Minus Ten Review- 15

No pictures from 10 years ago this week, so you get this dusty picture of R Avenue in Tama County.

Ten years ago this week I was in California attending a Fisher Bikes/Trek Bikes mountain bike release and Sea Otter. It was a whirlwind trip which changed everything from many perspectives for me.

A short trip packed with big things. I met and ate with Keith Bontrager, Travis Brown, Gary Fisher, and several high level Trek, Fisher, and Raleigh employees. I had beers with Gary Fisher in Soquel Demo Forest. I ate at a fine Mexican diner in Watsonville California, and I hobnobbed with mountain bike elite in Monterey, California at a mountain bike film premier. I sat in a van next to the inimitable James Huang, now of Cyclintips.com. I used Keith Bontrager's bathroom. I even rode gary Fishers fully electronic shifted townie bike with automatic shifting. Way before Di2.

Game changing trip. Memories that will last a lifetime.

To think that I started the blog less than one year before this trip happened. No one knew who I was. In less than a year's time, all this had happened to me. Trans Iowa was about to happen for the third time as well. I had a life that was on a very fast pace.

Now, I could have easily let this all go to my head. The good thing was that I didn't think of myself as being that big of a deal. I had a sneaking suspicion that I had snuck in the back door to a party I wasn't invited to. So I knew it wouldn't last, and I was just going to be as cool as I could be and enjoy the ride for as long as it was going to last. Now, it lasted longer than I thought it would, but it did slowly come to an end.

And I'm alright with that.

Minus Ten Review- 15

No pictures from 10 years ago this week, so you get this dusty picture of R Avenue in Tama County.

Ten years ago this week I was in California attending a Fisher Bikes/Trek Bikes mountain bike release and Sea Otter. It was a whirlwind trip which changed everything from many perspectives for me.

A short trip packed with big things. I met and ate with Keith Bontrager, Travis Brown, Gary Fisher, and several high level Trek, Fisher, and Raleigh employees. I had beers with Gary Fisher in Soquel Demo Forest. I ate at a fine Mexican diner in Watsonville California, and I hobnobbed with mountain bike elite in Monterey, California at a mountain bike film premier. I sat in a van next to the inimitable James Huang, now of Cyclintips.com. I used Keith Bontrager's bathroom. I even rode gary Fishers fully electronic shifted townie bike with automatic shifting. Way before Di2.

Game changing trip. Memories that will last a lifetime.

To think that I started the blog less than one year before this trip happened. No one knew who I was. In less than a year's time, all this had happened to me. Trans Iowa was about to happen for the third time as well. I had a life that was on a very fast pace.

Now, I could have easily let this all go to my head. The good thing was that I didn't think of myself as being that big of a deal. I had a sneaking suspicion that I had snuck in the back door to a party I wasn't invited to. So I knew it wouldn't last, and I was just going to be as cool as I could be and enjoy the ride for as long as it was going to last. Now, it lasted longer than I thought it would, but it did slowly come to an end.

And I'm alright with that.

Minus Ten Review- 9

Since I didn't post any pictures this week ten years ago you get another look at this animal excavation.

Ten years ago this week I didn't post any pictures for the week. I know.....I know! I said that would be rare going forward. It will be. I promise.....

Anyway, ten years ago I was going on about a few things. Trans Iowa, of course, Jan Ullrich's retirement from Pro cycling, and I was ranting about the icy Winter storms we were getting then. But one thing I made some prognostications about concerned an image seen on the web forums of Travis Brown piloting a strange beast of a bike, As it turned out, it was a 29 inch wheeled front/26 inch wheeled rear bicycle which Trek eventually produced and dubbed a "69er".

One thing I did get right from that image was that Trek was experimenting with offsets for forks. In fact, they already had what they were going to do figured out. Later in the Summer Trek would release the bombshell that they had an exclusive one year deal with Fox Shox and that the new offset would be 51mm which was part of what Trek dubbed "G2 Geometry". Many folks only remember the fork offsets, but there was more to G2 than just that.

G2 geometry pretty much opened the door for what we now see as "normal" trail bike geometry. Slacker head tube angles matched up with longer fork offsets were the first step. Longer front-centers and wider bars set up with stubby stems were the next step. Matched up with the short rear-centers, these geometries and angles all are pretty much the culmination of a vision Gary Fisher had in 1999 for 29"ers.

Minus Ten Review- 9

Since I didn't post any pictures this week ten years ago you get another look at this animal excavation.

Ten years ago this week I didn't post any pictures for the week. I know.....I know! I said that would be rare going forward. It will be. I promise.....

Anyway, ten years ago I was going on about a few things. Trans Iowa, of course, Jan Ullrich's retirement from Pro cycling, and I was ranting about the icy Winter storms we were getting then. But one thing I made some prognostications about concerned an image seen on the web forums of Travis Brown piloting a strange beast of a bike, As it turned out, it was a 29 inch wheeled front/26 inch wheeled rear bicycle which Trek eventually produced and dubbed a "69er".

One thing I did get right from that image was that Trek was experimenting with offsets for forks. In fact, they already had what they were going to do figured out. Later in the Summer Trek would release the bombshell that they had an exclusive one year deal with Fox Shox and that the new offset would be 51mm which was part of what Trek dubbed "G2 Geometry". Many folks only remember the fork offsets, but there was more to G2 than just that.

G2 geometry pretty much opened the door for what we now see as "normal" trail bike geometry. Slacker head tube angles matched up with longer fork offsets were the first step. Longer front-centers and wider bars set up with stubby stems were the next step. Matched up with the short rear-centers, these geometries and angles all are pretty much the culmination of a vision Gary Fisher had in 1999 for 29"ers.

Fringe: A Look at 650B And Death Of The 69er

2012 Jamis Dragon 650B

Fringe: My wife, Mrs. Guitar Ted, likes this weird new T.V. series called "Fringe". It's a Sci-Fi deal where weird things are happening all the time, and the show's Chief Of Weirdness, a character named "Walter", is always rambling about some bizarre thing or concept, (that is if he isn't trying to give himself a self-inflicted lobotomy).

So, what has all this got to do with bicycles? Well, in the off-road world, we've had our own version of "Fringe" going on for the past 13 years or so now. Used to be 29"ers were that odd duck, but not anymore. After big wheels opened the door to new wheel concepts, we got "69ers" first, and then "650B" came along afterward. (Well, sort of. Let's just roll with that to keep things simplified for now, shall we?)

So, just what is, (or you could almost say "was"), a "69er"?Well, I wrote about Trek's ill-fated attempt at the concept here back in the summer of 2006. Basically, it was a 26"er out back, and a 29"er up front, and everything together was supposedly the "best of both worlds". (Keep that phrasing in mind for the 650B coming up...) How's that? Well, the proponents of the concept said that you got the "roll-over of the 29"er and the acceleration of the 26"er".

Carver 69er

 Actually, you got the worst of both worlds along with it, but nobody wanted to talk about that! The thing is, this concept didn't really work   for a lot of riders. Especially once you figured out how a 29"er rear  wheel was actually more important to have from the standpoint of traction and propulsion. Also, that smaller rear wheel just acted like what it was- a 26 inch rear wheel, and having a 29"er wheel up front really didn't change things much from the standpoint of a front suspension bike. 

The 69er guys didn't like the heavier weight of the big 29" rear wheel, but guess what? They don't have to weigh that much, and lightweight 29"er wheels are easily had these days. In the end, the marketplace just didn't really fire up for this idea. It's pretty much dead in the water.

To be fair, Carver Bikes still offers this concept, although you don't really hear too much about it anymore. Fringe indeed.

650B? Yes....the "tweener sized" wheels of mountain biking. Not as big as 29"ers, they are somewhat lighter, (potentially), and roll over stuff marginally better than the ever so slightly smaller 26"er sized wheels. Once again, the claims of "it is the best of both worlds" were heard but as before, there were not many real world benefits that I could sus out to back that up. I rode 650B bikes every chance I got from 2007 till 2010, and every time I just couldn't see where they were going to out do a 29"er at what it does best, or be anything but marginally better than a 26"er hard tail or full suspension bike.

That isn't to say I didn't ride some nice 650B bikes. I did. Some of them I liked just fine, but not more so than a good 29"er. They just weren't far enough removed in feel from 26"ers, and they just didn't quite get to the level of a 29"er. 

Travis Brown Signature Bike

Of course, I wrote plenty about 650B bikes in the past. The last time I said the following

"Pundits proclaimed that 650B would be where 29"ers were in 2007 by 2010. Then the economy went south, and so seemingly did any hopes for the 650B wheel to take root."

To be fair, the economy certainly took risky ventures like adding 650B bikes out of the picture for some companies, but in my mind, that isn't the only reason this fringe element of mountain biking hasn't gotten as far as the 650B fans had hoped.  Essentially, the very nature of the wheels being "in the middle" of two other very popular wheel sizes has marginalized the appeal of 650B mtb designs. I know I feel this way about them, and I think lots of other riders do as well.

Of course, that isn't to say that 650B is going away. It isn't. Jamis and KHS have really staked out a nice slice of their line ups for 2012 in the tweener wheels. However; it isn't looking to catch on in a big way. Fans of the wheels are saying that it will take one of the bigger companies to legitimize 650B to the masses. I'd disagree with that. It's going to be rider driven if anything, and I don't see that like I did with 29"ers happening for 650B. It's staying on the fringes as far as I can tell.