Additional to yesterday’s publish, you could have observed a lurker within the background of one of many photographs:
It is because Yonkers is rife with deer, they usually worry no man:
The truth is this one really began to method me, and for a minute there I assumed it was going to come back up and sniff my crotch like a canine.
The paths simply north of the town are stuffed with such wonders, and for a time my favourite deer-slayer was the RockCombo, which was kind of in its inventory configuration when I first acquired it in 2020:
It grew on me shortly, and over time it turned my “prepared for something bike:”
Then got here The Nice Purge of 2024, and the troublesome determination to cross it alongside, because it overlapped with the Homer particularly:
[Via the comments.]
Sure, the RockCombo had extra mountain bike in it, however for that I’ve the Jones.
I used to be sorry to see it go, however I do nonetheless have its offspring, which may have a brand new rider as soon as my youthful son grows into it:
I could have to present it a “Rivendell Junior” remedy with some swept bars.
I additionally get to see the RockCombo each as soon as in awhile when it pops up in the feedback, because it did yesterday:
As you may see its new proprietor has elevated it to a brand new degree of magnificence and class it will by no means, ever have attained underneath my curatorship.
It’s sufficient to make me need one other one…or at the very least try what they’re going for:
The RockCombo is usually cited as the primary gravel bike:
Nonetheless, this may’t be true, as a result of if it was then Specialised can be suing all the opposite corporations promoting gravel bikes the identical means they sued that man who named his cafe Roubaix:
In any case, seeing the RockCombo once more made me nostalgic for it, and in my subsequent pokings round I discovered a recent evaluation of the bike I’d by no means seen earlier than:
It was from the June 1989 concern of “Bicycle Information:”
And was a part of a collection on “hybrids” that additionally included the Bianchi Tangent:
The Fisher Hybrid:
The Bruce Gordon Rock ‘N Highway:
The Miyata Alumicross:
The Offroad Climber:
And the Serotta Slicker:
1989 was fairly a yr.
In fact the hybrid idea quickly developed into one thing tamer; for instance, the drop bars disappeared, and if something it’s the lack of drop bars that has since come, at the very least partially, to outline the hybrid. However the best way hybrids had been described in 1989 is strictly the best way we describe a sure sort of motorcycle starting with “g” as we speak:
Proper right down to the mystical ineffability:
It was solely a matter of time.
