Unplugged

The mad buzz of activity surrounding electronic suspension systems, including this Jet 9 RDO over at Bikerumor.com, shows no signs of stopping any time soon. This means two things:

First, it means electronic suspension will be unavoidable at Interbike. I doubt it’ll reach the level of carbon fiber Taiwan catalog hardtail 29ers or this year’s me-too, disc brake ‘cross bikes, but it will most certainly be present.

And why not. Electronics make everything better. Take Legos.

You could spend a few hours building something interesting with Legos, or you could spend just a few months longer and what appears to be slightly more money than the cost of an actual car to create this awesome Lego Mindstorm go-kart. But to get the full effect, you really have to see this thing in action!

Pure awesome. If you’ve ever wondered how large a Lego device would need to be in order to roll up onto a rug without visibly straining almost to the point of stopping, now we all know the answer is “apparently bigger than that.”

Sadly, the only thing we seem to be using electronics to do right now is power our bikes–like if we need to go a considerable distance but don’t want to have to burn $5 worth of dinosaur bones. Practical and beneficial for everyone? Sure. Just not nearly as exciting as figuring out ways to add electronics to do shit your bicycle already did without batteries.

In addition to shifting and suspension regulation, then, I have a few suggestions for other ways to incorporate electronics into the crude and overly mechanical world of riding a bicycle.

1. The Brakes – Duh. We’re done everything else, but now it’s time for those wireless elecronic brakes that work almost all the time. Bonus points if they could make it so a call to my cell phone from my wife would slam on my brakes so I could take the call. That’s the type of integration we’ll be able to look forward to in the future.
2. Hydration – Tell me this: how ridiculous is it that here, in the 21st Century, we have to suck on Camelbak tubes or squeeze water bottles? Electronically regulated hydration could make drinking as easy as pressing a button or two, and/or maybe regulating flow through some type of pressure control switch that mimics what the mouth does when it drinks.
3. Tire Pressure – If only there was a way to fit a battery inside your tire, a small circuit board might be able to announce your current tire pressure every 30 seconds. Using apps and The Cloud, your friends could even monitor the air pressure in your bike tires from their desktop and mobile devices. And how fun would it be if they were also able to change that setting from their living room?
4. Two Words: Remote Control – London’s Olympic XC course aside, the problem with traditional XC mountain bike races is that they’re endurance events. Not the most spectator-friendly of events, right? So let the racers do what they do so well: train and pedal. All that other stuff–from suspension settings and tire pressure to hydration and putting on the brakes–is really a hell of a lot to have to deal with while churning out 400 watts on the threshold of oxygen debt meltdown. So give all that crap to somebody else–somebody standing by the side of the racetrack. Radio-controlled mountain bike racing with real people on the bikes: you can’t deny the entertainment value in that.

Yep. We’re only in the early stages of this whole electronic thing. Look what it did for Dylan.