Remember, you still have until 12:00pm EST on October 16th to submit your Meh-roica Bike Pageant entry:
In retrospect that’s an insane amount of time, and I’m not sure why I didn’t make the deadline much sooner. Like, this Friday would have made more sense, wouldn’t it? Oh well, whatever.
Meanwhile, I continue to receive entries, and here’s someone who really understood the assigment:
This one’s definitely in in the running for the jackpot:
Or at least the Belgian lottery:
Really, the biggest strike against it is the steel fork, which objectively speaking is an upgrade, though it does earn the bike a demerit in the perverse and impractical world of Meh-roica–even if the original crabon fork did crack, as the owner informs me it did. (A true Meh-roica rider would have replaced the cracked crabon fork with an even lighter crabon fork.) But how about that Team Issue Dura-Ace?
See, traditionally Dura-Ace components don’t say “Shimano” on them–it’s like Shimano has an inferiority complex and doesn’t want their own name on their top-of-the-line parts. But for a brief and glorious moment in the 9-speed era (we’re talking the Peak Meh-roica years), not only did Shimano put their name on some Dura-Ace parts (ostensibly the stuff they issued to teams, though you could also buy it), but they put it on there REALLY BIG, even on the shifters:
But it was short-lived, and to the best of my knowledge they went back to their usual routine and haven’t put the “S word” on Dura-Ace parts since:
And I almost didn’t notice the fork because my eyes went right to the green tires. Colored tires are EXTREMELY Meh-roica. Today it’s all bloated tanwalls, but back then it was about skinny tires in primary colors, and if there was any black on the tire at all it was limited to a little landing strip in the middle, sort of like a Brazilian bikini wax:
[Via Classic Cycle]
How can one bike shop have so many incredible bikes?
Oh, wait, I figured it out.
By sending all the crappy ones to me, of course:
Anyway, none of the above is to say that all Meh-roica bikes must be aesthetically dated. In fact I’d argue that this submission is downright timeless:
Also, yes, I’d like to remind you that while compact doubles are banned, triple cranks are very much permitted, since Meh-roica is all about arriving at your low gearing honestly, like our pre-GRVL ancestors did:
That’s two bikes out of the ol’ Waterford factory, by the way, which is not only an important Meh-roica landmark, but also produced my own Milwaukee:
Sadly with its compact double and 11-speed drivetrain the Milwaukee is not Meh-roica compliant.
And here’s a Meh-roica submission that caught my eye immediately:
Because it used to be mine:
Clearly the new owner bought it from Classic Cycle knowing that one day I’d have a contest and give away some free lube:
By the way, the Waterford is in front of Christmas decorations, and the Litespeed is in snow.
So are these submissions from the past, or from the future?
Speaking of bewilderment, someone posted this in the comments yesterday, and if it is what I think it is then I’m VERY UPSET:
Okay, let me know if I’m understanding this correctly:
Blackwater and Marginal Gain built the drivetrain around a different layout meant to reduce chain articulation across the range. The idea gets more interesting as cassette counts keep climbing. Marginal Gain says the concept could support 15- or even 16-speed setups while still keeping chain angles more reasonable than many current 1x systems.
So up until the 10-speed era, if you wanted truly wide-range gearing you used a triple.
But then we went to 11, and 12, and 13, and we were told how wonderful it was that we could finally get rid of not only the triple, but also the double, and finally bury the front derailleur once and for all:
But as soon as they started tamping down the dirt on top of the front derailleur’s grave some brain genius figured out, “Hey, actually, moving a chain all the way across a really wide cassette at extreme angles doesn’t make a lot of sense.” But instead of going back to a system that allowed you to keep weight down by using smaller cogs, and keep your chainline optimal, and shift more efficiently by executing a single front shift instead of like ten rear shifts when you get to the top of the climb and start your descent, they came up with A GODDAMN TRIPLE WHERE ALL THE FRONT CHAINRINGS ARE THE EXACT SAME SIZE:
Lob have mercy, DID THEY JUST CALL THAT “PRACTICAL?”
Again, maybe I’m not understanding this properly and it’s too much “cognitive load” on my front derailleur-taxed brain. But if I am, then this is even more ridiculous than the mythical 8-speed singlespeed, and that was built entirely for the purposes of irony:
You know, I’m going on 20 years of blogular curation, and I’ve managed to keep it up through some of the dumbest trends in cycling, but the three-ring 1x may be the “innovation” that finally breaks me.