In celebration of the twentieth year of this blog, I have a few tales to tell. This post is one of them. This series will occur off and on throughout this anniversary year, I hope to illuminate some behind-the-scenes stories and highlights from the blog during this time. Enjoy!
The switch was made and I focused on the gravel things after that point. Was there any future in gravel cycling? Was this a move I made because I had some premonition that gravel cycling was about to become the biggest thing since mountain biking back in the late 80's/early 90's?
No.
I had no idea where gravel was going in terms of what it has become these days. Frankly, I didn't really care at that point. We had "made it", as far as I was concerned already. We had real tires, we had bicycles designed to ride on gravel, and that, really, was all I was expecting this to be. A small niche cycling segment like fat bikes, maybe bigger, but not by much.
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| The last page posted for Twentynine Inches in 2017 |
I think many people have forgotten my involvement with 29"ers. Honestly, if you are under 30 years old, you may not have ever known I was involved with 29"ers at all. Some say I was an influence in that scene. I say "maybe". I mean, I guess back in 2005/2006 I was one of the earliest bloggers on that subject, and it got me started in the cycling industry as a reviewer and writer.
Before that I was pretty much nobody. A mechanic in a shop, like thousands of other human beings.
But writing about 29"ers here made a dent, and enough of one that companies were ghosting my blog for trends and chit-chat on big wheels. Web folk were starting to poke around my blog and a couple asked me to start writing for them, including "Twentynine Inches". Then things took off from there.
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| I was published in "Dirt Rag" for an article or two, one on 29"ers, one on gravel riding/racing around about 2011 |
So again, if I didn't totally understand where gravel cycling was headed, and didn't have big-time media credentials to lean on, why would I have quit on the 29"er thing? Well, there were a LOT of reasons for that decision. But for the focus of this post, it was because, much like gravel bikes are the commonplace drop bar bike for everyday road riders now, 29"ers had become the de facto mountain bike. A MTB was a 29"er by default. Big deal! So, there was no real passion or reason to push into writing news and reviews on 29"er stuff for "Twentynine Inches" when all the cycling companies wanted to have the heavy-hitters in media do the reviewing and get the invites to press camps, and all of that sort of thing. This weighed heavily on those who remained at the site until after about two years beyond my departure, "Twentynine Inches" ceased operations here in the USA.
As for myself, I just wanted to write about gravel cycling mostly, and the blog here really showed that focus. The site, "Gravel Grinder News" came out of this blog in late 2008, and by 2014 I was already doing reviews and write-ups on gravel stuff anyway. And in one sense, I kind of went from the frying pan into the fire as I merged "Gravel Grinder News" with "Riding Gravel" and started pretty much running that site. So, in a sense I just made a swap from one trend that had run its course to another that was gaining momentum daily.
And now I am not doing anything with "Riding Gravel" either, so is the gravel thing no big deal anymore? Why did I leave the gravel site? That's for another time....
More soon.
3 comments:
The blog history has been foreshadowing the current state of bicycle journalism
@shiggy person - I would like to hear from you on a further explanation of this comment. I am not sure I understand you 100% without that guidance.
I will say that I understood, to a degree, what I was seeing in front of me in 2007 when I was at a Gary Fisher/Trek press camp in Monterrey, California. It was during a power-point presentation by Trek brass which was being shown on a portable screen in a small, cramped room in the building we were at.
My "boss" at the Crooked Cog Network at that time was Tim Grahl. He was quite savvy with tech and latest trends. He had his laptop hooked up to the internet at this presentation along with a hand-held digital camera. When each power-point slide was show he screen shot it, fired off a few words, and posted it immediately. Meanwhile the then current top dogs in cycling media, including James Huang, were taking notes on their laptops or on paper.
After the presentation, Trek's head of MTB asked if there were any questions and said that he looked forward to reading what the journalists were going to write up in the "coming days".
Grahl piped up then and said that his story was already posted to our site if the Trek guy wanted to check it out. The faces of the journalists in the room were aghast and amazed. I'll never forget the disgusted look on James Huang's face then. I knew, sitting there, that this was the moment that traditional MTB media was going away. Especialy if the traditional media people were going to hold this new development in disdain and keep us at arms length, which is exactly what happened.
I found myself in a van the next day crammed into a seat next to Huang and he was, shall I say, "rather cool" towards me. I understood his displeasure, but I also understood that he, and all his cohorts, were going to have to change their ways going forward.
And so now we are seeing how that has all played out almost 20 years later.
GT, the technology change was a big part of it, but also the struggle to find a viable business model for the evolving market.
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