The smartest fork you’ll never eat with

This past weekend I took a friend of my shopping for her first bike (at least the first of her adult life). She had been taking spinning classes for a while but wanted get out and actually feel the pavement under her wheels (as opposed to feeling the pavement on let’s say, your face, which should be avoided if at all possible).

I had a lot of fun touring shops and taking different bikes out so I could cruise with her on test rides. As a former bike shop employee myself I reveled in the glory days of a life much simpler, when all I worried about was math homework and whether or not the next customer in the shop would be a total pain in the ass (ok, so I don’t miss the world of retail).

The next day we met up to go for her inaugural ride around Oakley and Hyde Park. After our cruise I showed her some basic maintenance tips, and I tried to provide a brief overview of how bikes work.

“It’s as simple as gears, breaks, wheels, and a frame”, I said, casually pointing to parts on the bike. Going into a little more detail I could see the look on her face turn to an expression of, “yeah, this might be simple to you, but I have no clue what you’re talking about”.

We parted ways soon after, and I laughed on my way home thinking about the first time I tried to build a bike. It seemed so daunting, like the puzzle pieces were endless. Within a matter of weeks however, everything seemed so easy, there were only a handful of items on the bike, the most complicated of which were controlled by springs and cables, nothing more. The most technologically advanced thing that existed for a bike was the cyclocomputer, and from the mechanics end there was still very little to do other than set the magnet and receiver and run the cable up to the handlebar.

By and large bikes are still very simple methods of transportation, making them easy to work on for anyone who is even mildly mechanically inclined. With the inception of the electric bike things began to get a bit more complicated (not to mention heavy) but even an electric motor is still a relatively simple device.

Well folks, I’m afraid to say, those days may soon be behind us, at least if the folks at Crack n’ fail Cannondale have anything to say about the situation. They have introduced the Simon, a new electronically controlled and 500-times-a-second adjusting front suspension fork. Although I’m not sure I can even call this a fork, as this is a derivation of the Lefty shock, which defies the “fork” description because it only extends down one side of the front wheel.

Suspending the front end of your bike with this piece of equipment means gone are the days of being able to tear down and rebuild your own fork. The trade off is, of course, being treated to a ride that (you would be led to believe) is unparalleled by any other fork on the market. While I can’t speak to that today, we’ll see soon enough when it comes on the market in a few years.

Frankly, I’m excited for the progression of the industry into supercaresque territory. Just as crazy-advanced (and expensive) technology appears on F1 cars and Ferraris before it makes it to your Mazda 3, so it goes with bicycles (v-brakes, disc brakes, etc). I hope it leads to products helping customers through the act of the product helping itself. A confusing statement, but let me explain.

Let’s take the bike my friend bought herself on Saturday. It has a front fork with a lockout switch and an adjustable preload dial. Will she ever use either of those features? Likely not. Would they come in handy and benefit her ride if she did? Likely so…they exist for a reason. But when she is chugging up a hill, I doubt she’ll be thinking about locking the fork out to stop losing energy to “the bob”. Even if she does, I know she won’t be evaluating her route before hand to determine how much preload (and consequent stiffness) she needs for the upcoming trek.

But a fork that does all of that for you, that’s the sort of thing that helps you help yourself by helping itself.

And anything that makes my life easier and my ride better is a winner in my book.

Hat tip to Monugs, who showed me this Popular Science article about the Simon.