Living in Colorado, one constantly comes face-to-face with the fact that the nature of things is as much timeless as it is temporary. Today is November 29*, and the temperature surely will reach the mid sixties. In three days, the temperature is not supposed to get out of the thirties. I put my snow tires on my car (in a panic) just a bit over a week ago, and now theres no snow to be seen either here in Colorado Springs, or where I live in the mountains at several thousand feet greater elevation. Of course, weather here is no more or less fickle than many places, but that doesnt change the fact that you cant ignore the weather. Had I not put on my snow tires when I did, there could easily have been a day I wouldnt have been able to make it the last half mile to my house, and if today I was wearing the clothing that I was the day that storm front moved through, Id certainly be uncomfortable. Bicycle technology, in part, is like the weather. For relatively brief periods, there are things you just cant ignore, but shortly later something else completely displaces todays life-changing trend from the radar screen.But what of the timeless? I can step out my office door and in one block Im at the trailhead of the 600-acre Red Rock Canyon open space. Ill be climbing hard right away, because the first geologic feature in the park is a yellow-limestone ridge that crests with a shear cliff that undulates between a few inches high to just a few yards high. From here, its not that remarkable to see, but when youre on the trail that skirts the base of this cliff, if you are paying attention, youll see fossils embedded in the face of the cliff. These ammonite fossils have been there for tens of millions of years. They are found all over the world because they were such a common life form that lasted for million years. So as readily as the weather changes, these fossils remain frozen in time so long it can barely be comprehended. Does bicycle technology have this timeless component? Of course, it does, although nothing like the timelessness of those ammonite fossils. Today, a bicycle mechanic utilizes the same knowledge to true a spoked wheel as did the first mechanic who ever used tensioned wires to attach a wheel rim to a hub. The principles of how a bearing assembly works have remain unchanged for the life of the bicycle, and what we know about one of the most common types of headset failure (fretting) was first discovered when Henry Ford was shipping deliveries of Model T Fords all over the country by rail. As dramatically different as todays derailleur technology is than what that technology was like when BBI started decades ago, a dominant majority of the derailleur-service techniques you need to learn are equally applicable to every derailleur made by every manufacturer for at least the last half century. So this week, I just finished a new section (about servicing Shimano Di2 electronic-shifting equipment) that will appear in the next edition of Barnetts Manual. Like the weather, its something that will get you in trouble (as a bicycle mechanic) if you just ignore it, but its too recent an innovation to know that it will stick around as stubbornly as something like the spoked wheel (the death of which was prematurely predicted by disc-wheel proponents in the nineteen nineties). In regard to the courses we offer at BBI, time (particularly regarding how limited and finite it is) greatly dictates to what degree we cover the timeless vs. the temporary. The largest percentage of our curriculum is devoted to, what is by bicycle-technology standards, the timeless. Of course we try to cover the latest innovations, as well, but a class is only so long and theres a seemingly endless supply of new innovations. Consequently, our curriculums all have two basic components. The core curriculum of any course covers the timeless, and this core changes rarely and slowly. The second part of our curriculum might be called the flex curriculum. In this part, whats on the radar now takes center stage, and changes occur frequently and sometimes quickly. What you can completely trust about BBI is that we are not blown about like a leaf in Colorados fickle weather, but that with our long experience of seeing both the timeless and the temporary, when you take a course at BBI it will have an appropriate balance in the curriculum that will serve you well for the long run, and not just until the next revolutionary technology knocks everything on todays radar screen to the same place that yesterdays storm of the century disappeared. - John Barnett *Article originally appeared in our newsletter on November 30.
Posted on: Tue, 30 Dec 2014 17:31:51 +0000
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