Maybe there should be a spoiler alert here - be advised that I will be discussing various aspects of the new book, so navigate away from this page if you prefer the content of the book to be a complete surprise.
I finished reading the book tonight, which if I can summarize in a line, is about all the good things about bikes that appear only when you toss racer prejudices and attitudes out the window and Just Ride. After the first few chapters, I thought that maybe the editors really sanitized GP's historically familiar against-the-grain opinions to be more blandly vanilla, hopefully to be appealing to a broader audience. The general content wasn't unpredictable to me, having read the Readers and Catalogs and most everything else Riv going back to 2004 when I wanted a touring bike and couldn't find any to buy except the Atlantis (that's how I first found Riv in the internet universe). But I was somewhat surprised that there was little to no discernible lug evangelism or quill stem absolutism or singing the praises of friction shifters, and the Retro-Grouchiness was held to a dull roar. But as I got further along in the book, I started to think that maybe Mr Petersen has simply mellowed about the trivial details over the years (I know I have!). Or maybe more accurately, there's less to be peeved about in the bike industry now than there was 10 years ago or even 5 years ago. After all, smart, sturdy bikes with ample tire clearance and useful braze-ons and some attention to classic, non-billboard aesthetics have become, dare I say, normal. If racing bikes and gear are the status quo in the world, then I must live in a lucky bubble in South Minneapolis where I ride and fix bikes every day, as I see lots of reincarnated 1980s sport-tourers, old steel MTBs, and new(ish) Surly Cross-checks and LHTs on a daily basis, but feel like I see relatively few "road bikes" being ridden by obvious faux-racers. To the extent that bike trends have steered toward the benefit of the "Unracer" over the past decade or so, my opinion is that Grant and Rivendell played a large part in it. This is not to say that all smart bike designs and product offerings are shameless Riv-ripoffs, but that Grant gave voice to a backlash movement and opened a long-neglected market to a lot of smart, creative people who maybe couldn't or wouldn't have done it without some pioneering coattails to ride on. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/rbw-owners-bunch/-/qRjJSQv8gPYJ. 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.
