smd4

Who's doing the assuming? You assumed I was talking about you and your weight, when I never even mentioned you.

smd4

Obviously.

Eric F 

Who said that? You previously commented about being ridiculed in a bike shop about your brakes, and then stated that the same would happen at any bike shop. Big John, Koyote, and badger1 said that they have not had that happen to them. Sounds to me like people just sharing their experiences. I don't see where anyone said that your experience didn't happen, only that they haven't had the same experience you did.

The one comment I got was by an ignorant kid out on the trail. I've gotten a lot more positive comments from people, especially those who used to ride a similar bike in years past.

tomato coupe

According to the rules of the internet, if one person does something, it follows logically that everybody is doing it all the time.

Eric F 

It's an easy assumption to make when you make this comment...
...immediately below your quote of elcruxio's post mentioning having to stop 400lbs. The implication that you're talking about his weight is not vague.

79pmooney

The playground arguments continue.

One of my criteria for brakes is how much control do I have when I suddenly see I need to be going 15 mph slower than I am going. Example - coming down from McKenzie Pass to Sisters, OR. The first several miles had been fast, fun sweeping turns and not an issue on my 42-13 geared fix gear. Then I came to a much sharper turn right after the road dropped so I saw no advance warning. No way were my pedals clearing. I grabbed both brakes and squeezed. Hard! Full on adrenaline.

I had absolutely no time to think about doing that braking gracefully or carefully. Now this was first spring on my avatar bike that I had equipped with nice Shimano dual pivots, KoolStops and some levers with really big, comfortable, super climbing hoods/handles. Figured out as I was installing them and seeing the odd cable routing that they must be V-brake levers. Hmmph. Well I went with them anyway. Got used to the new feel; much less lever travel but the force modulation was excellent although braking from the hoods was less effective. (That was never my go to in situations where hard stopping might be needed,.)

Well, that additional required braking power? Bailed me out! Bike just slowed very fast with no skidding, no wheel hop. In fact with nothing exciting happening at all. And I went around that corner with pedal clearance to spare. Boring. Since then I have put V-brake levers on my namesake Mooney with its excellent cantis and my best geared bike with its dual pivots. Both bikes that have seen big time descents. And wow! do I love those brakes going down paved roads I've never seen before. My two city bikes stay regular levers for their Mafacs for their wet weather stopping (and Mafacs were always very predictable hard stoppers with enough "squish" to haunt anyone who fears cable stretch). I use regular levers on my two setups with old-school (but pretty decent) sidepulls. (Short reach Superbe and very short reach Cyclone.)

Trakhak

Paraphrasing Kris Kristofferson's character's retort to a record company executive in some movie:

"You don't have 10 years of experience. You've had one year of experience 10 times."

Dave Mayer

Many newish road bikers seem to feel that they 'need' discs because that is what they grew up with on mountain bikes. One mountain bikes - fair enough, as you are riding over head-sized rocks and through axle-deep mud at high speeds down 30 degree slopes. You need powerful brakes and fat tires. You also need a dropper post and sloping top tube so you don't hurt your 'parts'.

But on a road bike, these things are just inappropriate ballast that make the bike heavy and dead-feeling. On a go-fast road bike, your #1 objective is to not to get popped off of the back coming out of a corner or up a hill. So you want as light as possible, particularly low rotating mass (wheels). Discs and 30mm tires don't cut it.

And the other main objective is to not show up at the ride start on a disc-brake bike, and have your tough-as-nails pals (who are rich and retired and log 300 days of on-saddle suffering per year) look down at your $10,000 bike and sarcastically comment: "are we going mountain biking, son?". No excuses for poor judgement here.

Koyote

You seem awfully sensitive to other people's opinions of you...Especially surprising since your riding "pals" sounds like dicks.

tomato coupe

You might want to do a little math and calculate the amount that disc rotors increase the moment of inertia of a set of wheels. (Hint: it's insignificant.)

Your friend must have really hit a nerve with that incident, as you've mentioned it twice in this thread. If you can't laugh it off, you've got bigger problems.

genejockey 

Every time I read your posts, I get this "Old Man Yells At Cloud" feeling.

Eric F 

Keep going, man. You almost have yourself convinced!

spelger

you're the second person to say that about hydraulics, on/off, no in between. now i've never ridden disk brakes so no experience there...but...my car has hydraulic disk (and drum) brakes and i can certainly feel the difference based on how hard i press. so what makes a bike system so different other than size?

genejockey 

I am constantly amazed by how many posts on BF boil down to "Any technological innovations in bicycles after (insert year) are useless frippery and anyone who spends money on them 1) is a pawn of Big Bike or 2) thinks they're a pro, while by contrast I don't often see posts that say "Any bicycle without the latest technological innovations is a useless toy and anyone who owns such is not A Serious Cyclist".

Why do you suppose that is?

genejockey 

(Pssst! It isn't! Hydraulic disc brakes on bikes are definitely not "on/off, no in between".) Perhaps the people saying it lack fine motor control?

tomato coupe

Hydraulic disk brakes might seem "on/off" the first few times you squeeze the brake lever, but that feeling disappears once you get adjusted to the lower required hand pressure. (When you go back to rim brakes, the first few times you squeeze the brake lever it seems like your brakes aren't working, until you re-adjust to that hand pressure.)

Koyote

And yet, you see plenty of posts from people claiming that they (or often their friends) have been told that "Any bicycle without the latest technological innovations is a useless toy and anyone who owns such is not A Serious Cyclist."

I mean, shoot, given that most of us are far more rude on the internet than in real life, I question whether this is the lone topic in which that equation is flipped.

Eric F 

My rides alternate randomly between a road bike with caliper brakes, a gravel bike with disc brakes, a MTB with disc brakes, and a MTB with v-brakes. The time it takes to adapt to the different brake feels is less than it took you to read this sentence. Way less.

genejockey 

The comments I've gotten on the road when riding any of my older bikes are uniformly favorable. Other riders either ignore or admire the bikes. I've never had anyone say anything negative.

Mind you, I only ever got one negative comment while riding a modern CF/disc bike, and that was from some guy on an old Kestrel whom I'd dropped twice (he caught up at traffic lights), whose comment suggested he thought I was on an e-bike. So I dropped him again, for good and all.

genejockey 

Same here, right about the first stop sign.

Koyote

Yup. The only bikes that draw my interest and comments tend to be older and/or lugged steel. The few times I've seen a Rivendell in the wild, I've almost drooled. Told one guy that his Riv was the prettiest bike I'd ever seen.

Schweinhund

You are mistaken. The only thing I hold in high reguard is his intelligence. Other than that, I don't know him. He is a smart person, and that can't be faked.
He's an azzhole, but so am I. How do I hold that against him?
You on the other hand, are arrogant. Arrogance is not seen as intelligence, rather the lack thereof.

Rolla

Same here. The latest carbon wonderbike is actually pretty boring to me, but a classic lugged Italian road frame can stop me in my tracks. I think I just like visible craftsmanship, which TIG'd or carbon frames often lack.

Schweinhund

Well, color me fooled then. But, I'm not the one making generalizations here. Hum?

veganbikes

Older bikes can be quite a bit more interesting, then "wow you have an aero frame that looks like the other aero frames so cool". I have had a few customers who had some really interesting stuff either full vintage or with some interesting vintage parts come through and they were excited because I recognized what they had and other shops brushed them off or told them to get something new. It is really a shame that people brushed off a cool mixte modern mixte (i think made by Brian Chapman) with some vintage T.A. cranks and Simplex derailleur or that Girvin ProFlex or vintage steel MTB with full Deore Deerhead which by today's standards look like a wally-mart huffy but is actually a top end mountain bike who's maker I cannot remember.