Timeless Design Is Timeless

Yesterday I set more mundane concerns aside and went for a ride on the Jones:

It was the ideal route for this bike, consisting of some pavement, some singletrack, and some dirt trail:

Now that I've set the tone for the fall, I intend to continue in this vein for the next few months.

Speaking of bikes with chubby tires, Lennard Zinn asked various bike industry people about what they considered to be "came-changing" technology:

("The new ultra-precision titanium mustache combs are game-changing when it comes to post-ride grooming.")

It's worth noting that out of seven (7) people, most of whom were mountain bike types, two (2) of them emphatically said wide tires and rims.  Meanwhile, suspension only came up once, and only in passing.

Think about it.

Or don't, I really don't care.

And in other tech news, it's becoming easier and easier to ignore Interbike, but I made a point to check out James Huang's coverage recently because it's always worthwhile.  The first thing that jumped out at me was this magnesium bike:

Sure, I enjoyed their questionable "pound of lead vs. pound of feathers" marketing approach:

But the real reason I took notice was that we all know Segal bikes were making magnesium bikes years ago:

I don't know if Segal are still making bikes, but US distributor Trish Cohen's website is still up, so make of that what you will.  And to be honest I still find myself thinking about that bike from time to time: light, endearingly ugly, and made of metal, it was in some ways the perfect New York City park racer, and I kind of wish I'd held onto it. (Though I think if you own a magnesium bike and a wood bike you may be taking the alternative frame material thing too far.)

Elsewhere in James Huang's coverage I found myself puzzling over this:

The cleverly named Tacx Radar (it’s a palindrome …) bottle cage can be configured for left-hand or right-hand access. It seems to hold bottles quite securely, too.

"How the hell can a bottle cage be right- or left-handed?," I wondered.  What's next, a right- or left-handed water bottle?  So I went to the website:

The Radar is a side load bottle cage with very good clamping and especially designed to fit small bike frames. You insert and remove your bottle sideways, from either the left or the right side.

I guess how it works is that if you have a tight frame and a big bottle you can yank the bottle out at sort of an angle, which does make sense.  So there you go.

Finally, via a reader, Old Man Budnitz is doing a "gravel grinder" now:

Basically, it has a belt drive and a Rohloff hub:

The trick to the dropbar Rohloff setup, the Ø:G uses the shifters from a set of SRAM Force 22 road hydraulic disc brake levers with their internal ratcheting mechanisms removed to control the internally geared rear hub without a bulky, less ergonomic shifter à la the Gebla Rohbox mod.

I thought Rohbox was that video game my kid plays until I read more about it:

Now I see why Budnitz doesn't include any pictures.

Hey, it may very well be a fantastic bit of tech, but that's still a lot to pay for a bike with the Rohloff equivalent of a Jtek ShiftMate.

As for actual useful information about the bike (tire clearance, bag mounting capability, etc.), I couldn't find any of that over at the Budnitz website, but I did find this video:

The Owner from Budnitz Bicycles on Vimeo.

And what I learned from that is that cool designer-type people ride Budnitzes:

So cool in fact they ride on the opposite side of the road:

One thing you can say for design people is they feel really strongly about design:

The world doesn't need junk, it needs responsible, well-considered, timeless, meaningful design.

You mean like upside-down skulls that say "Fuck Apathy" underneath them in Sharpie?

Timeless indeed.