I Was Wrong About So Many Things

An early adopter of technology, I am not.

There is a list of bike products. It lives in my brain, unless one of my friends secretly wrote it down somewhere. They certainly know about the list. It is a collection of many revolutionary bike products that I initially rejected, only to eventually adopt as essential technology.

I’m not a big New Year’s resolution guy. But I play along because it is good to evaluate yourself with a critical eye and look for ways to improve.

Most years, in some way or another, I resolve to be more open-minded and curious and optimistic — all tendencies that lend oneself to experimenting with new bike technology, to say the least. It is difficult to keep this resolution.

So, to pay penance for the many times I’ve reverted to cranky cynicism, I’m finally taking my mental list and putting it into words. This is an incomplete list of the things I’ve gotten wrong over the years, in terms of bike technology, mountain bike technology specifically. We won’t even start with the other stuff I was wrong about.

Tubeless Tires

It’s the year 2000. I’m a teenage bike shop mechanic who is obsessed with XC racing. My friend Guy, who works in the same shop, shows up one day with a brand new Specialized S-Works Stumpjumper with the latest Mavic Crossmax wheels fitted with UST tubeless Hutchinson Python tires. And he is gushing about how much better they are, how low he can run his tire pressure.

Intrigued, but not wanting to spring for an entirely new wheelset, I discover a little start-up based nearby in Upstate New York, Stan’s No Tubes. I order the kit, talk to Stan on the phone for at least a half-hour, and set up my wheels with this white goo. A few days later, I open the back of the old Chrysler minivan to discover a terrible mess and a tire that exploded off of the rim bead.

About 10 years later, I was still swearing off tubeless technology, believing it was unnecessary to run lower pressures and that it was far easier to fix punctures with tubes.

Nope. While the technology had teething problems, today, I would avoid riding off-road with tubes at all costs. The rim-tire interface is sorted. The sealants are great. Repairs are fast and (nearly) reliable with a range of tire plugs.

29” Wheels

Also going back to my Vermont years, I remember my high school friend and fellow racer, Brooke, had a first-generation Gary Fisher 29er back in the early 2000s or whenever it was. I took a few parking lot laps on the thing and was pretty sure this would not be the future of mountain bikes.

Tire choices were limited. You had to run a Marzocchi fork, which, in that era, was significantly heavier than other XC options. And the thing just felt weird. They hadn’t dialed in the geometry.

Even as late as 2010, I demoed a 29er trail bike and was pretty lukewarm on its handling. It seemed unwieldy and slow. By that point, I was open to 29” wheels on XC bikes, but I wasn’t sure if I liked the bigger wheels on taller, longer-travel bikes.

Again, I find myself now with a garage full of the very thing I’d sworn off. The only little-wheeled mountain bikes I own are a dirt jumper and a vintage bike from the ‘80s. Now that geometry and fork rake have solved any worries about weird handling, I cannot live without the stability and speed that come with bigger wheels.

Double Chainrings

At Interbike 2007 (I think?), one of the SRAM founders, Mike “Merc” Mercuri, told me that soon not a single mountain bike would have triple chainrings. They were going to “kill granny.” I was extremely dubious.

In the summer of 2001, I tried this very thing in a DIY way on my old steel VooDoo race bike by removing the granny gear from my triple. The result: Multiple dropped chains at the Snowshoe NORBA national. What a shock, that a bootleg modification, dreamed up by a teenager, wouldn’t work on one of the muddiest, roughest race courses in the country.

And yet, with my limited perspective, I thought: It didn’t work for me, so it won’t work for SRAM. That was wrong, obviously. To my credit, I never completely adopted 2x drivetrains and quickly shifted to single-chainring setups as those took over. How’s that for being forward-thinking?

Dropper Seatposts

Anyone out there remember some of the early Gravity Dropper seatposts? In my first job out of college, at IMBA, I met a couple who were on the traveling Trail Care Crew, Nat and Rachel, and they both rode Gravity Droppers. This was 2005, and they were obsessed with this ugly, clunky post, despite its external cable and massive accordion dust boot.

It was a weird time for mountain biking. Another IMBA friend, Tammy, had this wacky double-quick-release post where a middle sleeve nested between the frame and a short post so she could lower her seat without interfering with the rear shock.

As a cross-country nerd who liked simple, traditional technology, I was immediately turned off by the whole idea.

It took another five or so years before I got my first bike with a dropper post, a Trek Slash. Like tubeless, now all of my bikes have droppers, even the XC bike. Honestly, that’s my favorite too, because it’s the electronic wireless AXS Reverb.

Modern Position and Geometry

Finally, in a general sense, it took me a while to come around to the evolution of mountain bike position and geometry — the shift toward slacker head tube angles, shorter stems, wider handlebars, and longer reach.

I don’t think I’m entirely to blame on this one. The bike industry, in general, didn’t take a very holistic approach to this change. Instead, we’d randomly have a 50mm stem on a bike with a 69-degree head angle. Or, we’d have a frame with ridiculously short reach and a very slack front end, making for the world’s most cramped cockpit (see 2010 Trek Slash mentioned above).

However, once I experienced all of these changes in a coherent package, it made sense, and I appreciated the stability, confidence, and comfort. But in the early days, when these features were out of context, I found myself hating things like short stems or wide bars.

I’m Trying, I Swear!

The first step is admitting you have a problem, right? I’ll probably always be a skeptic, but I’m improving. After all, I launched an e-MTB website last year — that’s about as cutting edge as you could ask for, at least when it comes to bike technology!

Looking back at this list, I do see a pattern. When I had a negative initial experience with a technology, I was quick to make up my mind about it. I don’t think I’m alone in this tendency, either. While some aren’t afraid of being early adopters, many are, especially when it’s expensive to bet on a product that’s not entirely sorted out.

That puts bike companies in a tricky spot. Do they gamble on being first to market, or do they wait and see how things play out? I don’t have the answer, other than “It depends.” Maybe in 2024, I should try to figure that one out, while I’m on a roll with my resolutions.