Last week I mentioned Jobst Brandt and his thoughts on long chainstays. Subsequently, I found myself reading Jobst Brandt’s thoughts on lots of things, as well as Tom Ritchey’s thoughts on Jobst Brandt:
As a Cervino rider, the Nishiki jersey and shorts in the above photo caught my eye:
And I suspect he too may be riding a Cervino, because color aside, look at the shifters:
It’s hard to tell for sure, but they sure do look like they’re in the tell-tale jackrabbit position on top of the downtube:
See?
So what’s the significance of all this?
I don’t know, either, though if that is in fact a Cervino then it represents the only known contemporary photo of one in the wild, a find of major significance to the modern-day Cervino community, which as far as I can tell currently consists entirely of me:
[La communauté de Cervino, c’est moi.]
As for the Nishiki rider in the photo, nobody knows for sure what happened to him, but rumor has it that he was killed and eaten by Jobst Brant himself, who disapproved of his bicycle’s unnecessarily complicated shifter configuration.
A tall tale? Perhaps. But there’s no denying that Jobst Brandt is the closest thing the cycling world has to Paul Bunyan. 6’5″ tall and with, according to Ritchey, a “voice like Darth Vader,” Brandt didn’t even carry water bottles and instead slaked his thirst by drinking from mountain streams. He also broke cranks like they were matchsticks with a frequency that almost beggars belief:
And like Bigfoot, we only have grainy “proof” of his existence:
As someone who used to lurk in the rec.bicycles.tech newsgroup I was always in awe of his persona, his pragmatism, and his prose, which was as unadorned and functional as the equipment he favored. It has been awhile since I’d delved deeply into his posts, but fortunately they’re now archived, so lately I find myself perusing them again. As I’ve mentioned before, it’s ironic that the gravelistas have embraced Brandt as their “godfather” when so much in that world runs counter to what he espoused, from overcomplicated bikes with lots of gears to expensive organized rides to marketing run amok:
Mainstream discourse today is anodyne and cycling has readily embraced the modern mandate not to offend, which is ironic since cycling is a physical endeavor that inherently involves difficulty, even when undertaken casually. Sure, the arbiters of taste have at times taken this too far, like Rapha in the early days, and perhaps they’re rightly feeling a bit penitent for all the self-wankery:
[Oh for fuck’s sake spare me.]
But at the same time there now seems to be a pathological aversion to acknowledging that part of the joy of cycling is that it can be a challenge. Consider the manner in which we’re selling our soul to the e-bike, a device that completely undermines the human-powered ethos of cycling–yet Lob forbid you say anything negative about e-bikes, or question the (sorry) ridiculous claim they’re going to replace car trips on a massive scale. We’re literally surrendering our bike lanes to motorized vehicles for fear of seeming intolerant.
Embracing the challenge of cycling doesn’t mean it has to be physically grueling, nor is it that dirtiest of adjectives: “ableist.” Rivendell doesn’t sell suffering and self-flagellation; they sell riding slowly and in comfort. Yes, that’s also marketing, but underneath the lugs and the leather-and-cotton luggage is the idea that the bike is a machine comprising of metal and cables, and that there’s a satisfaction in operating it. Meanwhile, SRAM now sells electronic shifting on the basis that it is “meant to simplify the riding experience” and that “riders can focus on their ride, not their equipment.” Rivendell may want to keep you comfortable, but that’s different from holding your hand; operating the equipment is very much a part of the ride, and that’s a good thing, not a bad thing. Using a friction shifter instead of simply pushing a button may be more “challenging,” but it’s also more rewarding. It feels good in the same way being able to play something simple on a guitar feels good, whereas the modern cycling industry wants your bike to be more like the David Lee Roth soundboard.
In recent decades the idea has been that we’ve got to get rid of the “barriers to entry” in order to get more people riding, but in so doing we’ve lost sight of the fact that climbing over barriers is part of what makes it fun in the first place, whether it’s riding over an actual mountain or simply dialing in a shift. Not only have we flattened the landscape, but we’ve fetishized the act of doing so, and we’ve replaced the barriers that once dotted that landscape with a bunch of meaningless symbols:
A million companies selling the same gravel bike, accessory brand after accessory brand, influencers passing themselves off as craftspeople, bike bloggers lost up their own asses, and the umpteenth rebranded Panaracer tire.
Sure, obviously people are still boasting about their hard rides, and you can visit certain websites and see lavish photos of peoples’ bike camping trips styled like fashion shoots (or go to Bicycling and read about some middle-aged guy’s designer cycling vacation), but underpinning it all the message must be, “You can do this too,” and there’s aways a bike or a bag or an article of clothing or a lifestyle for sale along with it. There’s nobody telling you that you don’t need all those gears and you look ridiculous:
Jobst Brandt was about keeping it simple, but today the people who are ostensibly about keeping it simple recoil at the suggestion that maybe you can get by without a 13-inch gear and denounce it as “road cycling hegemony:”
As for me, Jobst Brant’s crazy gearing is one of the reasons I decided to bring the Kestrel to Switzerland, and I’m glad I did:
I’m not saying I’d necessarily do those climbs with a 42×21 again, but I’m certainly glad I did it once.
And if you think saying people don’t need disc brakes on their road bikes is edgy, how about saying dual-pivot brakes are for timid novices with weak hands?
This sounded insanely curmudgeonly even to me, but then I thought about it: the single pivot brakes I have work just fine. Not only that, but they don’t have to be adjusted to run so close to the rim, the brake pads are much thicker, and they open wider to let the wheel in and out–a challenge with dual-pivots when you’re using fattish tires:
Before long I was window-shopping them for my Milwaukee:
[Via eBay]
I’m not saying we should all go back to single-pivot brakes, but coddling people involves sacrifice on our own parts, and it doesn’t take long to forget what we’ve given up. Losing a little rim clearance was arguably worth the trade-off, but losing the ability to shift without a battery may not be.
Sometimes the best influencers are the most offensive ones.