Back in the day when I was slingin wrenches at Country Roads Bicycles in Plymouth, Indiana, we had to deal with a bunch of BMX brats. These kids would come in and say one of three things.

“what do you have for a dollar?”
“where are your pegs?”
“can I see the Profile cranks?”

Usually a kid would progress through these questions in rapid succession, shortly after his first bike. Get the kid a bike for Christmas and he’s hooked. He’s barely ridden the thing, but he wants accessories and he wants to make the thing better. The first two questions stem from his low budget, for which I had a mild hatred. As a shop rat, I simply didn’t want to show the $9 pegs to someone who’d reveal he only had $3 in his hands. A simple waste of time…

So it took me a while to figure out this third question… why were these Profile cranks the object of every kids’ desire? As a mountain biker, I simply didn’t get it. My square taper cranks worked just fine, and so did his one-piece cranks. They seemed like a pain to remove, and they cost nearly $300–more than the purcahse price of every bike we ever installed them on, and we only installed one set in my four years!

Was it that the Profiles were just shiny and showy? Did they act as a secret handshake to allow access to bigger and badder jumps? When I inquired, all I got was, “dude, it’s 3-piece.”

And all I could think was, “yeah, and my square taper is 3-piece as well, but they’re surely not $300.”

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Fast forward 12 years
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Mountain bikes have seen innovation. We saw boutique builders offer CNC machined cranksets for $500. And we’ve gone from a square taper bottom bracket to ISIS spline bottom bracket, and now external bottom bracket.

No matter what anyone tells you, including the reviews I’ve written and edited, these cranksets are not what we say they are.

From the year 2001-2006, I wrote reviews on two ISIS cranksets and two external bottom bracket cranksets. Each review was fairly uncritical of the technology. Each review took roughly three months of testing, plus another month of writing and internal peer reviewing to prepare for publishing. And only until after each review was published did the true issues present themselves.

ISIS doesn’t last long. Well, sort of. I’ve had luck with a few bottom brackets, but it seems that it’s luck of the draw and how abusive a rider is on the component. But for the most part, ISIS is plagued with a short lifespan.

External has issues too. The bearing life, for the most part, is not as poor as ISIS, but it’s certainly not as long as square taper. The big issue with external bottom brackets (EBB) isn’t that they don’t last long, it’s that they don’t spin freely. Go ahead… try it… take off the chain and try to spin that crankset. If you don’t get at least four revolutions out with a good hand-spin, your bearings are too tight.

The only manufacturers I know of to address this problem are Shimano and Cannondale.

Shimano’s new FC-M970 offers a bearing compression adjustment, and Cannondale offers the SI BB30 with press-in bearings on a few of their bikes like the Team Rush

But each of these products are ridiculously expensive… $600 for the XTR set-up, and Cannondale’s requires the purchase of a frame to match the crankset.

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Touché BMX
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All this makes me really think back to that Profile crankset.

It had press-in bearings.
It had an oversize shell (all BMX bikes are “overzize bb shells” in mountain bike terminology).
It was spline (ala Shimano).

It was durable as all hell–hHeavy (for mountain bike standards), but durable.
And it was half the price of what Shimano and Cannondale are offering now.

Sure makes these things seem like a freakin’ steal.
And it makes those kids not seem so stupid after all.

Out here in internet land, it frustrates me to see so many recommendations and endorsements for things that aren’t great. What’s even more frustrating as a journalist who gets paid to evaluate these same things is watching any schmoe on the street get offered the same gratuities, generosities and respect that I’ve worked so hard to establish.

What am I talking about? Blogs.

Sure, the power of the blog is great. But the power of the reader is greater. While a blogger has the power to publish anything he/she thinks of, the power of the reader is to know when and when not to pay attention.

Forgive me if i sound all high and mighty here, but I’m beginning to wonder what happened to our ability to reason. take this situation as an example:

You’re interested in a new suspension fork. You’ve read all the magazine reviews that say Company A is the best out there, hands down. But you’ve never used one, you don’t know what it’s like, and you really don’t have that kind of cash sitting around. It’d be great to get one just like it for about half the price. With some internet research, you come upon Company X. Their site says that the company’s staff consists of defectors from Company A who got tired of charging so much for forks. Their mission is to offer a similar product for half the price. Great!, you say. Sign me up. Then you get to thinking, “I’m a good consumer. I should research this thing first.” After a few more clicks, you come upon a link to a blog…. which includes a review of the fork by MTBlogger, who writes,

“Got a hold of Company X fork the other day. Man what a difference. There’s absolutely no need to spend $600 when you can have the same high-end fork as Company A for half the price. Don’t waste your cash– call up Company X today and get one for yourself.”

What’s your reaction? Believe MTBlogger and go pick one up for yourself? Or ask a few more questions like, “ever used Company A’s fork?” or “How many rides do you have on it?” or “What kind of trails do you ride?” or “How long have you been riding?”
A good Blogger would write back to you as soon as you post. You may find that MTBlogger is new to riding, has only owned one mountain bike that he got used from a friend, and this is the first sincere upgrade his bike has ever seen. Or you may find that MTBlogger is more of an armchair critic than anything, spending more time at the computer than on the trails.

Are people’s desires for recommendations outweighing their reason? Are we as consumers so hungry for answers that we’ve forgotten how to evaluate a source? Did we ever know how to in the beginning? Is the age of information becoming so muddied with dribble that we’ve neglected to actually interpret the information as we perceive it? Yes, yes and yes!

Don’t get me wrong… the web has great information, but 90% of it is crap. Stop wasting your time trying to separate the wheat from the chaffe. Find reliable sources. Stick to them. Support them. Pay attention to them. Ignore the rest.

Why is it that every time I build a wheel without the book by my side, I mess up and have to rebuild it?

My theory is that I read one book and stuck by it–Jobst Brandt’s The Bicycle Whee. That book was difficult for me to follow, and while I dug some of the theory stuff, it talked over me head at the time. I built about 6 or 8 wheels with that book by my side.

Then one day, someone told me about a “simpler, much simpler book.” I’ve come to know it as “the other wheelbuilding book,” as there are really only 2 books written on the subject. The Art of Wheelbuilding is another comprehensive look at building wheels, but in my opinion, offers and more clear and easy way to assemble a 3-cross spoked wheel.

It’s my theory that despite the Art of Wheelbuilding’s clear instructions, my background steeped in two schools of thought is so mixed and convoluted that it’s nearly impossible for me to get it right.

And after all this is said and done, I still couldn’t pass a wheelbuilder’s vocabulary test—what the hell is a pulling spoke?

So I was chatting with an old friend this morning. He’s back in town after a stint out west working on trails for our nation’s forest. After ranting about the half a trillion dollars spent on war that could’ve been spent on building the mountain biker’s dream—the most ridiculous, comprehensive, exhilerating trail system the world’s ever seen—we started talking about retail.

It’s been 6 years since I spent time in a shop and I’ve been considering going back to work at a shop one or two days a month. My motivation isn’t money, it’s to get back to the basics and to relearn what customers of today are really looking for. It seems that spending so much time making magazines has distanced me from the core users, the newbies and the shop rats.

We talked about his shop in particular and how disheartening it is to see so many customers coming in who seek the high end, but aren’t really using it. These people are spending $6K on a bike, but ride it maybe a couple times a month.

Is there anythng wrong with this?

I used to be offended by yuppies on expensive toys, but I’ve come to realize these people really are the bankroll of not just the bike industry, but the entire outdoor industry. Think carbon fiber frames hanging in garages and custom soled boots used on on a 5 mile hike and handcrafted skis that sit on the Audi. Not every high-end customer is like this, but it’s certainly quite a few.

And the low salary of the outdoor worker is somewhat understandable—the shop wrench isn’t out saving lives (well, by providing a safe and reliable product, he’s theoretically preventing injury or death—and the salesmen and the engineers behind the product are facilitating products that might extend a user’s life if paired with a healthy diet and consistent use… you get the point). He’s not like a heart surgeon whose livelihood is so valued by society that a $150K/yr. salary is justified.

And as we began to talk about the underpaid salaries of all outdoor industry people—the trailworkers, the shop salesmen, the engineers, the executives, the non-profiters, the journalists, the reps—I realized we’re all underpaid when compared to similar professions in other sectors. Why is this?

It seems that society doesn’t value what we’re doing— providing incentive to stay healthy, a fun bonding experience with friends and family, and creating environments for lifetimes of enoyment.

So what does society valu? Software engineers, Actors, Mainstream athletes, Middle managers, Drug Reps, Commodities Salespeople, Financial Planners and Managers, Automobile Marketing Firms? Yep. All these people make a ton more than the outdoor industry worker. And all these people help subsidize the outdoor industry. And somehow, we’ve allowed them to believe that whatever it is they do is more important than what we do.

And guess what? It’s exactly the opposite. We are doing a disservice to ourselves by allowing ourselves to be undervalued. Somehow we’ve allowed our passive society to take its grip on our livelihood, forcing us to lose our self-worth in the process. Somehow we’ve been conned into believing that a 2-hour movie for four (4 tix @ 12/ticket + popcorn and drinks = $80) or a night out drinking with friends ($100 among 4 is nothing!) is worth more than a year-long state park pass . We’ve allowed ourselves to get lost in manufactured experiences, and in this process, we’ve devalued our skillset to society as a whole.

We as the outdoor industry workrs of America need to take back the control. Good family bonding doesn’t happen at a passive basketball game or during a movie—it happens when you’re out on the trail trying to figure out where you are. It happens over trail mix at a scenic overlook after a hard-earned climb up the mountain. It happens in a city park chasing a dog that got off the leash, allowing you to explore and find new trails.

We know these expriences, the ones we facilitate and promote and enhance, are te truly valuable things in life. But how do we capitalize on them? How do we increase the worth of our skillset in the American mind?

That’s my question to you…