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Bike technology is moving fast. Like, really fast.
Seriously—the bike world today is an entirely different place than it was twenty, or ten, or even five years ago. And as new products pop up to make our riding lives easier, we start to forget all the annoying, inconvenient, and kinda crazy issues we used to deal with.
Don’t believe us? We polled the staff for the old-school problems that cyclists today will never have to deal with. Tell us what we missed in the comments.
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Problems Cyclists Today Will Never Have to Worry About
Reaching down to shift and praying you grab the shifter on your first try.
The feeling of your teeth rattling in your skull as you navigate a crazy-rocky downhill on your 26-inch hardtail.
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Having to walk back home with a broken bike, collarbone, or worse. (Thank god for cell phones.)
Patching tubular tires, because that’s what you rode all the time before clincher tires were a thing.
Wires running all over your bike connecting various sensors to your bike computer because…what’s wireless?
When V-brakes were considered an upgrade on mountain bikes.
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Changing elastomers in your mountain bike fork depending on the trail you were riding.
Gatorade. Nothing but fucking Gatorade.
Getting out of—or into— your cages in a hurry.
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Wearing my boyfriend’s baggies because there were no women’s options.
Waiting for the current issue of VeloNews to see who won a race the previous month.
Nailing cleats to the soles of your shoes, and if you didn’t get it just right, waiting until your next pair of shoes to try again.
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Buying long sleeve jerseys in progressive sizes because winter jackets sucked, so you just wore three long sleeve jerseys instead. And still froze.
Having to share lights—and figure out how to charge them—at a 24-hour race because they were so hard to come by and you were lucky to own them.
Carrying a phone card in case you got hopelessly lost and needed to get your ass picked up miles from nowhere.
