Farmers aren’t cows

The merchant-customer relationship has a lot in common with farming or hunting. Specialty retail used to be different, because so many of the workers were also users, but it was never purely thus. It has moved steadily away from the fellow enthusiast model since the 1990s. The business model moved from small specialty stores to larger, higher-volume retail outlets, through mail order to the impersonal mechanism of the internet.

The larger and more impersonal the delivery systems become, the more the relationship changes not only from an interpersonal exchange between fellow enthusiasts to a quasi-predatory one, but also from a small scale hunting or farming metaphor to a factory farming analogy. You all are being processed, like a bunch of turkeys.

Granted, the metaphor falters because animals used in various ways for food production don't have any autonomy. As a human, you have your knowledge -- such as it may be -- and your free will, to question what seems questionable, to buy from someone else, or to quit an activity entirely. That last factor guides a lot of marketing thought. Purveyors of specialty stuff understand that many people get in, but few stay. This is dramatically evident in a boom and bust cycle, but goes on all the time in lesser waves.

Your knowledge may not be as comprehensive as you think it is. I've been in the business for about 30 years, and I still forget some things from the historical record, or have to dredge my memory for diagnostic information or procedures I might not have used in awhile. And my immersion in this area has taught me about the interdependence of a civilized society. Primitive hunter-gatherers needed to cooperate, but in the earliest times there was a lot less to know. Because we have eradicated that subsistence world, we have to function in the interconnected web of overlapping technology and customs that has evolved ever more rapidly as our species has invented and interpreted lots and lots of things. Become an expert in your field and you automatically don't have the time or the brain space to master many other fields. You have to trust others to inform and guide you. But can you trust anyone who is selling something?

If you have enough coin to have internet access and a credit card, your circumstances are probably not desperate enough to make a poor buying decision a fatal error. Not when it comes to bikes and parts thereof, anyway. Then again, I have both of those things, and I definitely do not have money to waste. But say you have to live entirely in the real world, obtaining whatever you need from physical locations where money changes hands directly. You have a personal relationship with your guardian and protector, or your hunter and exploiter.

Life is one big gray area. Working in a small shop, I have to balance the needs of the business to exist and support its staff against the desire to outfit every customer with the absolute perfect stuff for each individual. Working in a large shop, I would still run up against the limitations of that business's ability or willingness to stock a lot of variety and cater to anything other than the largest common denominator in any category. "It's good enough," the saying goes. And it's true, up to a point. But if you have the misfortune to buy into technology just before a massive shift, you will be on the wrong side of obsolescence for longer than if you'd stumbled in nearer the launch of a new platform. See much 9-speed Dura Ace these days?

New platforms do not guarantee less trouble from the get-go. Early versions often hit the market with bugs that the industry counts on early adopters to disclose. The first customers for any new marvel are often test pilots, whether they know it or not. That's the predatory angle. Someone has to buy the latest crap so that its real-world failings can be discerned and refined out in later editions. So the smart money waits as much as a whole season. But if everyone held back, it would simply delay the onset of this testing period. They've got you by the components, man.

The bike industry began as a cauldron of innovation. The machines evolved steadily from something with wheels like a wagon to the sleek wonders that you see today...and fat bikes...and 75-pound smokeless mopeds. From the beginning, they were creatures of desire, not need. But luxuries become needs. Transportation on demand found a ready market when "the poor man's horse" came on the scene. That led fairly shortly to motorized vehicles that could carry a person around the countryside without the need to build a railroad. By the late 20th Century, automobiles featured in ads for employment: "must have own transportation," "Reliable transportation a must," and so on. These were not high level jobs, either. The regular grunts were expected to own a car. We went from having a workforce on foot to a workforce using mass transit to a workforce swarming around like the Dunkirk evacuation fleet, only doing it every morning and evening, five or six days a week, year after year.

The needs of mass production slow the pace of change slightly, but the pressures of marketing accelerate it. Bike manufacturers seem to be keeping production runs really low in spite of access to the lower costs in Asia. They know that the pool of people with the wherewithal to buy their trinkets is shrinking, and that within an economic sector not everyone will want to play with those toys. Sell-through is easier if you accept that some customers will miss out. It still frees up each company to pump out a newer and better model about every ten months. This is like dumping piles of old doughnuts out in the woods to attract bears, or putting out apples and a salt lick to be "nice" to the deer. Bait 'em in and pick 'em off. Regulations from state to state may require some variations on the theme to meet strict legality, but the underlying motive to create habits in the prey that make hunting them easier is always the same. Have you seen the latest issue of Bicycling!!?!?!

One sales rep we had in the 1990s listened to me griping and said, "You sound like a consumer!" That's it right there: Industry versus customers. He wasn't facing customers every day, getting chewed on for the shortcomings of the latest mechanical marvel. Indeed, from the very early 1990s to the end of the decade I saw a serious gap open up between the manufacturers and distributors, and the front line retailers. Reps who were friendly and available at the start of the decade disappeared, replaced by increasingly numbers-driven salesmen looking for as big an order as they could write, with as little feedback as possible. We weren't insiders anymore. We became the first rank of suckers. Don't talk back. No one cares. Better minds than you have already decided what will be best for several years in advance.

The vast majority of customers these days do not complain, but I don't think it's because they are satisfied. Maybe they don't know what to ask. Maybe they don't ride enough to break anything. Maybe they don't care enough about function to take issue with something that works haphazardly. Maybe all the years of dealing with tech support for just about everything have finally beaten consumers down to the point where they don't even bother to try.

As someone who has devoted a lifetime to educating people about human powered transportation and environmental issues and the connection between economy, ecology, and quality of life, I can tell you, it's hopeless. Should I have figured this out 40 years ago and gone straight for as big a pile of money as I could amass? Too late now. What I hoped would bear fruit in a couple of decades looks like it might bring about some improvement in two or three generations. Or not. C'est la vie. We still seem to be uncovering deeper and deeper layers of problems even in areas where we seemed to have made considerable progress as of the late 1970s. Are we really going backwards, or simply finding out that we hadn't come forward in the first place?

The best you can do is try to be trustworthy. Is it really all just a metaphorical food chain out there?

An Okay Shoe

Time once again for another glowing endorsement of a current cycling product.

Always on the lookout for a non-cleated cycling shoe that will fit into a toeclip, I ordered a pair from Specialized that looked promising.

The model is called Skitch. According to internet search results, skitch means "to hitch a ride by hanging onto a moving vehicle while riding a skateboard or roller skates. There was also reference to doing this in just your shoes while sliding on ice. Neither of these sound like they would last long, which is usually what happens to shoes that fit toeclips, too. The bike industry giveth, and the bike industry taketh away.

The curse of modern shoes is the cupsole. A big, beefy rand is an obvious impediment to riders trying to fit a shoe into the opening of a toe strap. Less obvious are the nearly ubiquitous cupsoles on shoes that in other respects appear tapered and smooth, without aggressive tread, or bulky straps built into the upper.

A veteran toeclip rider gets used to the feeling of the strap contacting the sides of the foot right above the sole of the shoe in just the right spot behind the wide part of the foot. Toe strap is a bit of a misnomer, because you want it well back from your toes. Even a low-profile cupsole interrupts this contact, making the rider -- this rider anyway -- feel isolated from the pedal, and insecure. The strap may indeed be holding the foot in place, but without the feedback of the strap it becomes impossible to judge how firmly the foot is held, and how much one can trust it in a snappy maneuver.

Only a cleat provides maximum power and control. When I'm wearing a touring shoe I have already decided that the versatility of a walkable sole and the less frantic pace of a tour justify the less secure attachment. But I keep the straps for a reason: if I need a little more power or control than a flat pedal would provide, I have it. It's an intermediate step between the total commitment of any cleated system and the complete anarchy of a flat pedal.

As kids we never thought about any of this. All of our bikes had the standard rubber block pedals. When we had to accelerate, we stood up and pumped. When we had to climb a steep hill, we stood up and pumped. When we'd outgrown our bikes and hadn't gotten a new one that fit, we stood up all the time. For that matter, stuck onto a tall, gangly steed that we were supposed to "grow into," we had to stand because we were straddling the bar. The seat was a summit we could not yet reach. But when you know better, you want better.

Nice features of the Skitch include laces, a fairly tapered toe, and a waterproof toe cap which seems like it should also serve as a built-in toe warmer -- you know, those neoprene thingies that you stretch over the toe of a cycling shoe in cool but not super cold weather. It's very comfortable, with a cork insole. Fit is tricky, since a touring shoe should fit a bit more generously than a full-on performance cycling shoe. Here is another place where the cupsole messes up the total effect, by making the front of the shoe about a quarter of a size larger outside than it is inside. You have to stuff that into the clip to get far enough for the strap to go around the sweet zone.

I envision using this shoe for winter commuting. The North Face Snow Sneakers that I've been using are seven years old, and they were never very stiff. My winter commutes tend to be park-and-rides on dirt roads and the local unpaved rail trail. The route is all downhill in the morning, so shoe stiffness isn't too critical, but all uphill at night. Tired already from a day of work, I hate to feel like I'm losing what little power I have to a squishy, bouncy shoe. But the Snow Sneakers aren't too bad. They're definitely nice and warm without being oppressive. And they have excellent off-bike traction without having a super aggressive tread. They are apparently still available. At $110 retail, I would be reluctant to thrash them through slushy trails. Because I work in a shop, I didn't pay retail. Because I've been a low-level wage grunt all my life (oops), I can't imagine having enough income to consider $110 disposable.

At least the new shoes might let me save my nice Diadora touring shoes for fun rides in nicer weather. The Diadoras were marketed as spinning shoes, so they're shaped for athletic use. I trimmed the front strap so it fits into the pedal more easily.

Years ago, my late friend Bill recommended Winwood extra large toe clips as the best at accommodating big shoes. I ordered three sets. I could use a fourth now, and they're no longer made. I've ordered a possible contender made by All City to replace the non-Winwood ones on my off-road commuter.

The problem is not so much clip depth as the amount that it comes back over the instep. It has to reach the sweet range. The new clips accommodate double straps. When I ran double straps for a while in the early 1980s, we took one set out through the holes in the rear plate of the pedal cage and the other set through the normal routing. That really held the foot, but the rear strap could cut in painfully. One strap is enough for most uses, as long as it is in the right place for your particular foot size and shape.

I've only taken one ride on the new shoes. I will post updates if anything about them surprises me.

Fixing the unfixable

As I was picking congealed grease out of a Shimano Rapidfire shifter pod dating from about 1991,

I actually appreciated how solidly it was made, and how reliably it worked compared to its temperamental descendants. Early versions of a product, even one with lots of conceptual flaws, will be made much better than later versions, because the promoter doesn't want it to self destruct before establishing itself among the uninformed as a solid product. Only then do the manufacturers start watering it down to increase profits.

I hated the underlying concept, and still do. Shimano announced Rapidfire in a triumphant video that they sent out to shops before the 1990 season. We watched our copy in horror, anticipating in full detail the hell that it would unleash on mechanics and riders. We could do nothing to stop it, despite my best subversive efforts. It included the admonition that there was nothing we could fix inside these pods, so don't even try. Word in the cycling press was that intrepid mechanics had disassembled brand new units and reassembled them exactly as they had been, and they mysteriously failed to function. Whether this was true or was disinformation planted by Shimano I never found out. It implied that there was some magic Shinto pixie dust inside these units that would fall out if barbarians profaned the interior.

I plastered these cartoons all over Interbike's Philadelphia show for a couple of years:

It was, of course, to no avail. The technofascists won, leading the technolemmings off of cliff after cliff. But I digress.

The 1991 pod clicks solidly into gear as soon as you flush out the pus that they used for grease. It congeals into a substance we call earwax. My colleague Ralph came up with that one. He was an excellent wrench who was smart enough to get out of the business. It's been bad for his waistline, but probably good for his bottom line, to pursue his interest in computers instead of the 19th Century technology of the bicycle, dolled up with 21st Century materials as it is today.

When hackers and their malware finally make the Internet untenable, bicycles will be waiting to receive the refugees of the Digital Age.

Back to the pod from '91: it felt weird to have so few clicks. I've had to clean out many later versions, chasing more gears, so an original six-speed feels very short. But the wider spacing with fewer stops provides more margin for error. Cable tension has to be relatively accurate, but not neurosurgically precise.

Within a couple of years, the Japanese Buggernaut had enclosed the pods more completely and nearly doubled the number of parts inside. This made them less vulnerable to invading grit and mud, and generally more reliable. It also concealed the insidious activities of earwax under a Darth Vader-like black mask.

In the 1990s, the bike industry, led by Shimano, used the customers mercilessly as test pilots. You might expect such shenanigans from small companies making boutique componentry, but you saw more of it from the big players with lots of leverage. You see it today as manufacturers hump their customers in vulnerable "enthusiast" categories with model year changes intended to make addicts want another hit. There are no white hats in the big componentry business. With the coming of the Electrical Age, batteries are all the rage in everything one might electrify.

Honestly, how did any of us survive the 1970s and '80s on the paleolithic crap we had to ride? In his book, Four Against the Arctic, author David Roberts told the story of four Russian hunters in the 18th Century who survived on an island near Svalbard for six years before being rescued. He and other members of his research team observed that people from a later time, less inured to routine hardship, probably would not have survived. Indeed, look how many perished on Arctic exploration trips when their technological cocoon ripped, dumping them into the elements where Inuit survived and thrived.

We're not Arctic explorers, but we are certainly allowing ourselves to be increasingly isolated and softened by accepting more and more technological intermediaries between us and the realities of the tasks we choose to tackle. Some of these can enhance safety and functionality, but an awful lot, particularly in cycling, pander to riders in search of marginal gains at more than marginal increases in cost, and drive perfectly functional older stuff underground.

Would I miss my outlaw bravado if the stuff I use was totally mainstream? Against what would I rebel in Biketopia, with beautiful routes and intermodal interfaces everywhere? Why don't we build it and find out?

Black Gloves

Before the last snowstorm, I actually managed to get out for a couple of rides. This gave me the first opportunity to try out the North Face Apex gloves I bought a couple of months ago to replace the North Face Windstopper gloves I was wearing out.

The Apex Glove

North Face offers a couple of models of wind-blocking fleece or softshell gloves, the Windwall and the Apex. The Windwall is similar to the old Windstopper Gore Tex glove, without the brand name Gore membrane. I had loved the Windstopper gloves, but the gripper sections sewn onto the palm and fingers would come loose over time. I reattached them when necessary. Eventually the material they're made of wears out so you can't sew it down anymore. The fleece material also wears. The membrane loses effectiveness. By the end of the useful life of a Windstopper glove you need glove liners whenever the air is more than moderately chilly.

The Apex gloves have a textured material bonded to the shell rather than pieces of grippy fabric sewn to the glove. I thought this might wear better than the sewn-on panels. Good in theory, but it doesn't grip very well on cold handlebar tape.

The Apex gloves definitely block wind incredibly well. Driving home after work the day I bought them, back around January, I stuck my hand out the car window at 50 miles per hour with an air temperature in the teens. The only effect I felt from the frigid wind was pressure. No chill. Ten out of ten for weather protection.

The things I don't like about the Apex glove are the poor grip provided by the texture pattern and the tightness of the gauntlet. The gloves are hard to pull on. I usually take a large. The overall fit of the large on me is good once I'm in it. But getting in there takes a lot more effort than pulling on the old Windstoppers. This is especially bothersome if I pull them off while I'm riding, to fiddle with something that needs more dexterity than the glove will allow, like my phone or camera. I will ordinarily do this riding no-hands without a second thought.

Getting the gloves off is no problem. Getting them on is not unmanageably difficult, just more trouble than the easygoing Windstoppers. It takes more fussing to get the jacket sleeves tucked into the gauntlets and all the drafts blocked before resuming speed.

As bike work picks up at the shop we're getting a few amenities in order for the coming season. Management delivered a nice box of black nitrile work gloves so the greasy grunts don't have to absorb quite as many lubes and solvents through our skin.

I've been doing this job for 24 years. Maybe this is too little too late. But at least it keeps me from grunging up my violin. As my colleague Big G observed from his own musical experience, "you don't want to clog up the brass windings on your guitar strings."

"I noticed last year that if I was eating fried chicken the tips of my fingers would end up cleaner than the rest of my hand," he said. We toyed with the idea of replacing the abrasive hand cleaner in the bathroom at work with some pieces of fried chicken. The gloves are a better solution.

I like how they look, too. They go with my customary easy-care black attire. A black shirt only gets darker the longer you wear it.

The nitrile gloves are loose enough and tough enough to remove and replace many times. They're not a single-use item. I won't know what to do with myself when my hands aren't scuzzy in bike season. But I guarantee I can get used to it.

Product Testing

Sometimes I get to test products for a local guy who runs a business torturing gear for companies that hire him to work out the bugs in prototypes or redesigns of existing products. Usually it's footwear.

Last week he gave me a pair of Converse All Stars. Apparently, Converse is changing the sole material in the venerable sneaker. As it happens, I need new shop shoes, so I jumped at the chance to get some for free.

GOD, they're uncomfortable.

This time I guess I'm testing for nothing. I won't use my ticket for free shoes after I turn in my test pair. After a day on my feet in these I'm actually eager to stuff my feet into my cycling shoes. I'll meet my obligation to beat these to death, but it feels like work.

I can't complain. Last year I got a really nice pair of waders. I use them for river testing. I've also gotten a couple of pairs of slip-on indoor-outdoor shoes. And occasionally a prototype fails, like when I stepped on a measly little twig and it pierced right through the sole of a pair of hiking sneakers. Those got called back immediately. Too bad. They were comfortable and good-looking. I never got to see the improved version.