Under My Thumb – Bike Snob NYC

Yesterday I enjoyed an early morning ride through the suburbs, where I took in the Halloween decorations:

I wonder if when Dad gathered the family to admire his handiwork anybody pointed out to him how disturbing this is:

He should at least put some pants on that thing.

Speaking of gaffes, did you know the bike industry is shooting itself in the foot?

This is an odd remark from a media outlet that is currently featuring this on its homepage:

I’m not sure it’s fair to say the bicycle industry is shooting itself in the foot, though I would say the bicycle industry and the bicycle media are engaging in mutual masturbation.

In any case, one of the things the writer laments is the disappearance of double- and triple-ring cranks:

Remember those old viral 1x subtitled video clips, they did carry an uncomfortable sense of truth; “Let’s take away the chainrings and front shifters, tell them it’s better, and then charge them more for it”. Even some within the industry raised an uneasy eyebrow at those. Although 1x does have many practical positives, so does the versatility of double – and dare I say it without being shot down with an anodized titanium firebolt – for many regular mountain bikers, the now demonised triple crankset makes sense too, especially for those extra inbetweener gear choices.

I have no idea which videos he’s referencing, but recently I’ve been giving some thought to the drivetrain of the Jones, which I’m preparing for trail-riding season:

At first I thought I’d need to replace at least the chain, though after the liberal application of Dumonde (is there anything that stuff can’t fix?) it seems to be running reasonably smoothly again.

Nevertheless, I’ve always had mixed feelings about the single-ring drivetrain. This particular one has held up quite well despite lots of use with minimal maintenance. (I’ve replaced the chain once, and other than that I just douse it in Dumonde.) I also appreciate the simplicity on mountain bike trails, where front shifts aren’t always an option if you haven’t planned them ahead of time; meanwhile, with a wide-range single-ring drivetrain you can access your lowest gears even under a heavy pedaling load. And single-ring drivetrains do appeal to the same part of my brain that singlespeeds do (the simpleton part), and like many people I used to “curate” them before they were something you could just buy off the shelf:

So I appreciate that today you can get that same mechanical simplicity, plus a much wider gear range, minus stuff like chain catchers and bash guards–and cheaply, too.

What I’m not wild about is that on smoother roads and trails I’d usually rather make a single front shift than have to clickety-click my way through a bunch of gears. I even briefly frictionized the Jones for that very reason:

And speaking of all those gears, there are twelve of them, which is a lot. As I say, overall everything has held up well, but in terms of adjustment it can be a bit more finicky than a drivetrain with fewer cogs. I certainly don’t need twelve of them, even with just a single front chainring. (And yes, I know there are other single-ring drivetrains out there with fewer cogs, including the ones that come on the current Joneseses.)

Fortunately, despite being a modern, disc-braked, Boost-spaced bike, the Jones doesn’t suffer too badly from incompatibility. In fact, it even has a cable stop for a front derailleur (top-swing) and will take a double crank, plus the rear hub is Hyperglide-compatible, meaning I can choose from a vast array of cassettes. For this reason I’m quite tempted to equip it with an ecumenical generation-spanning drivetrain complete with thumb shifters:

[It looks like a face!]

And a Rapid Rise derailleur:

The only thing I’d need would be a Boost-compatible double crank, though those are also quite cheap:

For the ultimate in defiance maybe I could even find a wide enough spindle to get a square taper crank on there. Now that would be something.

Or I could stop Riv-ifying the Jones (I’ve been down this road before) and keep enjoying it for the superlative bicycle it already is until something actually wears out, which is a much more sensible thing to do.

I’m just dying to put those thumbies on something, though…

Speaking of thumb shifters, yesterday I joked that 26-inch wheels are going to be the hot new wheel size, and guess what?

That’s right, they’re back:

The Dakar utilizes a 26″ wheel and the J-Unit 34 Pro fork for a few reasons, but one of the bigger ones is; front triangle size! The smaller wheel and fork combo make it so the front triangle can be larger. A big front triangle means you can run a larger long range gas tank (full frame bag) INSIDE of the triangle instead of a tiny one on top of the top tube (🤢). The other up-side to a 26″ wheel is it keeps the bike nice and snappy and maneuverable. It seems like everyone wants to “shred” these days, and the smaller the wheel the harder you can rip, for a multitude of reasons.

Now which big company will be the first to copy them? They’ll just need to come up with a new name for them.

How about MicroDrive?

Oh, wait…