Because is really the best answer of all.
So I guess the big hype coming from Surly this year is the Ice Cream Truck. It’s our new Omni-Terra bike (some might say fatbike) and she’s a big boy. I won’t get too into details (cuz if you want those, you should go here) but what I will do is address a certain question that I found while trolling the interwebs. The question was this, “Why would I buy a 37lb fatbike in todays market?”
Interesting question. I don’t have a clue why you would buy it. I don’t even know you. I barely understand why anyone buys anything these days. Need is way out of the picture. The desire to consume is the strongest desire, it would seem. So, I can’t honestly answer that question for you or anyone out there.
What I can do is tell you why I buy things. It’s cuz I want them (yum yum). When it comes to a bike, I read about it (a lot), then I read about it some more, then I try to find bad things about it and then I read those, and then I try to find over the top great things about it and I read those, then I try to find crazy hater bad shit about it and I read that, then I ask folks about it (again, lovers, hater and people in the middle) and then ride it. I ride it many times. I ride it next to other bikes of its kind, and doing so helps me decide which one rides the best, the best for me that is. After all that, I form my own opinion (I know for many people out there this is the hardest step, after all, it's much easier to simply adopt someone else's opinion. Isn't it?) This is all (of course) informed by what I like and don’t like about bikes (and proably myself). What a “good ride” is to me (which may or may not be the same for you)(probably not though). That’s how I decide what I want to buy. I base it on feel. Not just interior hunchy type feelings, but exterior tactile type feelings too. I base that want on MY experience.
Of course others argue that I think certain bikes ride better because I want to think those bikes ride better because the capitalistic behemoth that we exist in, paired with the unstoppable marketing machine that is Surly has taken my mind and turned it into jelly. I‘ve been had and am a slave, that the bike is simply the next placebo to temporarily fill the hole in my soul that was left over when my father’s mother’s father’s mother’s father’s mother’s mother’s mother’s father’s mother’s (and it goes on like this) father’s father’s mother’s father’s mother first said, “Hey, let’s plant seeds, and take care of things we can eat, and start creating arts and the sciences so they can help us, get rich, set up pawn governments, control people’s lives, enslave the week & stupid, get fucked up, have a good time, and fuck everybody else and their peasant bullshit.” (see last weeks blog on Jean-Jacques Rousseau)
Of course I would say, "Fuck those people." But what do I know?
What I do know is that, when someone asks me this question, “Why would I buy a 37lb fatbike in todays market?” the answer is simply this: Because you want one. If you do that is, and if you don’t, I hope the answer is this: You wouldn’t.
What else is there?
