012

Apple's Recent Patent Wires Your Bike

I like bicycles, sure, but I’m quite fond of fancy tech bullshit, too. Technology that uses your phone to give everybody in the room a copy of Photoshop, for instance, is cool. Combining technology and bicycles, however, doesn’t seem to agree with me. Maybe I’ve set up too many cycling computers (or, as customers tend to call them, “speedometers”), or maybe I’m just really old now, but I continue to think adding electronics to bicycles is weird.

Obvious exceptions here include bikes with electric motors, lights, and power meters–things that are notoriously challenging to pull off sans electronics, but the most recent push to wire every aspect of our lives–including our bike–strikes me as slightly anti-bike.

Recently looking at the patents Shimano has in the works for taking Di2 and smearing it across every possible function of the bike, including suspension systems, might be what has me going just a little Luddite here, but the recent press about Apple’s “Smart Bike” is what really caught my attention.

In case you haven’t heard, Apple has filed for a patent that essentially wires up your bike, using sensors everywhere and wireless technology to basically record everything, including “speed, distance, time, altitude, elevation, incline, decline, heart rate, power, derailleur setting, cadence, wind speed, path completed, expected future path, heart rate, power, and pace.” Apparently, you could even use voice commands to control the iPhone at the heart of the system. Neato.

Already we’ve seen similar things from Nike, and it’s pretty common to use applications like Strava to track things like training rides and sort through your own data, and I can certainly understand the value of affordable performance tracking equipment for athletes, but beyond that, I’m missing the point. It’s always been the social aspects of these types of systems that puzzle me the most. While I admire anyone’s intense training schedule, I’ll take your word for it, thanks. My desire to know details about other people’s bicycle riding stats falls somewhere below the dietary requirements of zoo-bred lemurs and high fashion. Checking in on someone else’s shared social mileage and elevation gain combines all the joy of seeing photos of what people had for lunch with the pure glee of math. I really like to know people are out riding bikes, but a general sense is all I need to be happy about it. When it comes to detailed stats, my attention wanes. Sorry, but if I wasn’t with you, I just don’t give a shit that you rode your bike. Unless you captured some gnarly video, got hit by an antelope, or both.

My obvious concern, then, is that we let technology do for our bicycles what ubiquitous digital cameras and camcorders have done for our ability to actually see stuff. Once your ride is completely and utterly wired and you’re finally–gloriously–monitoring everything from incline to chamois moisture level to temperature in your Gu packets, will you still remember to enjoy riding your bike? Like taking a picture instead of looking, wiring something that’s inherently fun has the potential to make it a lot less fun.

Maybe once we have the technology to monitor the girl in a t-shirt blowing past your rigged out Starship Enterprise bike on her beat up single-speed and disappearing off into the distance, and convert that event into Siri’s haunting and faltering voice commanding you to “get your fat Fred ass up on the pedals,” I’ll start to understand the appeal.

High-tech DIY

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Mar 052012

Demon Frameworks' Co-winner of 'Best Road Bike' at NAHBS

While virtually the entire bike industry is on the way to Taiwan for the Taipei International Cycle Show, a very different group of guys capable of making bicycles all by themselves and growing considerably more interesting facial hair has just wrapped up another successful North American Handmade Bicycle Show. The contrast between the two shows is pretty striking and says something about the diversity of the bike industry. That seven dollar mass-produced kids’ bikes can exist under the same general umbrella as high-priced labors of love like Tom Warmerdam’s incredible Demon Frameworks bikes (above) seems somehow much more shocking than Bugattis and Dacias both being considered “cars.” We’re some diverse folk.

The trademark advantage of hand-built bikes over the big production brands is usually an emphasis on artistry and detail, unique aesthetic traits, while the big guys tend to own technology. Don’t get me wrong: Crumpton and company are doing some stunning things with carbon fiber, but the big guns naturally tend to be the innovators when it comes to materials and engineering. That’s because they’ve built companies geared toward selling enough product to raise capital that gets reinvested in new technology. While you can argue (convincingly) that they often waste that development money solving problems that don’t exist, or making all new problems, the big guys are driving the industry forward, and generally they get the job done and continue to improve bikes. Unfortunately, very little of this technological development goes on entirely within their walls.

Right now, the reality is that if you want bicycle technology, it’s impossible to avoid outsourcing production, especially to Taiwan or China, where bike manufacturing is–frankly–far more advanced and serious a business than it is in most other countries, including the U.S. More unfortunate is the fact that a small number of factories in Taiwan and China produce the majority of product like carbon fiber bicycle frames. Again, if they’re the best at it, more power to them but at some point (that most of you have no doubt noticed we’ve already reached) you begin to lose diversity from one mass-produced bike brand to another. For companies that haven’t even bothered to employ engineers and designers, you also cede design control, which means your marketing department can’t even distinguish your products from the competitions’ products. I know of multiple U.S. bike brands who are essentially shells for their respective Chinese factories, and it shows in their product bullet points. “High-modulus carbon fiber” is probably still the funniest, except for “ultra-high-modulus carbon fiber,” which is even funnier. There are bike companies in the U.S., for instance, that could not–for a million bucks–explain why their frames are shaped the way they are–I mean other than for “vertical compliance” and “torsional stiffness.”

I think it’d be really great if that wasn’t the case.

To be sure, some of the people at Handmade are choosing frame shapes based solely on what looks cool, which isn’t a particularly scientific approach, but at least the same person welding or bonding is the one making the call. And I think this has room to improve drastically over the next ten years.

Design and development innovations like 3D printing and Solidworks (which is surprisingly easy to use for thinking up designs and testing them, given how ridiculously powerful it is) are good signs, and suggest we might yet have a future in which, say, a small component manufacturer could design a viable suspension fork. Sure, the technology necessary to really empower more of us to make interesting and legitimate products is still probably a decade away (if it happens at all), but I’m hopeful. Given all the recent focus on the “new normal” American economy and the decline of the manufacturing jobs that created our middle-class, I think the best chance we have of becoming a leader in manufacturing in the future may come from high-tech DIY. We’re not there yet, and maybe we never will be, but how wonderful would it be to see a Hand Built show that included more complex technology? How great would it be for guys like Frank the Welder to be able to design and produce bikes using at least some of the same production technology as Specialized or Trek? Some interesting ideas tend to always find their way out into the world. The technology necessary to make that happen for bicycle is only getting better. What’s the future equivalent of Keith Bontrager’s dumpster diving? I’m hoping it’s out there.

Friday’s Bicycle BFFs

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Mar 022012

Engineering friends much smarter than I am contacted me about yesterday’s post, wherein I wondered what the hell was going on with Shimano holding patents on the 15QR system found on Fox forks. While I’d known that Shimano designed the QR axle on Fox forks (great, because Shimano makes the best quick-releases), and that Shimano and Fox generally partner any time ergonomics or handlebar-mounted controls and such are involved, what surprised me yesterday–and still makes no sense to me today–is why Shimano seems to be patenting so much suspension technology these days.

The questions I have aren’t technological; they’re about the two businesses. I counted eight suspension patents filed by Shimano between 2009 and 2011, most involving the integration of electronics into damping and spring systems, but some that seem pretty fundamental to damping adjusters. No big deal, right? Maybe Shimano has a deeper partnership with Fox than I’d thought and they’re actually involved in designing sophisticated fork innards for them. Shimano’s a bigger company, and they certainly have a vested interest in supporting a SRAM/Rockshox competitor, so maybe they’re lending a significant amount of mental horsepower to Fox’s suspension development.

Except this is Fox. We’re not talking about Crank Bros. here. All of the engineers at Fox tend to know their stuff, but Bob Fox himself is a genuine sleeves-up engineer who knows more about suspension systems than arguably anyone else in the industry. His name is on a whole lot of patents. All by themselves Fox seems to certainly know what they’re doing (you don’t see Shimano making suspension systems for off-road racing trucks). Sure, Shimano’s filed eight suspension patents since 2009, but I stopped counting at fourteen in the same time period for Fox. They’re smart.

Case in point, this May 2011 filing which–though I could certainly be wrong–seems to suggest some version of ProPedal, or “at least four spring curves,” is on the way for forks.

I get why Shimano has enlisted Fox, but why is Fox relying so much on Shimano? Focusing on damping systems and leaving the “bike interface” parts up to Shimano–and relying on the monster sourcing and manufacturing power of Shimano–makes sense to me, but not the part where Shimano is tinkering with valving and stuff, if that’s what they’re actually doing. They’re certainly doing it with electronics, though. I guess what I’m saying is that I can’t figure out where the line is here. If someone were to tell me Shimano owned Fox, for instance, all of this would make much more sense than it does now.

Bigger-picture-wise, two things are clear: whatever the business partnership between Shimano and Fox is, it’s much bigger than I’d thought, and, maybe more disturbingly, Shimano electronics are almost inevitably headed into your suspension in the future.

Just typing this I shudder at the memory of nine volt battery and little LED on a Pro-flex Smart Shock. Obviously the systems in the patent drawings look a hell of a lot better than that, and maybe they’ll only use it on hybrids and stuff, though that seems like a hell of a lot of technology for a user who travels to bike paths with his bike bungied upside down on top of the family sedan. Unlike previous attempts, these systems would probably even work correctly more than half the time, but still, this rough drawing of the proposed little gearboxes that’ll be fumbling with our future dampers is a little disconcerting.

At least the added space necessary for the drive motors and stuff will force pretty much everyone to increase fork rake.

Eventually, though, I do see us running out of places to put batteries on our bikes. Hopefully the economy will have fully recovered for most of us by then, so we can pay some riffraff rigid single-speeders to ride along with us, carrying all our extra batteries and maybe an extra water bottle or two.

Shimano vs. Fox?

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Mar 012012

Shimano Suspension Fork Through-axle System

Somewhere around my eighth cup of coffee this morning, I noticed Guitar Ted’s extremely interesting post, “Is Someone Waking the Sleeping Giant?”. The question he asks–is Shimano once again preparing to reassert its industry dominance?–is particularly intriguing, given the shape of today’s industry. Those of us who’ve been around long enough to remember Shimano’s last burst of innovative aggression in the ’90s know that the attack came with a violence and sense of scale normally reserved for military invasions. Suddenly, everything changed. When the market share needle at Shimano HQ finally dipped into the “unacceptable” range, quietly–with few flashing lights or screaming alarms–they struck. And when they did, your chi-chi wonderbike circa 1994, with its rasta anodized boutique mess of titanium chainrings and CNC machined everything, was basically vaporized where it stood, its fancy parts rendered quaint and technologically barren nearly overnight.

It was sort of breathtaking.

By the time they dropped those original “V-brakes” on us (with what turned out to be sort of piss-poor little wiggly, fast-wearing mini linkages), it was clear the Shimano tank had driven into our little DIY knife fight, and guys like Kooka and Grafton were going back to their day jobs.

This wasn’t necessarily a good thing. There’s a reason I referred to Shimano as “it” up there at the beginning of the post, whereas you tended to refer to companies like Cook Bros. and Paul Components as “they,” or even “he.” In a way I don’t think Shimano ever really understood that we liked our cobbled together, poorly shifting, fairly domestically-sourced mash-up bikes. A fair criticism of Shimano (that SRAM has done a great job avoiding) is that they’re out of touch with what we really like. But boy is Shimano good at giving us parts we need.

This is what mountain bikes looked like before "system integration."

When shit works–I mean works, like on a level never before witnessed or even imagined–and consistently, you can’t help but start to like it. Sometimes a big company has inferior products but a superior marketing budget or established power and rams garbage down our throats. Realistically, Shimano could have done that. They could have chosen to outspend these little guys–for whom the OE market wasn’t even a factor–and crushed them the standard issue, soul-less business way. To their infinite credit, Shimano actually innovated to the top. They built drastically better stuff. That’s an honorable way to win.

Which brings us to our current situation.

The catalyst for Guitar Ted’s ponderings would seem to be an article in Bicycle Retailer and Industry News, which I’ve clipped for your reading pleasure here. “Are you ready for an 11-speed internal-gear road bike with electric shifting and diss [sic] brakes?” the article begins. Diss brakes aside, the nature of the upcoming components described in the article does suggest the big wheels at Shimano are once again turning, and the giant cannon is once again emerging from Shimano’s base of operations within a hollowed out mountain somewhere. But where to aim it?

Gone are the scattered DIY insurgents Shimano obliterated last time. In their place stands the obvious competitor, SRAM. Though dwarfed by Shimano in terms of revenue, and seriously lacking a “fishing equipment” division, SRAM has seemed almost incapable of making a bad business decision over the past decade, carefully acquiring brands and rolling them up into a very legitimate powerhouse of a company. SRAM did a lot of the same things Shimano had done in the past, but also added a healthy dose of teenage instant-gratification. When Shimano was still saying, “No carbon fiber and go to bed by 10:00pm,” SRAM was busy giving us as much carbon shit as we could afford and letting us stay up all night if we wanted. Formidable stuff. Most notably SRAM took what had been a disadvantage–less ownership and control of their own supply chain and actual manufacturing processes–and turned it to their advantage. They seem to iterate like lightning, making Shimano, no slouch, seem ponderous by comparison. When it comes to mountain bikes in particular, SRAM absolutely out-innovated Shimano over the past five to ten years, thanks largely to listening to riders and being able to develop and bring to market products much more quickly.

But those with an ownership of their supply chain and manufacturing processes are starting to dominate again across all sectors. Apple, the kings of proprietary products and supply chain control, is a company now valued at nearly a half a trillion dollars. With a serious manufacturing advantage, Shimano is uniquely positioned to disrupt the industry yet again, but the real question is will they once again out-innovate everyone?

The biggest question for me–and something at the heart of all of this–is what about Fox? Check the Shimano patent drawing at the top of the post. Since 2009 alone, Shimano has applied for over a half dozen patents just in suspension systems–and these aren’t your Sunday-driver patents. They deal with electronic suspension monitoring and, more telling still, stuff like through-axles.

I included the drawing above because it raises the most interesting question of all: is Shimano about to turn on Fox? They’ve collaborated in the past, and Fox would certainly be a prime acquisition for Shimano, but Fox is no half-ass operation. They have interests and assets outside of the bicycle industry and a long history of independence. As the mountain bike world increasingly breaks down into game of SRAM vs. Shimano+Fox, you have to wonder what the through-axle patents Shimano is displaying say about their current relationship with Fox.

For one thing, that patent drawing looks a hell of a lot like a Fox 15QR system, but some of the embodiments (Shimano offers several within this patent) are even more like the Fox system. I’ll leave you today with those images, and you can ask yourself if we’re about to see a major partnership, or if Shimano’s about to eat Fox’s lunch. If they can.

The Shaft

Bikes, Swine Comments Off

Feb 292012

I’d rather try to lick a passing bus than read most of what passes for content on the Internet these days, and professional “content marketers” are one of the main reasons. Times are tough, and under tough circumstances no doubt some people are looking down at their degrees, noticing the words “English Writing” on there, and panicking. I’ve been there, and any job is at least a job, but make no mistake: writing bullshit copy for search engine spiders makes you no friend of mankind. You better hope the future robot overlords keep you around for energy generation and amusement, because humans are getting sick of your shit. Churning out high volumes of disinformation is making our world worse.

Let me put this in terms English majors can understand: you know how Tolkien’s Orcs were apparently Elves all physically twisted and morally perverted by dark magic or some such shit? That’s you.

Probably the only honorable thing you can do if you find yourself writing “Ten Ways I Love to Use My Shamwow!” articles is to bake in some self-deprecating humor and definitely avoid taking your job seriously. You’re writing keyword love letters to web crawling bots for crissake! Do you really think your boss even reads this shit? And if the clients contracting you to write it actually had legitimate products, would they really be trusting you to write about them?

We last met content marketers when I mentioned those rad Jeep bikes, and in that case, too, the most disturbing aspect of the article with the contrived sense of “expertise.” These are essentially people writing without any background in or ever cursory understanding of, the subject of their article. Probably the worst thing you can do in that situation is pretend to know something.

Which brings me to the Dynamic Bicycles Tempo Cross 8 “review.”

Right out of the chute, we get this:

In the world of bicycles, innovations are generally small things – changes in the aerodynamics and the like – so when something as interesting as a “chainless” bicycle comes my way, I’m more than happy to get on board.”

In bullshit Internet marketing terms, this is the “introduction.” Establish that you “know something,” preferably by dropping a “term” like “aerodynamics” that you discovered in a ten second Google search. Presto! Street cred: established! Sad little “innovations” like suspension forks, oversized axles, carbon fiber, and disc brakes are going to have to ride in the back seat today, because you don’t even know they exist, and yet you’re doing to be our tour guide to the world of bicycles today, and just what is it that’s so magical about the Dynamic Bicycles Tempo Cross 8 (besides the name)?

It has no chain.

That’s right! We’re talking some shaft drive! The most skin-crawling aspect of these posts is the faux-authoritative tone, and that’s in rare form as we move into the meat of the mighty Tempo Cross 8.

While there have been different chainless bikes throughout the ages (heck, the first bicycle the “penny-farthing” actually had no chain), Dynamic Bicycles has put together a bicycle that works tremendously. From the elegantly refined color scheme, to the quiet gear box, the Tempo Cross 8 was literally everything I could have asked for in a bicycle.”

Wow. That’s a pretty strong endorsement from a random stranger with no discernible bicycle knowledge who cut his reviewer’s teeth on video games.”. Helpful tip for consumers: if the author of a bike review is talking about the “color scheme,” and we’re not reviewing the freaky rubberized texture coat of an Ibis frame or some new “Predator” technology that renders your Spring Classics bike invisible for final kilometer sneak attacks, you’re in the wrong place.

Roll up those pantlegs, though. We’re about to pimp some shaft. Here’s why the triple-named Tempo Cross 8 smokes a “so-called normal bicycle”:

A chain can break. A chain “pop off” of the teeth on the gears. A chain can seriously screw up your ability to have a good ride should damn well anything go wrong – top that off with the fact that fixing it will often be a very dirty job, and you can see why people would look for another solution.”

Yes, chains have clearly proven to be highly unreliable in their continued dominant use over the past kajillion years. But I’m familiar with nicer gearbox technologies and haven’t heard of this strange budget-oriented bike’s clearly revolutionary and car-like transmission. Please tell me more.

Yes, you pump a bit of grease into the gearbox every now and then (in truth, they say every hundred miles – or about once every three years for most people), but even that it cleaner than the grubby chain grease you see. On top of that, there’s no worry of a gear randomly flying off (like a chain might) – making the mechanical side of this bike virtually maintenance free (perfect for someone lazy like me).”

I’m leaving in all the typos, by the way. That’s just a part of all things web content these days, sad as it is, and my interest here is the actual content, or lack thereof. One of my favorite examples of “anti-content” is the implied high maintenance and inherent–apparently explosion-related–danger of a conventional chain. Clearly someone who rides less than 100 miles every three years would have chain wear issues with a regular bike, whereas one with a proprietary transmission few self-respecting bike shops would touch is perfect for such grueling Fred conditions, under which a bike usually receives most of its wear and tear while in the garage.

But our author clearly has serious cyclists in his crosshairs as well, slinging the hardcore lingo. “Sometimes when you’re driving a normal chained bicycle,” he tells us, “you can get a ‘clunk’ when the chain gets pushed by the derailleur, but nothing like that here”–no doubt a result of his superior ability to drive a bicycle. And he goes out of a limb when it comes to the saddle. “I’ve tested out a good number of other high end bicycles,” he asks us to believe, “and one of my biggest complaints has always been that some companies charge you over a grand for a bike, but give you the equivalent of a rock to sit on. Not so with the Tempo Cross 8 – I’m not sure but I think that the seat that comes standard could be the most comfortable bicycle seat I have ever sat upon. It is completely comfortable to sit on, and the bumps on the road pretty much feel like nothing at all while riding on it.”

At this point, I don’t know about you, but I’m sold. But wait a minute . . . the Tempo Cross 8 sounds a little too perfect. Surely there was something this author can tell us he didn’t like–you know, like to gain our trust and seem sort of objective.

The only real complaint I can register on the bike is that just like other high end bikes, the Tempo Cross 8 doesn’t have a standard kick stand. I’m not sure why companies don’t feel like putting kick stands on their bikes, but it’s irritating to have to go and pick one up – especially if you’re dropping close to a grand on a bike hoping for a complete package.”

Here, he has a point. I mean really. What is it with high-end bikes and their persistent, infuriating lack of kickstands? And to think the Tempo Cross 8 was this close to a perfect five star rating!

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