As is customary here on Tan Tenovo’s Internet Bicycle-Themed Complainatorium, when a new Rivendell presale is upon us, I let you know, even though Rivendell never ask me to let you know. So this is me letting you know about this one:
Look, I don’t care if you buy one or not. What you do in your private life is your own business. But I’m making you aware because I happen to like this bicycle very, very much:
You could put it together all upright with swept-back bars and stuff, you could go flat-pedal sporty like in Rivendell’s photo, or you could go race-adjacent as I have. Also, if you’re an aging roadie, you could probably move over like 80% of the parts on that really nice road bike you’ve had since the ’90s that’s now a bit too limited in tire clearance and low in the cockerpit:
The best time to move the parts from that Serotta onto a Roadini was ten centimeters of quill stem ago, but the second-best time is now.
Or, if your old bike has a threadless steerer, a Roadini spares you the indignity of resorting to something like this:
I mean hey, whatever works, but by now we should all be familiar with the dangers of Compulsive Cockpit Curation Syndrome:
And I shouldn’t even have to mention this one again, but I will anyway:
That’s a rolling cautionary tale.
None of this is to imply you have to be old to ride a Roadini. After all, new retrogrouches are born every day:
Ah yes, it seems like “gravel” was invented only yesterday, but already we’re looking back and reflecting on what it used to mean and how it went astray:
Gravel cycling didn’t evolve from modern mountain biking. It was driven by US geography and a desperate need to escape traffic.
Hmmm, I dunno, I would say it’s both. Certainly getting away from traffic is a major factor, and probably the primary one, but it’s also important to keep in mind that mountain biking–both the act as well as the bikes themselves–has changed so much over the past 40 years that in retrospect it was inevitable people would find their way back to what it used to be and the industry would reinvent a way to sell people relatively simple bicycles for riding on trails and unpaved roads. Just imagine if ice hockey went from what it is now to flying in a helicopter onto a glacier and then chasing an electronic AI-driven puck around with a $19,000 telescoping stick made of crabon fiber while wearing a pair of rocket skates. Eventually someone would come up with the idea of simply skating around on a frozen pond with a stick of wood in your hand and knocking a “dumb puck” into a net, and soon all the sporting goods companies would sell you special equipment for this exciting new sport of “pond ball.”
The other inevitability is that cyclists–the people who ride the bikes, the people who sell the bikes, and the people who write about the bikes–are completely lacking in object permanence, and when a new thing comes along it’s as though everything before it never existed. For example, in a few short years, gravel went from “wider tires are nice” to “if you buy a bike with anything less than 50mm of clearance you’re a complete moron“–and yet tires can actually be too wide, who knew?
The problem is that this race-day math ignores the vast majority of people who buy gravel bikes and the terrain they actually ride. I’m not about to try and draw a line in the sand when it comes to tire width, but it definitely exists. The trend is to go wider, but we will reach a tipping point where we lose the lively feeling people are actually chasing on a gravel bike.
And of course, a by-product of forgetting about everything that came before is that once you remember it again you won’t be able to use it anymore because there will be a whole new set of “standards:”
Moving to a 32-inch wheel isn’t just a matter of swapping out rubber. If the industry successfully pushes this as the new standard, the cascade of changes will touch everything, and it inherently makes the bike worse for most of the riding we actually do.
To be clear, the bike won’t be worse, it will just be incompatible with all your old stuff because they’ll have had to come up with a whole new way to make the giant-wheeled bike seem lively again.
And how’s this for cognitive dissonance?
This isn’t the transition to disc brakes or electronic shifting. Those innovations brought tangible benefits even if what we had was already good. For most everyday riders, 32-inch wheels are actually worse.
I’ll leave the disc brake thing alone for now, but what were the tangible benefits of electronic shifting? We went from pushing a button to shift to having to charge a battery first in order to push a button to shift. A 32-inch wheel makes more sense than that.
Meanwhile, not too long ago (though I’m way too lazy to find the post, and my intern is busy shopping for a new helper monkey for me) I mentioned how surprisingly cheap Lynskeys were now, and I guess this is the reason:
Here’s what’s happening:
Lynskey, a Chattanooga-based titanium bike and component manufacturer, was established in 2005. The owners, the Lynskey family, have an extensive history in the cycling industry; David Lynskey, the company founder, was also the founder of Litespeed Cycles in 1984 and led that business to its sale in 1999. Both brands are Chattanooga-based and specialise in premium titanium bikes and componentry; of the two, Lynskey offers a lower-cost, direct-to-consumer alternative.
Court filings indicate that Lynskey has liabilities between US$1 million and $10 million, and had approximately US$59,000 cash in hand as of April 30.
If they do recover they’re going to have a hard time competing with the likes of ASSISTING FORCE:
Ironically, this story is from the same publication and by the same writer as the 32-inch wheel story. In any case, forget Lynskey, these companies are even undercutting themselves:
In an effort to bypass those costs directly, Quickpro is inventing a new brand and launching a new platform. The new brand name is Assisting Force, and the first release is actually two slightly different gravel bikes: the Assisting Force AF01 SSL and the standard AF01.
“Assisting Force” indeed.