Reminiscing

As some readers will have realised, the older you get, the more material you have for nostalgia. If you’re lucky enough to have had kids you’re proud of, comparing their childhood with your own can be a bittersweet experience. Here at the Soigneur HQ the team have been doing some reminiscing.

Growing up in 1970s-80s New Zealand we had pre-internet innocence, but also the isolation that can arise when you only have your classmates as peers and they’re not into the same things as you. We had fewer extremes in overt wealth but things were also more expensive. We had more social cohesion but when that’s predicated on everyone watching the same two TV channels, that’s not much to celebrate.

So, while nostalgia can make us yearn for the good old days, watching how one’s own kids grow up certainly highlights many of the benefits of today.

Whereas we spent our teens hanging out at the corner dairy feeding coins into video games, our kids grew up riding the myriad of mountain bike trails that Soigneur’s hometown excels in.

Whereas our school holidays were spent at ‘kids programmes’ run at local schools, our kids got dropped off at the mountain-bike downhiller’s shuttle with a ticket to last them a day’s riding.

When were we teens, getting one’s first car mean finally saying goodbye to the bike. For our kids, it meant an easier way to get the downhill mountainbike to the trailhead and to ride trails further afield. Our cars needed decent stereos, our kids’ must-have was a towbar.

And then there’s the tech of course. We’re all enjoying the benefits of new tech these days but the generational divide was made clear to us recently when the son who grew up with hydraulic disc brakes tried one of our rim-brake road bikes. “There’s something wrong with the brakes” he cried. “They just don’t work” he continued.

Turns out they were just fine (Dura-Ace, right?), but notsomuch when compared to the mountain-bike disc brakes he grew up with. The poor lad will never have the thrill of racing downhill on a roadbike in the rain with next to no brakes, but some war stories we can frankly do without.

Technical developments in cycling are a bit like that too. What was once new is old, and new things keep coming along. Just when the rim-brake vs disc brake debate is easing off, we now have shorter crank lengths, tubeless tyres and 1x set-ups to debate. For everyone bemoaning new tech, consider how once a upon a time clinchers, derailleurs and even equally-sized wheels were termed “new tech”, so rejecting anything new is a slippery slope back to the penny farthing.

So, as highlighted by the younger generation’s disdain for rim brakes, there’s a lot of great new tech out there that many of us are overlooking. Some of it might be marketing hype, some of it may be for changes beyond our skillset, but some might really make a big difference. Once upon a time you’d never ridden your favourite bike, tried your favourite food, or met your current partner. So what’s stopping a little experimentation?

In that vein, we recommend experimenting with a new Soigneur jersey...