Further to yesterday’s post, you may have noticed a lurker in the background of one of the photos:
This is because Yonkers is rife with deer, and they fear no man:
In fact this one actually started to approach me, and for a minute there I thought it was going to come up and sniff my crotch like a dog.
The trails just north of the city are full of such wonders, and for a time my favorite deer-slayer was the RockCombo, which was more or less in its stock configuration when I first received it in 2020:
It grew on me quickly, and over time it became my “ready for anything bike:”
Then came The Great Purge of 2024, and the difficult decision to pass it along, since it overlapped with the Homer in particular:
[Via the comments.]
Yes, the RockCombo had more mountain bike in it, but for that I have the Jones.
I was sorry to see it go, but I do still have its offspring, which will have a new rider once my younger son grows into it:
I may have to give it a “Rivendell Junior” treatment with some swept bars.
I also get to see the RockCombo every once in awhile when it pops up in the comments, as it did yesterday:
As you can see its new owner has elevated it to a new level of elegance and sophistication it would never, ever have attained under my curatorship.
It’s enough to make me want another one…or at least check out what they’re going for:
The RockCombo is often cited as the first gravel bike:
However, this can’t be true, because if it was then Specialized would be suing all the other companies selling gravel bikes the same way they sued that guy who named his cafe Roubaix:
In any case, seeing the RockCombo again made me nostalgic for it, and in my subsequent pokings around I found a contemporary review of the bike I’d never seen before:
It was from the June 1989 issue of “Bicycle Guide:”
And was part of a series on “hybrids” that also included the Bianchi Tangent:
The Fisher Hybrid:
The Bruce Gordon Rock ‘N Road:
The Miyata Alumicross:
The Offroad Climber:
And the Serotta Slicker:
1989 was quite a year.
Of course the hybrid concept soon evolved into something tamer; for example, the drop bars disappeared, and if anything it’s the lack of drop bars that has since come, at least in part, to define the hybrid. But the way hybrids were described in 1989 is exactly the way we describe a certain type of bike beginning with “g” today:
Right down to the mystical ineffability:
It was only a matter of time.