Even though many of the guesses are 75 percent accurate, this bike is bound to disappoint throngs, but not by intent. There is already tons of variety in mtn bikes. More than a dozen categories--jumpers, pumpers, xc, dh, hardtails, fat, plus, e, enduro... No matter what we do, there's going to be some overlap, and it's going to be both too much and not enough, depending. There will be some THINGS that it doesn't excel at, but it's more the rider than the bike, anyway--right? The record descent of Repack Road (fire trail in Marin County on which 95 percent of the original mtn bike development took place in the late '70s) is 4:22 for all 2 miles and 1,300 feet of it. In late '76 Gary Fisher did that on a modified paperboy bike with a coaster brake. About 8 years later, (sorry for the history!) daredevil downhiller Jimmy Deaton, rode it on a then-SOA bike in 4:34. Those are the facts that feed the notion that the measure of a bike and a rider is speed, which I think is way off. When you design for extreme speeds or terrain or surfaces (sand, snow, boulders...) you get an extreme bike that psychologizes normal riders into thinking they're worse for being normal and let's them buy their way into the glorified extreme world and look ready for action on the way back from Trader Joe's.
The plan with the new bike—which may not even happen—is that it's a sufficient platform and maybe no more, for lots of non-extreme trail riding, and it's sufficiently different than our other bikes to be barely justifiable. On Friday, April 27, 2018 at 1:14:09 PM UTC-7, Coal Bee Rye Anne wrote: > > I also noticed that hint, but wasn't quite certain how to interpret it. > On one hand it made me wonder whether a fatter tired single speeder is in > the pipeline (Hunqabeam!) but then I read it again and determined my own > selfish desires were too heavily influencing that initial interpretation. > Curiouser and curiouser! > > Brian Cole > Lawrenceville, NJ > > On Friday, April 27, 2018 at 3:24:19 PM UTC-4, Jeremy Till wrote: > >> This might be a stretch, but hey, what's the fun in following a guru if >> you can't spend hours parsing his words and interpreting them? I think >> there might be a hint towards an upcoming trail-oriented Riv (or update to >> an existing Riv) hidden in this passage from Grant's post yesterday >> <https://www.rivbike.com/blogs/peeking-through-the-knothole/sjdflsjfl-april-26> >> : >> >> In mountain bike racing and just riding, it's gone the other way. The >>> early guys were riding unsuitably low-tech bikes, then bikes reached a >>> basic good level of appropriate technology in the late '80s, and now >>> they've borrowed as much as possible—for now—from cars and motorcycles. >>> There are reactions to it the other way, with one-speed mountain bikes, but >>> those are fading fast because...one gear is too limiting for varied >>> terrain. *There's no restraint at that end, and we're going to show 'em >>> all what-for sometime late this year, if we can pull it off.* >> >> >> I wonder what it could be...the before-hinted plus-tire Hunqapillar? >> Bringing back the Bombadil (probably can't be done under the LOTR gag >> order)? Some other new trail-oriented rig? >> >> Honestly, I'm pretty satisfied with my Jones-barred Clem as my MTB >> (well...a threadless fork would be nice), so I'm not anxiously awaiting >> anything, but it would be interesting to see what they come up with. >> >> Let the speculation begin! >> > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
