I agree a Quickbeam is a fabulous commuter, in the right circumstance. I have to have some gears in my terrain, the varying weather, the seasonal ebb and flow of my riding stamina and the physical exhaustion of the day (or night) makes them a must. Not all of them get used by a long shot, but this is also the bike I ride on the roughest surfaces, going back to the rationalization of its purchase and selling off the hard tail MTB and permanently loaning my too-small XO-2 that I had been using before. My experience with the mech disk brakes is different than Jeremy's. For what I get in all-weather function, the wear issue is easily within expectations. Three sets of pads over seven years daily use. No more frozen rim brake pads when trying to stop the second time (anyone else had that thrill?). Maybe it's just my set up and use, but I have few complaints given that the bike was an experiment for disk brakes to start with. Last year at a local metric century which took every opportunity connect lowest to highest points in the three rivers, my friend and I were on the highest elevation facing a four mile downhill in absolutely pouring rain, he on his open wheel Richard Sachs CX with cantilevers, me on my fendered Rambouillet with Shimano double pivot side pulls. I was stunned by the comparison to my commuter's disks in such conditions. On a workday I have no choice if pouring such as that, I just go and never consider the higher weight of that bike as loaded or my expectation of the brakes will both modulate and stop. My calipers under those conditions were near uselessness, my friend wore through his front and back salmon pads in that one paved road descent despite no actual signs of useful friction either.
An ideal commuting bike is very much a product of the conditions in which it will be used and the shape that I am in when I ride it, expected variances in both being anticipated. Unlikely that anyone could dictate the design of a commuter precisely to the expectation of everyone. If it is your daily driver then you have a lot of time while riding to be thinking about what would be better about it. Most product managers would shrink from any findings from a focus group of n=1. Beauty of this list is that number is a bit larger but still of some cohesiveness, and even this audience would not be impressive to the MBA-types that get involved in product development once the sums at stake are beyond those of the founders/craftsmen/zealot visionaries. Andy Cheatham Pttsburgh -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
