As our meager snow cover takes a pounding from heavy rain, I wonder what kind of work is likely to come through the door. Thoughts turn toward the coming bike season, such as it may be, but we could as easily see someone with a snowboard or alpine skis to wax, or skates to sharpen. Or, as happens too often, no one at all.
This shop has had to piece together many products to pull in enough money to get by. While cross-country skiing and bicycling remain the principal endeavors, we've also sold ice skates, downhill ski clothing and accessories, some hockey and lacrosse gear, field hockey, tennis balls and inexpensive racquets, badminton, ping pong balls, day packs, hiking accessories... The hockey and lacrosse clientele quickly became too serious about themselves to come to a little omni-shop like this, so we no longer stock more than tape and mouth guards, and a few cheap sticks.
One thing unified our clientele during the last of the 1980s and throughout the 1990s. Back when mountain biking was really big, the vast majority of our riders did at least one of the other sporty activities. Most of them were in the youth hockey program that was expanding rapidly, but some raced downhill on the school ski team. A few raced on the cross-country ski team. Among the adult riders were lift-served and cross-country skiers, and adult hockey players. Almost no one stuck to pedaling something all year round. There were non-competitive skiers as well, and outdoor generalists who might do a bit of climbing and hiking.
Both the bike and cross-country ski industries have done a lot in the last few years to make those lines more complicated and less profitable. The bike business has been at it since at least 1990. Cross-country skis were actually a welcome refuge until about 2005 or '06, when they really started to screw with things. We'd always had to put up with Fischer's weird ideas, but then Salomon started messing with their solid and successful binding line to see if they could sabotage it, and they did a great job. Meanwhile, Rottefella was pursuing the Shimano strategy of flooding the market with inferior stuff that was made widely available, shortstopping a lot of money before consumers knew what their options were. The better marketed product will always defeat the better made product. It's about convincing consumers. As long as the idea sounds good enough and works well enough to get past the warranty period, you can convince people to "upgrade" to your next piece of crap when the old tinsel falls apart.
The first waves of technofascism seemed to enhance the experience for riders inclined to push the limits or try to compete. Only one or two overactive sentinels like me pointed out that proprietary enslavement was going to end up costing us more than it gives back.
Addicted riders today, in any category, think they're in a glorious age. As long as you can afford to keep up, sure. Keep that needle in there until they find you dead with it, or you finally hit rock bottom and go into rehab. Meanwhile, my low-tech persistence is probably comparable to drinking Sterno and huffing aerosols out of a plastic bag, with only affordability in its favor. I beg to differ, but I know it's open to argument.
Back when a casual participant could enjoy mountain biking to its fullest extent, riding was popular. But the imposition of "improved" shifting systems and the rapid evolution of suspension ambushed many riders who had to take more than a year off and then wanted to pick up where they left off. The only way to keep up would have been to stay on the bike and evolve with the equipment more gradually.
Proponents of engineered trails and over-engineered bikes have suggested that a fancy trail network will attract "younger people with disposable income." They seem not to have noticed that what the area has already attracts retirees with disposable income, because that's the age group that has the money right now. The mountain bike demographic in this area is a few aging young adults whose kids are finally moving out, people in midlife crisis, and athletic retirees who go out whenever their internal organs want to behave for long enough. It's not a place for people on the rise, it's a place for people doing their best to arrest their decline. And some individuals have already expressed their intention to pull up stakes and go someplace warm to live and ride before too many more years pass.
I've lived in a lot of places. When I was a kid we moved so often that I'm not even from where I was born. I never had a home town, or even a town to call home for more than four years, max. Usually it was more like two. But we moved because we had to, not because we wanted to. So when I settled here, it was as much because I had had enough of moving as because this area is any kind of perfect.
Perfect places don't exist.
The bike industry let the demands of the hard-core ruin the experience for everyone else. I don't know how to reconcile the advancement of technology for the gear weenies and stunt riders with the needs of the many, except to say that excruciatingly technical bikes should cost even more than their already inflated price tags and be made in small enough numbers to reflect how many people are actually using them as intended, while the happy masses deserve to get solid, simple, reliable machinery that they can enjoy for many years with minimal mechanical intervention. It doesn't have to be internally-geared hubs. It does have to be more durable than the plastic and sheet metal crap we've been seeing more and more of.
That being said, I acknowledge that shifting derailleur gears seemed to mystify the majority of people who owned them. Indexing started to give them the firm stops they were looking for. One thing led to another, and here we are. But back on the junk heap of history lie simpler machines that allowed for simpler fun that many more people could take up and set aside repeatedly over the course of years. Now if it's been a year you have to wonder whether your brake fluid is still up to its job, and worry whether your shock is holding pressure, and renew the sealant in your tires. Or you could just wing it. That's what most people do.
Bike work would be the most difficult to perform up to in-season standards right now, with our lone work stand half buried in the rental ski rack, and the bike tools pushed safely aside to keep the bench clean for ski wax. The few jobs in waiting are not a rush. The owners of the bikes wanted them stored somewhere out of their way until bike season is undeniably here.
Gale force winds sweep heavy showers against the windows. Notifications on my phone tell me that the power is out at my house. I look forward to an evening by candlelight, trying to drag a cartoon out of myself for my last remaining print outlet. And maybe I'll see if I can make chocolate chip cookies in a cast iron frying pan.
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