I confess to being a bit of a grouch about this kind of thing. Can you tell? But it's not about neo/retro grouchiness. To me, working at a bike shop is a balance between giving my customers what they want and not letting them do something that is a bad idea or more trouble than it's worth.
At the moment, the skinnier tube, low-trail bikes are mostly the domain of custom framebuilders. For most people, a custom frame is not a realistic option. From that perspective, the formerly standard diameter tubing doesn't really exist. So I have a customer come in bursting with ideas out of the latest BQ, and I have to be the bad guy and say, "sorry, that stuff isn't real." But now their current bike, which was great last week, is unsatisfactory on account of the "oversized tubing". As if the formerly standard diameter tubing, by itself, determines whether a bike is any good or not. We all know it's not that simple. I'm all for experimenting and for mixing old/new ideas. If Surly had a skinnier/flexier tubing road frame for $400, I'd be happy to sell them and facilitate such experiments. But I'm never going to encourage someone to sink thousands into the skinny tube dream, when, IMO, tubing diameter is so far down the list of important factors. -- 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 [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
