When people say, “I don’t get modern art,” I say to them, “That’s because you haven’t been paying attention to art.” A lot of what finds its way to gallery or museum walls is part of a larger conversation going on within the art world. In other words, it’s all about context. What doesn’t make sense to you, actually makes perfect sense in the ongoing process and evolution going on within that creative space.
If you weren’t paying much attention to bikes, you might similarly be confused by the new bikes appearing on the market now. Two words: suspension gravel.
We have been, for the last decade or more, engaged in the process of filling in all the gaps on the continuum of bicycles from aero road bike to fat bike, from 19c tires to 5″ knobbies, all the suspension travels, 100mm to 160mm, all the wheels sizes, matched and mismatched, all the variations within the variations, until categories blur and overlap. The result is a panoply of choice and a profusion of confusion.
Pick a random bike out of the mix and say it with me, “I just don’t get modern bikes.”
JK. I understand only too well.
I have this thing that happens while I’m out riding my local trails. I’ve ridden them a thousand times or more, and yet I very regularly wonder if there isn’t some new or hidden offshoot, some as yet undiscovered addition to the map, that might secretly be really awesome.
I think this is what the designers and engineers in the industry are doing too. They’ve already made really great bikes, but they just can’t quit the idea that some new, subtle variation on the current iterations might unlock huge riding advantages and, of course, new selling potential. And they work for people who have hired them for exactly that purpose.
Layer on top now, the eBikes that mirror most of what’s happening on the mechanical side and then follow them up their own continuum, Class I, II, III, right into scooters and eScooters. Bicycles begin to merge with motorcycles. The very definitions of the things begin to wobble and blur.
And that, my friends, is how you end up with a large red square next to a smaller green one on a field of just slightly off-white. And also how we arrive at suspension gravel bikes.
The chainring is big but what’s that a 28 or 32 cog? What’s that they say? HTFU?
;-D