Completely happy Friday!
It’s Easter weekend, which implies we’re formally transferring into spring. Meaning summer time might be right here earlier than you already know it, and it’ll even be over earlier than you already know it. And autumn all the time passes too shortly, which actually means it’s mainly winter already.
Properly fuck me.
In any case, additional to yesterday’s put up, I discovered myself flipping via a few of these 2003 Trek catalogs and reminiscing concerning 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 12 months:
[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 you could 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 truthful 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 fully doable I solely thought I used to be speaking to Scot Nicol and was in actual fact schmoozing with a tree. Talking of which, I had no thought (or forgot) the New York Instances lined it:
Within the parlance of the time, this is able to have been a positive 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 put up.)
In the meantime, on the street facet, unsurprisingly the highest of the Trek vary was the USPS group bike duplicate:
Perusing the catalog provides you sense of simply how flush Trek was in these days. That they had a “WSD” (that was Trek-speak for Ladies’s-Particular Design, a time period that may in all probability get you cancelled right now) 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 as if the massive manufacturers used to supply one, and there’s in all probability an entire essay to be written on how the gradual 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 might all the time purchase a Klein:
In 2003 nobody body materials had but turn out to be dominant on the excessive finish, so an enormous firm like Trek needed to struggle a struggle 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 in fact 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” possibly I’d have been in a position to money out early.
Anyway, Trek-era Kleins nonetheless had the flowery paint jobs that had turn out to be 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 large model on the market, and talking of fat-tubed aluminum Cannondale was additionally in a state of superior bloat. Bear in mind, this was the corporate that had just a few years earlier gone public and launched a motocross division:
Happily no bicycle firm could be silly sufficient to over-invest in motorized bicycles right now:
Don’t fear, this time it will likely be completely different.
The massive offroad advertising time period on the time was “freeride:”
Which gave corporations like Cannondale an excuse to promote shit like this:
Although if freeriding was too balls-out for you, then you might all the time tuck one ball again into your saggy shorts and go along with the marginally tamer “all-mountain” life-style:
I suppose freeriding begat all-mountain, after which all-mountain begat “downcountry,” and naturally you’ve obtained to throw an “enduro” in there someplace, and oh my god isn’t mountain bike advertising horrible?
By the best way, unsurprisingly for a corporation that had been dabbling in motocross, by 2003 Cannondale was already like “Fuck rim brakes:”
They have been additionally possibly the primary firm to supply a disc-brake cyclocross bike:
I can guarantee you that in 2003 completely no person who truly did cyclocross needed a cyclocross with disc brakes, and it could 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 in fact the bike sponsor for Armstrong’s USPS group, Cannondale was the sponsor for Saeco:
Saeco was most well-known (a minimum of in America) for being the group of Mario Cipollini, however by 2003 he’d modified groups and was driving 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 stage prime tube:
The aluminum period was very short-lived in skilled street biking; metal reigned for like a century, and it’s pretty protected to say crabon will reign for a minimum of one other century. However for a short 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 a minimum of Binachi USA was, due to the designs of Sky Yaeger, who was liable for the Pista, and the Milano, and Bianchi’s well-known line of singlespeed mountain bikes:
Ah, these have been the times.
