Glad Friday!
It’s Easter weekend, which implies we’re formally transferring into spring. Which means summer season shall be right here earlier than you realize it, and it’ll even be over earlier than you realize it. And autumn at all times passes too shortly, which actually means it’s principally winter already.
Properly fuck me.
In any case, additional to yesterday’s publish, I discovered myself flipping by way of a few of these 2003 Trek catalogs and reminiscing in regards to the state of the bike business on the flip of the century. For instance, right here was the top-of-the-line Gary Fisher mountain bike that yr:
[All the catalog links are in yesterday’s post, I’m not going through all that again.]
Simply because the earliest land animals nonetheless had fins…
…so too did the twin suspension bikes of yesteryear nonetheless have rim brakes. Additionally, in these days it’s possible you’ll recall Gary Fisher was pushing this complete loopy 29-inch wheel idea:
It took awhile for the 29-inch mountain bike wheel to catch on; in 2008 I attended the Singlespeed World Championships in Napa and I appear to recall Scot Nicol nonetheless deriding them as “wagon wheels,” although to be honest you shouldn’t put an excessive amount of inventory within the reminiscence of anybody who was on the 2008 Singlespeed World Championships, and it’s solely doable I solely thought I used to be speaking to Scot Nicol and was in reality schmoozing with a tree. Talking of which, I had no concept (or forgot) the New York Occasions coated it:
Within the parlance of the time, this could have been a certain signal that singlespeed mountain biking had “jumped the shark.” (Accusing issues of “leaping the shark” was probably the most ubiquitous type of lazy cultural criticism on the time, and I personally was accused of it every day beginning with my second weblog publish.)
In the meantime, on the street facet, unsurprisingly the highest of the Trek vary was the USPS workforce bike duplicate:
Perusing the catalog provides you a great sense of simply how flush Trek was in these days. They’d a “WSD” (that was Trek-speak for Ladies’s-Particular Design, a time period that may most likely get you cancelled right this moment) model of just about each bike, and they even a tandem. (I’ve by no means paid a lot consideration to tandems, but it surely looks like the large manufacturers used to supply one, and there’s most likely an entire essay to be written on how the sluggish disappearance of the tandem represents the more and more harmful state of the American roadway, the erosion of the establishment of marriage and conventional values, our decaying ethical fiber, and so forth.)
And right here was Trek’s top-of-the-line cross-country mountain bike, full with dual-suspension, crabon body, and rim brakes:
In fact in case you didn’t need a Gary Fisher, or a Trek, you can at all times purchase a Klein:
In 2003 nobody body materials had but develop into dominant on the excessive finish, so an enormous firm like Trek needed to combat a warfare on all fronts–and that meant providing top-of-the-line bikes in metal, crabon, titanium, and aluminum:
By this time Klein was simply one other tentacle of the large squid that was Trek, however after all Gary Klein had lengthy been a fat-tubed aluminum bike pioneer:
Gary Fisher, Gary Klein…in these days in case you have been a motorcycle individual named Gary it appeared such as you had a better-than-average probability of hanging a profitable take care of Trek. If solely I’d had the foresight to name this weblog “Bike Gary NYC” perhaps I’d have been in a position to money out early.
Anyway, Trek-era Kleins nonetheless had the flamboyant paint jobs that had develop into the model’s hallmark (that and the fats tubes), but it surely’s the pre-Trek fashions that enchantment to the collector weenies:
After my “American Societal Collapse And The Tandem Bicycle” essay I’ll write a ten,000-word treatise on this:
Even then I’ll solely be scratching the floor.
However Trek wasn’t the one massive model on the market, and talking of fat-tubed aluminum Cannondale was additionally in a state of superior bloat. Keep in mind, this was the corporate that had just a few years earlier gone public and launched a motocross division:
Luckily no bicycle firm could be silly sufficient to over-invest in motorized bicycles right this moment:
Don’t fear, this time will probably be completely different.
The large offroad advertising time period on the time was “freeride:”
Which gave firms like Cannondale an excuse to promote shit like this:
Although if freeriding was too balls-out for you, then you can at all times tuck one ball again into your saggy shorts and go together with the marginally tamer “all-mountain” life-style:
I assume freeriding begat all-mountain, after which all-mountain begat “downcountry,” and naturally you’ve acquired to throw an “enduro” in there someplace, and oh my god isn’t mountain bike advertising horrible?
By the best way, unsurprisingly for an organization that had been dabbling in motocross, by 2003 Cannondale was already like “Fuck rim brakes:”
They have been additionally perhaps the primary firm to supply a disc-brake cyclocross bike:
I can guarantee you that in 2003 completely no one who really did cyclocross needed a cyclocross with disc brakes, and it will take many extra years for the business to lastly get the idea to stay. And don’t you now we’re ever so significantly better off for it.
And whereas Trek was after all the bike sponsor for Armstrong’s USPS workforce, Cannondale was the sponsor for Saeco:
Saeco was most well-known (at the very least in America) for being the workforce of Mario Cipollini, however by 2003 he’d modified groups and was using a Specialised…or a camel, relying on his temper:
This was Specialised’s top-of-the-line street bike in 2003, although I appear to recall Cipollini insisting Specialised make him a motorcycle with a degree high tube:
The aluminum period was very short-lived in skilled street biking; metal reigned for like a century, and it’s pretty secure to say crabon will reign for at the very least one other century. However for a quick interval within the late ’90s and early aughts aluminum was it:
Not solely was aluminum the highest bike materials, however Bianchi was additionally the hippest model in biking–or at the very least Binachi USA was, because of the designs of Sky Yaeger, who was answerable for the Pista, and the Milano, and Bianchi’s well-known line of singlespeed mountain bikes:
Ah, these have been the times.
