On Jan 18, 2009, at 9:10 PM, Andrew Karre wrote:
> I think the next big contribution BQ could make to the cycling > discourse is to delve into the "local" aspects of frame and bicycle > design. I don't have any experience or evidence to back this up, but > might it be the case that the terrain for which Singer, Herse, et. al. > were designing their bikes was more homogeneous than what the BQ > readership encounters? Correct me if I'm wrong. I know France has > diverse weather, roads, and topography, but did the constructeurs' > designs and the routes of the tech trials reflect this? Jan has alluded to the constructeurs building bikes that were adapted to the terrain where they lived. Jo Routen designed bikes a bit differently than Singer/Herse; he lived near Grenoble IIRC and did lots of riding in the Alps, in many cases before there were paved roads. The Technical Trials seemed to have usually taken place in the Alps, though, so there was probably some tendency to push design towards being suitable for riding in the mountains. > For my part, I read every BQ article with great fascination, but when > Jan talks cornering performance, for instance, it just doesn't have a > lot of resonance for me as a brevet rider in Minnesota, where the > majority of corners are flat 90s amongst corn fields (Tim's evil > Wisconsin route excepted). Hey! :-) OK, you're right, that route was a bit evil. Great prep for BMB or PBP, though. > I commute by bike year > round in the Twin Cities so I think I have some authority on this, > given our 120 degree temperature range, and I can say I have never > learned anything useful about winter riding from Grant or Jan. My > point isn't that their advice is bad--not at all; it's quite good, I > imagine. It just doesn't scale to Minnesota conditions, just as our > choices don't make any sense in the Southwest, etc (where they must > wonder why we're all so obsessed with good fenders). And our approach wouldn't scale all that well to Alaska, I suspect. And while north of us in terms of latitude, Copenhageners dress quite differently than most Twin Citians: http://www.copenhagencyclechic.com/ > It seems to me like frame building and bicycle design should be > encouraged to evolve regionally--not just out of a desire to support > the home team, but out of a desire to ride truly optimized bicycles. > This is exactly what doesn't happen with mass produced bicycles (all > bikes are optimized for crits or the Tour or both), so BQ would be > increasing its already good works by taking on this issue. I think that custom frame builders probably do this already, to an extent at least, but of course large manufacturers like Trek aren't going to. Economies of scale- one of the fundamental principles of supply side economics- is counter to local specialization. Chris Kvale and Curt Goodrich seem to design bikes differently than Tom Ritchey or Grant, for example. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
