I Sing The Shifter Electrical

A few months in the past, I put in a brand new Shimano 105 R7000 drivetrain on my Milwaukee:

In so doing, I preserved in amber (although technically the bike’s colour is copper) the final “reputable*” mechanical rim brake highway bike drivetrain providing from Shimano.

*[The first thing all novices learn is that you need to have at least 105, if not Ultegra or Dura-Ace, even though it’s completely untrue.]

Fortunately, skilled girls cyclists not need to undergo this similar indignity:

As an alternative, they now have entry to the identical crap their male counterparts are utilizing:

I’m sorry, rim brakes and mechanical groupsets arre not “designed for the pains of an expert racing season?” Actually???

However that is?

Wonderful, I had precisely the identical downside with the Clem final weekend:

[Photo: Dan Leto]

Simply kidding!

Right here’s Dan, by the way in which:

[Photo: Tanley Tenovo]

He’s sitting as a result of the battery on his e-Silver digital friction shifter died:

[Rivendell e-Silver Shifter: no indexing, all electric]

Oh yeah, you didn’t know I used to be on the market to check the newest Rivendell digital stuff?**

You’ll learn all about it on Escape Collective quickly.

**[I shouldn’t even have to say it, but obviously this is not true…though I do expect something similar from Growtac at any moment. It’s perfect for their growing line of needlessly complicated shifters.]

Come to consider it, I had a motorbike with digital shifting for a short time…

…and whereas I admit I by no means had any actual issues with it, each time I eliminated the rear wheel the skewer nut would catch the rear derailleur’s energy cable and unplug it, which I’d by no means discover till I began using once more and tried to shift.

Luckily, the bicycle business has since addressed this by casting off the completely dependable and wildly handy fast launch skewer and changing it with a big bolt:

Drawback solved.

And sure, wi-fi additionally solves this, identical to it would clear up the internally-routed cable downside when wi-fi brakes lastly hit the market:

Granted, this text is sort of a yr now, however the query isn’t if wi-fi brakes are coming, the query is what sort of footwear will roadies and mountain bike bros select to put on when it lastly does to allow them to most successfully run over their very own moms as they run out to purchase it?

And in case you’re fearful about wi-fi brakes, you shouldn’t be, as a result of they’re already in use on automobiles and planes, duh:

Planes??? Wright Brothers apart, what the hell do planes need to do with bikes? You understand what else is in use on planes? Vacuum bogs and passive-aggressive flight attendants.

Clearly we must always use these on our bikes too.

Lastly, I’m reluctant to share this story as a result of it’s so terrible, however a lady was brutally attacked for her e-bike on Randall’s Island:

Curmudgeonly kvetching about rider habits is one factor, however violent theft is the actual ugly facet of the e-bike explosion.