Recently on a routine local ride, everything was going well. I felt good and had all the energy I needed. I was able to stay on the gas without ever feeling like I was facing anything more than a moment or two of discomfort/dread during any of the more arduous ascents. I hit all the technical bits with panache even throwing some cross-ups off more recently built launches on the “XC” side of my homebase trails. The fact that features of this ilk are more common than ever before on what are considered cross country trails speaks to how far mountain biking and bike design have come. I was in the zone, a flow state as recently discussed, and was still able to have those transcendent chaos moments I like. I do suppose one could argue that previous generations of bike designs allowed for more chaotic riding events as the riding style dictated by their design, handling, and often less than great durability played a role in this.
In this episode we’ll look at an invention that had an impact on modern mountain bike geometry despite said concept fading away quickly. But before we drop into that chute, let’s dance.
Gus Gus: Attention I have long believed that music does not necessarily need loud guitars, a caterwauling singer or a crushing rhythm section to possess an impact that is heavy, thundering and moves you. This is despite my recommendations here that are often to the contrary. I can go on and on all about all sorts of genres, and groups that are not rock bands at all that bring a wallop however I will cut to the chase. Gus Gus is a band/collective from Iceland that have been making electronic music since the mid-90s and are still going strong today. They generally get lumped within the genres of techno, electro and house, but there is more going on. I first encountered them in the early 00s with the release of the above album which is a good place to start for the uninitiated. The beats are propulsive and hit you in the chest, yet they make not dancing to them difficult. They have slower trippier stuff throughout their catalog as well and some funky soul-tinged numbers too. Regardless, the beat is always unique and up front. Their KEXP set is particularly heavy and surreal with undeniable grooves. Check them out, but don’t say I did not warn you about getting down.
At the beginning of this piece, I mentioned just how amazing modern bikes are in their ability to take you beyond what their predecessor’s designers could have dreamed of. The following invention helped usher in higher levels of rad-getting from the bottom up. External Travel Adjust, Extension Travel Adjustment, ETA or whatever you want to call it helped you get up so you could get down. This little doodad from Marzocchi and others like it arrived right around the end of the initial Freeride boom in the early 00s. Prior to all the Freeride hubbub, the biggest efforts in mountain bike advances were focused on making bikes faster. Mostly this was for ascending and even early downhill races had uphill segments. As downhill racing came into its own with dedicated bikes for going fast strictly in the descending phase, saddles with few exceptions were down and out of the way. The forks and consequently the front ends of these were tall with (relatively) slack headtube angles with zero consideration for ascending. These bikes were great for descending like a lead balloon but were horrid for anything else. Freeride bikes aimed to get most of that kick ass descending and durability in a package that you could still reach the summit without a shuttle or chairlift, albeit still meat engine powered as no e-bikes existed. The goal was on to make changes to these downhill sleds to make them more conducive for climbing.
As noted above, a downhill bike sucked for anything beyond going downhill, and this was especially true if you had to pedal up anything. This was an issue certainly of weight as these beasts were a solid fifteen or more pounds heavier than any XC bike, but what really hamstrung them was their tall front ends. The cleverest solution to this became the idea of changing the fork travel. The concept was to make the fork shorter, which effectively steepened the geometry much closer to that of an XC bike.
My favorite of these was Marzocchi’s ETA system. Rock Shox had their version called U-Turn and there were others I don’t recall immediately. The ETA system was an on-the-fly rebound lock down that with a flip of a small lever atop the fork crown on the left leg and compressing the fork you could lock the fork down to less than a third of its travel. Now you were in a far more comfortable and capable climbing position for those slogs to get to the good stuff. It was not a lock out as even as low as you could get the fork, the cartridge still allowed for approximately 30mm of movement which kept the fork tracking even up notchy technical climbs.
The brilliance of the ETA was its simplicity, but two things would lead to its demise. First there were reliability issues. When ETA worked it was amazing, but many times it would not lock at all or begin to drift back to full extension. I had a couple of Bombers with ETA, and I used it frequently on longer ascents. Eventually even mine blew out, and I opted not pursue a repair.
The bigger factor, though ending the ETA control, was that around the late 00s mountain bike geometry began to radically change. Seat tube angles became steeper while head tube angles slackened. They figured out that, basically, a bike’s descending prowess had little to do with a slack seat tube angle, and so that could be steepened a great deal to improve a rider’s climbing position. Doing so meant that the slack front end would have little to no effect on the bike’s climbing manners, and the need for and extra complexity of reducing fork height on the fly was no longer necessary.
While the ETA’s days are long past, there are times when I think it could still be of use. Most of my rides are nonstop up and down and lack long continuous ascents, but on those occasions when I am climbing, say, a fire road, for more than half an hour, having the ability to drop the front of the bike would be nice. There is a hack that has existed for this forever where you can just compress the fork and lock it down in the lowered position using a toe strap or Velcro loop. I may have tried this once years ago, but I found the benefits were not worth having to futz with it. Nevertheless, I am glad things like ETA lead us to where we are today.