Can't operate without the computer

 Modern fighter jets are designed for such extreme maneuverability that they are actually unstable in regular flight. It's an exaggerated example of the difference between a tight, steep racing road bike and a touring bike, but it's a similar principle. The machine designed for competitive -- or combative -- responsiveness isn't made for inattentive cruising. The pilot or rider provide the skill necessary to operate. And, in the case of the modern warbird, the pilot gets vital assistance from onboard computer systems that coordinate the constant stream of variables challenging smooth flight. That's starting to creep into the bike world as well, with computerized shifting helping to manage infuriatingly temperamental drive trains with 12 or 13 cogs squeezed together, pulled by a chain that has side plates as skinny as razor blades.

In the workshop we depend increasingly on the computer to keep track of the deluge of information about all the parts of all the different categories of bikes across decades. I spend hours a day looking up specs and procedures for suspension, shifting, and brake systems as they have evolved since the 1990s. The bike industry may have torn the rear view mirror off and nailed the throttle to the floorboard as they stare fixedly forward and roar into a sun-blinded futurescape, but here in the present, people are dragging in all sorts of things from the near and distant past, expecting that an expert in a professional bike shop will know how to bring them back to full functionality.

We try, because we know no better. And we succeed a good bit, because we have many allies. The trick is to find the true information in the uncurated jumble of anecdote and hearsay, to learn something you didn't know before, or refresh your memory about something that got buried under a couple of tons of newer crap.

I resent it. Knowledge used to flow at a human pace. The industry might have seemed to plod, but it suited the pace of human propulsion. Technolemmings will disagree, of course, but no one can deny that we all still push the pedals with the same power that we always have. Some super-trainers and the pharmaceutically enhanced can push harder for a time. Some riders have paid for electrical assistance. Strip away those props and you're left with the same old sweaty grunt grinding away at the cranks.

Information is not knowledge. No one can possibly have experience with all of the things we're expected to know about as lowly bike technicians. Anyone who rides enough in all categories to have a depth of relevant experience in all of them won't have time to have a job, especially a job like fixing bikes. And someone who earns a living fixing bikes won't be able to afford decent bikes in all categories. And so we turn to that flaming dumpster of all human knowledge, the Internet, to hunt down enough verifiable information to keep treading water in the flood of products.

For many years, I could analyze a system by looking at it. Now that is no longer true, particularly with shifting systems. The stupid idea that all the gears should be in the back, and that the cassette should span from 10 or 11 to 50 or 52 teeth has led to mutant derailleurs sensitive to angle adjustment errors of a millimeter or two. There is no fudge factor and there is no ability to improvise. Cassettes don't come apart to allow custom gearing or individual cog replacement. The industry inexorably blocks off every avenue except the One True Path of their proprietary products.

 I do believe that the future of mountain bike gearing lies in enclosed gearboxes, like motorcycles have. Derailleur systems are wonderfully simple and durable for people who want to ride a bicycle in a traditional way, even if they venture onto some unpaved roads and mild trails. But mountain biking in its current style, as a ride to nowhere, looking for entertaining features like a cross between motocross, parkour, and miniature golf, is too rough on a derailleur system. So far, the gearbox designers have not come up with a generic shape that will fit any frame, so mountain biking gets even closer to motorcycling in the sense that bikes will be more completely committed to manufacturer support. It's a step backward to very early times, when bikes were made in little factories all over the place, by machinists who made every part in house and advertised the virtues of their specific approach. The idea of cross-brand interchangeability evolved later. It broadened the appeal and versatility of the bicycle to allow a rider to venture far from the source and still have a chance to find service and repair parts. But it also hampered designers who wanted to start from a basic set of needs or desires and design to meet them, independent of existing constraints.

Gearbox transmissions highlight the difference between a human engine and a mechanical one. The "clutch" is provided by the human rider letting up on the pedals to allow the gears to complete a shift. Test riders have complained that this interrupts their rhythm and can break momentum unacceptably on steep climbs or in technical passages. So for now we're stuck with the weird derailleur systems that will shift under load and are lighter in weight, and throw money and time at them to keep them operating in the hamster wheel of modern mountain biking.

Meanwhile, it gets harder and harder to maintain a good old derailleur-geared bike with a double or a triple crank, adult-sized chainrings, and a cassette that doesn't have a low-gear cog the size of a manhole cover and a high gear cog the size of a nickel. We go to the computer again for that, even if only to compare our different vendors to see who has what, and compare prices, like the $40 (retail) 74X28 chainring versus the same size ring from another vendor, that would retail for half of that. We're headed toward scrounging the scrap heap for nearly everything, on top of the amount of salvage that has already become the norm. Recycling is good; it always was. But now we're into post-apocalyptic territory to keep what used to be normal bikes running as cobbled-together mutants in a world too modern for its own good.