Ebullition/Doubt 21: Wait, Where am I?

You aren’t wearing that banana shirt again, are you? No, I guess I am not. I mean if I was like most of my peers going to the study club dinner, I would be in a polo shirt with either a college or country club emblem or an oxford and chinos, versus my beloved banana Tiki shirt or the dragon one I chose after being called out. I’d like to say it is something in my DNA that has made me never want to go the way of the crowd in any sense, be it fashion, music, or sporting pursuits. However, my parents are/were both sedate in their tastes. 

The argument could be (and has been) made that my attire was not correct for the task/event and not going along to get along would just make things more difficult for me. This line of thought is pervasive and certainly exists in the cycling world. Whether you are “under or over-biked” for the ride has been ongoing for years. I bought into it and was likely over-biked for much of the riding I did. My thought was a. I wanted a bike I could not break and would hold up to my less than graceful bludgeoning and b. I never wanted to feel like the bike was holding me back from whatever melee I could get into. This led me to riding many big heavy bikes for years and this was undoubtably influenced by my fascination with the late 90s/early 00s Freeride movement coming out of Canada. Speaking of which, let’s set the mood with some more recent Canadian tunes.

O(0s)’Canada! Duchess Says: Anthologie des 3 Perchoirs and We Are Wolves: Total Magique

I’ve long been a fan of our friends to the north. This is true of both Canadian music offerings and cycling pursuits. Here are couple of 00s selections from a pair of related Montreal bands. Both bands lean heavily into synthesizers for their sounds, but where We Are Wolves adds more of a garage punk “guitar” * driven thing to their dance-y krautrock vibe, Duchess Says is more electronic and out there. WAW makes me want to fist-pump and sing along. In contrast with Duchess Says I just want to keep listening to the electro weirdness at hand.  WAW wants to rock out and kick your ass. DS swings from Yeah Yeah Yeahs new/no wave numbers to straight ahead speedy hardcore and back sometimes in the same song. The experience is like watching multiple car wrecks as you never know what is going to happen next. They are both a blast and apparently, they toured together around the same time these albums came out. DS’s last outing was 2016s Sciences Nouvelles, but WAW dropped their most recent album NADA last November and features noise impresario Oliver Ackerman of A Place To Bury Strangers on a track. 

*They don’t technically have a guitar player, but they sing in English, French and Spanish so that’s dope. 

It’s just a jump to the left. Going from my Evil Wreckoning to the Specialized EVO was a seemingly easier task than where I’d end up thereafter. This was despite the different standards on those bikes. I was essentially looking for a bike that did what my bikes had done for more than fifteen years at that point, albeit better. This meant similar big (150mm +) travel numbers, geometry and most importantly their handling. I knew what I was getting into as I was not looking to veer far from where I’d been. 

On the contrary, following my TRS jump class, my brain had melted. The instructor, Rich Drew hit all the jumps and bigger ones on his lightweight XC/down country rig. He confided to me that he rides most of his regional trails, even the most technical ones, aboard it. Prior to taking this course the old me would have dismissed this approach as I was convinced I needed a falchion for my battles as noted here. I would have also remained unconvinced, figuring that riders of such elevated skill could ride any bike any place. However, I “needed” more bike to make up for not being at such an exalted ability level. 

Now that “more” of a bike felt like an anchor. Previously I had sought big bikes that would make up for my lack of grace, but now I craved precision. This isn’t to say that big bikes cannot be precise, yet doing more with less makes one choose more decisively, e.g. “aim” precedes “fire” and not vice versa. This new paradigm for me had begun to creep in with the previous hard tails I had ridden. At the time I still thought about what I could “not” do confidently on them. Now I began to think about what percentage of the riding I did aboard my full suspension bikes could be accomplished on my hardtails. Spoiler alert: most of it.

In 2018, I built up a ’15 Kona Honzo as a single speed. As always, my hardtails were my back up bikes to whatever full suspension I had at the time. However, as had happened many times before and after, I found myself riding it way more than I expected. In a short period of time, I equipped it with a more substantial, longer travel fork, burlier tires, a dropper and a few other bits suited to my angry, drunken bear riding style. I had been down this road before, having put a Z1 on my Bianchi B.A.S.S. in the way back. I was always amused by the fact that back then (’99-00) when I’d join in on group rides, still being new to ATL, I’d have the most travel and the least gears. 

My ceaseless modding and over-forking was fortuitous as at a later point in the year the Honzo was my only mountain bike. I had disassembled my V1 Wreckoning for some amount of customizing, and everything takes longer than it does.  I mostly stuck to trails I knew that weren’t too crazy for most of my rides, but when I was invited to ride a secret stash of trails that were plenty hectic, I couldn’t say no and joined a group consisting of riders all on long travel enduro bikes. While I figured the worst-case scenario would mean I’d be walking some of it, my hosts and I were duly surprised when I climbed the whole damn thing (twice) and bombed down the gnarly descents riding all of it blind with a single gear and “shorter” (140mm vs everyone else’s 160mm plus numbers) travel fork than anyone there. This is not some kind of humble braggadocio (I am an okay rider at best), but rather another instance that led me to understanding what I really like. This too. 

Addendum: After writing this and pondering my previous single speed dalliances I may grab one of these to mess with/up myself.