However, I suppose I should count myself lucky that I grew up riding bikes that hadn't even heard of suspension or wide tyres (and I never considered them as needed... except on the odd bumpy off-road foray)
Me too!
The fact is, cars needed suspension and quickly gained it in their early days, motor cycles needed front suspension and equally quickly gained it, but pushbikes didn't need it and therefore didn't get it.
That was
not because it wasn't available, there were several attempts to introduce it for bikes from the mid 1890s on, but cyclists just didn't want it or feel it necessary.
It was only when the creation of the mountain bike also created a degree of need for it that it was adopted at all, and that wouldn't have mattered but for a rather foolish public falling for the macho image and starting to use them on the road.
And as you say Stuart, there are generations now who know no different and consider it and fat tyres to be essential. More fool them, for they have to work very hard indeed to compensate for the inefficiency of their choice, and that causes me no problems. What does concern me is the way this silly fashion has eradicated sensible utility bikes in the UK. Not so in Europe's main cycling countries though, where they still know what makes a good bike.
And that sums up the difference. The utility cyclists in other countries rarely buy a bike and use their old but good bikes for many years as we used to, while in the UK the public now buy two million new bikes every year and don't ride them.
Ironically, this foolishness actually helps our e-bike cause, because when the few who do try to keep riding find how difficult it is to pedal today's cumbersome sprung monstrosities, they feel the need to seek out some power assist. "It's an ill wind" as the saying goes!
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