Few things are better on a rainy morning than settling in with a full pot of coffee and some time to cruise freaky patents. Sure, I’m supposed to pretend facing a rainy morning while racing a 24-hour event–or better still, wrenching one–is the more honorable, Klingon sort of path to joy, but, having done that, I call bullshit. Nice to be warm today, and I like looking at the future. The strange, strange future. While, for me, nothing will compare to the old days of Interbike, when small companies could still afford to booth up on the ground floor and show off their bizarre wares, sorting through upcoming patents is as close as it gets. Will these things see the light of day? Tough to say, but here are a few reasons to hope the Mayans are wrong.
About all I can say to this is: “wow.” If you think you’ve seen everything possible in the world of bicycle suspension, you need to say hello to a kind of four-bar with bars that criss-cross in an “x” pattern, which seems to be what’s going on here.
Pretty straightforward here. So staightforward, in fact, that I can’t really believe this was approved. If blending seat stays into your top tube’s a crime the Handmade Show is going to look like Occupy Oakland.
Like everyone else, I’ve been kicking Specialized in the nuts for a while now over their recent marketing self-immolation stunt against Volagi, so it’s nice to point out some positive–if somewhat bizarre–things they have up their big red sleeves.
Tough to say where they’re going with a sort of bloated seat tube as suspension system, but I love the initiative. Goofy envelope-pushing stuff like this is the good side of Specialized.
While this smacks of notorious “lawyer tabs” on forks, I have to admit it’s a simple way to keep your handlebars from completely flying out of your stem.
Um, but . . . so this solves a problem? Is there a reason we all need to be concerned about this, guys? At first glance, the safety clip on this stem design seems like it’d only come into play if your stem’s faceplate exploded off or something. Might have to up my life insurance and/or read this one over carefully.
Nice and practical, SRAM’s design for a front derailleur with a really compact, multi-cable-pull-friendly actuation arm. I figured I’d include this because it’s nice to see front derailleurs–if one must still use them–being shrunken as much as possible. This makes frame designers very happy.
Have a question about the what’s left of the future? Go look at some patent, or feel free to ask me. I love this stuff.
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