A longtime customer walked into the bike shop this morning and asked, "I'm looking for an $1800 mountain bike, but I don't want disc brakes." I'll see what I can find, was my answer. I checked the catalogs, I searched the internet and I called my experts in the nearest college town...guess what?...there is no such animal, in fact, between $600 and $3,000 you will not find a new mountain bicycle that does not come outfitted with disc brakes. I was shocked.
I've been in the bicycle business for forty years as a columnist/publisher/author and mechanic. I've owned and operated my own bicycle shop for over twenty years. I never saw this coming...the industry has been swarmed and inundated with disc brake technology. It's not as if rim braking was a problem. I've only seen a handful of worn-through rims in four decades of fixing bicycles. What's going on here?
