Anti theft seat...

That's a pain in the ass.

very beautiful, all of it. The territory around 3:45, that's my backyard (a one hour radius of my backyard, though some of those trees are actually in my backyard). Anyone who visits me, I'd be happy to tour that area with you. It's some of the greenest, most majestic scenery I've ever experienced.

Excellent landscapes.

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And WTH is going on with that seat?

And why is the kickstand hefty enough to lean the Space Shuttle on?

City rental bikes are designed to fit in a locking dispenser rack so that's what the weird bracket thing is. And they are designed to be ugly and weird so that they have no value if stolen. Also, the parts will fit no other type of bike on the planet.

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Thank you, sirs.

The inch has gotten massively into Mountain Biking, last year for his birthday he got a cheap department store Schwinn with some money he earned and gifts from family. At first I forgot who I was dealing with (a 12 year old) and tried to talk him into buying a better (used) bike. He had his heart set on the
Schwinn and I eventually realized I was being a colossal buzzkill and what was important was that he loved this bike. So I zipped it and shared in his revelry.

This year we've gone on three rides together so far. It is tough because the mm "hates mountain biking" and the single parent thing creates complications that I'll skip explaining.

I'm trying to set up playdates to keep her busy so the inch and I can go for rides. Today she spent the day with grandma so the inch and I were able to go to this place that he's been telling me about for two weeks, after he went there with a friend.

Again, being relatively obtuse, I didn't realize how much he was looking forward to sharing the experience with me, I thought he just wanted to go biking. Despite some near disasters; we had to repair his shocks and couldn't get them back together because the bastard bolt wouldn't catch the threads. Success after an hour at 7 pm; his front tire got destroyed when his bike fell off his mom's car and the rim was sorely tweaked. I ended up clamping it in my vice and bending it back into shapish shape. Trued it as best as I could; we went to the bike shop - a little too high end - they don't really carry 26" tires these days, but they could order them. "Well... we're heading out to a ride and we have no tire at all..." The dude at the shop was so awesome, he found a tire that they had mounted on a rim as a repair that the owner never picked up and just gave it to us.

So we made it to the trails, me on my 1984 Ross Mount Rainier, and him on his Schwinn Ranger. First of all, the trails blew my fucking mind. They were so well laid out and designed. It has been decades since I did any real mountain biking and the intermediate trails tested my reaction time and balance mostly. I also need to adjust to riding with glasses. I did not have them and realized that was a handicap.

When I rode there were no trails laid out like this, we just bushwhacked and made our own trails, following deer paths in the woods, hiking trails, dry river beds. (Old school technical) So this was a real treat to have somthing well groomed with a great mix of twists and turns, climbs and descents, rocks and trees and so on.

It was also about ten thousand degrees and eleventy five percent humidity. NO HEART ATTACK TODAY! W00T

But, in the bike shop I felt like Rip Van Winkle; I didn't even recognize the bikes as bikes. First, they are fucking HUGE. The tires are 27.5 and super bloated, the H Bars are about a yard wide, everything has disc brakes, there isn't a round tube anywhere in the shop, and everything has front shocks, and the choice is 'hard tail' or 'soft tail'.

I grilled the salesman for a half hour about the rationale behind all the changes. (We did not get into electronic shifting, I kept it at tube shape, H-Bars, disc brakes and the pros and cons of rear suspension.)

One thing I noticed about this trail system is that it was designed for today's bikes. There were a number of parts where a soft tail would have allowed me to bomb down the trail much faster (assuming I could react quickly enough) As it was I was able to negotiate it by not sitting down much and letting the bike move under me while I acted as the shocks. What we used to do with varying degrees of success.

I need to get up to speed with the world of bikes and I'm hoping Griff, you might be able to shed some light on the industry.

More specific questions will be forthcoming if you'd be willing to answer.

In the meantime, for budget reasons, I'm sticking with my vintage mountain bike.

I'm happy to answer any questions you have. I've ridden through the changes. A buddy got stuck with a modern FS (full suspension) that does not fit him by purchasing online from a lying sack o shit outfit that rhymes with liceloint but the other guy I ride with bought from the same and made out great. The cool part is the FS bike fits me so I test drove a modern high end bike last weekend. My takeaway is that disc brakes, which I don't have on my older bikes are amazing. You can make a lot more mistakes and get away with it on the modern FS bikes. They go through stuff we usually hop over. I still love the hardtail for climbing though and all that fancy gear is pricey to replace when you break it. My two rideable bikes are a full XT 1999 Rocky Mountain Race soft tail and a mid 2000's parts bin GT Avalanche hardtail. Those FS bikes are very forgiving for middle-aged riders. Both my riding partners at I think 54 and 56 recently went modern FS.

Get out of my head!

Seriously, I just went through this exact same thing. Except my son wanted a road bike. He had it all researched and was pointing to what I assumed was a POS Chinese bike from Walmart. I steered him to a local non-profit bike shop that teaches at risk teens how to tune up vintage bikes and then sell them. The non-profit vintage place had a lot of decent old high end bikes, that started at around $200-$250 and his budget was more like $150-$200. Plus they only had womens' bikes there that might fit him.

So he gave me the $169 cash and I bought him a bike from Walmart.com.

It's actually amazingly good for the price. But it's just like you say, the aluminum frame isn't round in cross section. All sorts of weird shapes. And everything is 700CC now, not 26".

Anyway, he fucking loves it. And it feels like it's decent quality. Shimano components. Shifts nicely. Brakes work well. Made by GMC, but GMC, if you read the box, is Shanghai General Sports Co., Ltd.
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It's interesting, because I was trying to figure out just WTF GMC bikes is. I had seen this GMC bike referred to as a Kent in other locations. The deal is that Kent bikes sells bikes under its own name, and also licenses the names of Jeep, GMC, Razor, Cadillac, and Little Miss Match. They import their bikes from all over the world, but many of them come from China, produced by Shanghai General Sports Co., Ltd.

Yeah, 27 got replaced by 700c back in the nineties on road bikes plus a smaller 650C? size for women's bikes. It became a pain to get 27 tires but when I bought my last touring bike I switched over. Mountain bikes are in upheaval right now wheel wise. 26 was the standard, then they pushed 29s, then 27.5 (650B), and some super wide stuff. They seem to want to maintain them all at this point but I have noticed a reduction in choice for 26". Mountain bikes always seem to be rushing to the next great thing hence my stash of old XT parts. I can't begin to predict if any standard will emerge.

Have you tried one of the fat tire bikes? They look like they would bounce over any little bumps but would be a little soft in the turns.

My touring bike has 27" wheels and my racing bike has 700c tubular rims. I build my own wheels and even after 10K miles on them they are in great shape, I can't really bear to just change them out just because they are out of fashion.

Fashion and consumerism seem to be driving everything these days. I remember in the early 80s that most bikes hadn't had any significant changes in a couple of decades. Shimano led the charge, I believe, when they began changing their components every year; a cable anchor bolt from a 1984 rear derailleur would not fit on a 1985 rear derailleur. Shitty little things like that drove people to need an entire new derailleur when shops couldn't or didn't want to stock 97,000 different bolts, washers, nuts, pulleys, bushings, etc. Parts sales went up, repair revenues went down. Designs and styles also changed, but in terms of actual improvements there were few genuine improvements and a lot of different way to do the same thing.

Which leads me to many of my questions about the changes in today's bikes.

I have to go right now, but I'll continue when I return.