Further to this past Friday’s post, with all that’s going on in the world today, I feel it is of the impmost utportance that I continue to address the Check TrekOUT fullularly-suspendered graveling cycle:
[The Shrek SchleckOUT]
As I said not too long ago, though I’m too lazy to find where, and anyway it doesn’t matter since this blog is just me repeating myself, I of course acknowledge that all these new bikes I’m constantly whining about are probably great. No doubt this is the case with the Flek SmeckOUT, which comes from a company that’s been making bikes for many, many years. There’s not a doubt in my mind that it Does What It’s Supposed To Do, and with aplomb–maybe even several plombs!
Sure, aesthetically speaking it’s an exercise in strained corporate irreverence, and clearly there was a mandate to make it look like the singer from Ratt’s pants…
Or a prop from “Pee-wee’s Playouse”…
Nevertheless, I am fully willing to accept that it’s an enjoyable bike to ride, and I’m sure if I were to try one myself I’d appreciate its many virtues. I would also never look askance at someone who purchased one…provided they could easily part with the $8,999.99, of course–and I won’t even express indignation at the price, since nobody is making anybody spend $8,999.99 on a gravel bicycle, and that includes Trek, who have lots other, cheaper, bikes too.
And yet I remain troubled–not by the bike itself, but by what it represents. Consider the conclusion of the Desert Hipster Website’s review, which I skipped to, because who the hell could read something that long in its entirety?
Maybe that’s the future of the CheckOUT. The few weirdos who’ve been waiting for this will buy one, and the full-suspension gravel market will be immediately saturated. For a brief moment, the rest of the gravel and touring crowd will look up from the latest news about tire-clearance or brake-hood angle, and will then settle back into their sport’s comfortably slow evolution.
But I fucking hope not.
There will be more full-suspension gravel bikes… And when enough of those other bikes come, the novelty will fade. They won’t just be for the weirdos or the bikepackers or the ultra racers or the underbikers. They’ll be for people who want to be more comfortable. More efficient. More safe. You’ll start to see aluminum ones with more affordable parts. Economy of scale will allow for lower prices and more players.
It may take a while, but things will change. Consider how different mountain biking was before full suspension became the default for so many riders. The very concept of riding drop-bar bikes off-road will change. The races will change. The imagery will change. The language will change. The stories will change. The people will change. I can’t wait to see what happens.
Dear god, that’s ominous. Why do all the gravel bikes need to have suspension now? Why do we need endless iterations of this thing at every single “price point?” (Bike reviewers are always saying they hope an aluminum version comes out. Of course they’d never ride it, they just think you should.) And what’s up with that bit at the very end? Why does he want “the people” to change!?! What was wrong with the people???
Also…safe!?!
Don’t talk to me about safe! Here is the suspension set’s idea of safety:
[Mountain dork awaiting the paintball barrage for the Jackass stunt.]
But here is what a safe gravel all-terrain bicycle looks like:
[Photo: Dan Leto]
Steel, a step-through frame to spare your “pants yabbies,” and a wheelbase so long that if you walk from the front wheel to the back you need to set your watch back an hour.
And even Trek keep saying their own bike is dumb:
So many features to isolate you from the gravel. (Why is the whole point of riding on gravel not to know you’re riding on gravel?) So many places to mount stuff. So many accessories you can get exclusively from Trek:
Trek really thought of everything! But isn’t that…kinda lame? It’s like that kid whose parents bought him absolutely everything but you weren’t even jealous, you mostly just felt sorry for him because he was kind of awkward, probably because his parents made him wear knee and elbow pads just to ride a skateboard. Like, the 178 mounting points aren’t even enough and they also needed to add sliding brackets for some reason?
Who designed this, Travis Bickle?
But most of all, what’s troubling about this bike is that everyone will rave about it for a week, then they’ll be on to the next thing, and then in two years it will be forgotten–or if not forgotten then redesigned, just as yesterday’s top-of-the-line mountain bike is today’s “Wow, how did we even ride those?” curiosity, considered fit for nostalgia purposes only. The reviewers, the bike companies, none of them have any real commitment to the bikes or to you, especially once suspension is involved. Consider:
You can practically hear it crying from here. “Do you remember me, Dad? Do you!?! Remember when I was on the cover of ‘Bicycling’ in 1998?”
But Dad doesn’t remember–or at least he’d like everyone else to forget. And within two years the Y-Foil was certainly forgotten, and today it’s a curiosity and a joke, appreciated only by washed-up contrarian bloggers. See, the Y-Foil possesses the three attributes the true contrarian cyclist finds irresistible:
- It’s old
- It’s discontinued
- Everybody else hates it
But it’s not bad. In fact it’s quite good! It’s fast, and it’s comfortable. You can even take it on gravel…though it helps if that gravel is smoother than most paved roads:
And remember, just as the dual-suspension bike is supposed to be the future of gravel bikes, beam bikes were supposed to be the future of road bikes:
[From here.]
Granted, designers neglected to address certain questions, such as “How do you dismount it without crushing your taint?” But perhaps it’s all in the technique. Maybe you unclip, sit on the beam, and slide down to the headtube where you can finally straddle the thing.
But yes, no doubt in 1998 some reviewer somewhere professed a fervent hope that this would be the future of road bikes, and the diamond frame would finally be abandoned:
I guess what I’m saying is I’ll be riding a Trek CheckOUT in 30 years.