"Oversized" implies that, whatever the paradigm is, *this *one is different. A single scalar unjustly obsessed upon as if increasing it opened the door to greatness and performance known only to the gods of Olympus.
Bike frames seem to me (my personal disclaimer and demonstrated respect for those who design and build the frames I desire) to be a solution of enough variables that one should recognize the narrow mindedness of isolating one as the panacea. The negative implication of not being "oversized" rubs me wrong; I trust the designer/builder to resolve the design and size issues to optimize my results with the built bike. I applaud every company who's integrity is to the bikes and less about their platoon of MBAs trying to realize bullet points for their CVs with market share et al (sorry Patrick). I get building your business and growth, I just hate seeing it go all wrong "to meet a greater marketshare" or other such brand management gyrations. Andy Cheatham Pittsburgh On Thursday, February 20, 2014 7:10:06 AM UTC-5, Jim Thill - Hiawatha Cyclery wrote: > > 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.
