Today and Only Today – No News

Bike Rumor kindly confirmed the validity of an email I received earlier in the day from NINER BIKES.

I looked at the pictures.
Skimmed for text.
Full (news) letter Here (it’s a long one).

The new SIR 9 caught most of (their) headlines;

• Oversized head tube; allowing for new headset options and tapered forks.
• Modified Reynolds down tube; increasing fork clearance and decreasing stresses at that new head tube.
• Addition of a thru (m)axle dropout.
• Revised brake bosses; direct, chain stay, post mount.
• They (intentionally) refer to themselves as NINERDS.
• The Bio-Centric EBB has been updated; two screws share the load reducing the potential for unintentional rotation (not stated).
• Red is now, TAMALE.

I absorbed it.
In truth, probably only the first page.
But what I did, had an impact.
It made me feel a little nostalgic.

Not about the baser joys of cycling or the bikes of my youth or the triviality of re-re-designing a flawed component instead of shitcanning it or that simpler time when the colour red was just the colour red and not an excuse to write a newsletter or whore up to multinational criminals…

I thought on Taipei Cycle 2011, the estimations and predictions I subsequently rejected in favour of (continued) universality…

• integrated headsets
• tapered forks
• press-fit bottom brackets
• hydro-formed tubes

I thought on the diSSent FE, the times and monies spent…

• true north
• true temper
• columbus
• reynolds

That’s when things took a turn.
A little became a lot.

And I decided that I hate.  HATE HATE HATE nostalgia.

Nostalgia is like a history text, in your mind.
But.
Instead of boring white guys and a bunch of dates, it’s all shit that happened to you (a long time ago) remembered through a thick fog of tears and humiliation.

Particularly the kind of nostalgia that stems from the distorted memories of a serial fabricationist.
Such as myself.

It is unpossible for me to consider (thereby appreciate) the ACTUAL decisions I made within the context of the ACTUAL time I made them.

So.

Sometimes, when I read something like the SIR9 article, it’s hard not to be overwhelmed by a desire to reconsider previous considerations;

Was it a mistake to intentionally IGNORE the (industry’s) latest (arguably superior) in the assumption that a a diSSent isn’t the majorities PRIMARY purchase, that they want to do so on the CHEAP…

Was it a mistake to intentionally PURSUE a project while your gut screamed RUN AWAY simply because the (vocal) majority says they MIGHT buy it…

Unwilling to assume ownership or any definitive alteration of either, I simply went about my day.

Sharpening box cutters, measuring rolls of packing tape and reviewing quotes for 3D machining.

Now.

Like that.

I’m over it.

Fat ladies and all.