The Upsides are Joyous

No Dabs, 2/6/22

While working my way up to Miner’s Ridge the other morning from Lilac and on up a little more, I thought: the effort is very labored and these damn cobbles are determined to make this ride unenjoyable. I smiled at the thought and when I made it to a spot I hadn’t been in years, the humor on display reminded me that joy is out there waiting …

Too often, the downsides are prominent. The upsides need to tell more of the story:

Human ingenuity that goes into a dropper post, making for a safer and faster descent;

The knobs on tires that do what they are designed to do;

Brakes that stop on a dime;

Bikes that climb and descend;

And all that squish.

It goes without saying, and has for a while, that when we think of mountain bike technology through time, we often nitpick the small things that we might think aren’t as good as advertised, or that we expected things to do more/be better. Let’s back up and remind ourselves that human beings and their brains are working on our problems, our complaints, our wishes.

I was reminded of those things while in Cuyamaca …

Next time you’re out on a ride, even if/when you’re on a simple one gear or your bike of yesteryear, don’t lose sight of the fact that bike technology and its evolution is made possible by fellow human beings. People live lives and in this context, people live lives tinkering and conducting science and drawing on computers so that we can enjoy our rides and enjoy our lives, at least for a few hours a day.

Cheers to humans who design/engineer mountain bikes!