Welcome to The Bicycle Industry, the place where no good idea goes unpunished. Where the status quo is sacrosanct, and changes are no good.

At least that’s the way it seems to me sometimes. Case in point: Wes Williams had to resort to running around Inertbike in a cowboy costume, snapping a pair of cap guns in the air, just to get The Industry to pay attention to his “bigger is better” philosophy for mountain bike wheels. Finally, after much weeping and gnashing of teeth, the so-called 29″ mountain bike is here – dare I say – to stay.

Now it appears that the nay-sayers have set their sights on the 650B mountain bike wheel. The blogs and forums are already polluted with the usual hackneyed recidivism: “choices are confusing,” or “it’s just marketing hype,” or “no real advantages.” The same shopworn clichés that the Sayers of Nay chorused in response to suspension forks “oversized” headsets, and indexed shifting.

Just for once, could we please allow the innovators to innovate? Could the folks who say it can’t be done kindly step out of the way of the folks who are making it happen? Or at least – and here’s a novel idea – could we try out an idea before we pass judgment on it? Just a thought.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 25th, 2007 at 7:10 am and is filed under Brain Farts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.