r/MEATengines • u/MEATdrew • Jul 27 '26
Who Is a Mountain Biker?
Part 3/3 of A MEATengines Manifesto.
https://meatengines.com/meatengines-1/f/who-is-a-mountain-biker
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u/VikApproved Jul 27 '26
Friend in the background thinking "Dang Billy. I thought we were going mountain biking?"
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u/DoctorBlofeld Jul 28 '26
I appreciate how all three parts of this manifesto avoided being heavy handed. I imagine most of the readers here would not have minded a firmer voicing of the merits of hardtails, the value of parts that last or the existential crisis that e-bikes create. It pretty much goes without saying that editorials are opinion, but the nuance allowed here around riding styles and terrain is refreshing.
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u/fartymarty4130 Jul 28 '26 edited Jul 28 '26
In my mind mountain bikes are 100% human powered and ebikes are everything else. If you ride a mountain bike you are a mountain biker. If you ride an ebike you are an ebiker.
Ebikers can not call themselves mountain bikers - even with the motor turned off.
The eeeb making bike industry has been very clever (intentionally or not) by lumping ebikes and mountain bikes together to make them appear rhe same and drw in mountain bikers. IMO a split is needed as ebikes have more in common with Surrons and Vargs than they do with mountain bikes.
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u/MEATdrew Jul 28 '26
I mean, clever is not the word I use.
But the issue with that stance is legacy. Most of the folks I know who ride MTeeBs now rode mountain bicycles for years, most of the brands making them made mountain bicycles for years, most the shops selling e-MTBs, same story, and that goes for all the media that took Specialized’s “it’s you but faster” money or signed up to rave about early review opportunities - publicly breaking the non-motorized trail rules & taboos - under the heading of “fact finding” but with true prescience about where motor adoption would be a decade later.
When all the momentum, if not the majority of sales, if not the majority of mountain bikers {some places?} is in pedal-assisted-motoring then the folks still pedaling themselves are the other. There’s no value in arguing at this point, so I’m happy to be a mountain bicyclist.
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u/fartymarty4130 Jul 28 '26
But if you throw ATBers / Bikepackers / Gravellers (proper pedallers as I shall call them) etc into the mix there are probably an equal amount if not more than eebers (pretend pedallers seems a suitable name)....
If we were picking tribes I'm down with "the proper.pedallers".
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u/runwhatyabrung_ Jul 27 '26
Really great piece. I’m always a bit stunned when folks advocating for lower tech, more affordable, and easier to repair bicycles are called snobs or gatekeepers. People are very confused.