Jack of All Trades, Master of None

• A couple of weeks ago, in order to escape the coming blizzard, I cut into Old Town and ducked into Village Cycles for a spell. For such a high volume shop, the place strikes me as having too low a ceiling and some really crummy carpet, but I always like to check out what the latest Big Brand products are looking like, and this is the place. So there were many models and colors of Crank Brothers pedals, stacked high behind glass; piles of discounted Nike shoes; a rainbow of surprisingly tasteful Bontrager bar tape; plenty of folding rubber; and of course row after row of 2008 Treks, Fishers, and Lemonds.

  What struck me most was something called the Soho 2.0, a sincerely improbably concatenation of compact geometry aluminum tubes, a brushed stainless steel coffee thermos, mountain bike wheels, and hubs from Shimano's mid-range Nexus lineup. This bicycle is so wrong that it got me a little riled up. It riled me because, to the casual consumer, it kind of looks like just the thing for mildly Europhilic, fair weather riders -- when in fact, it's yet another reheated retread: a mountain bike disguised as a cruiser masquerading as a city bike.

  But it made me think, and rethink, about both internally geared hubs and roller brakes. You don't really see these on too many bicycles outside of Europe, but with the rise of high end city bikes stateside, availability has marginally improved. The latest offerings from Sturmey Archer, SRAM, and Shimano are easily purchased from QBP. Niche brands like SON, Nuvinci, and Rohloff are filling out the top end of the spectrum. I'm not entirely sold on the practicality of an internally geared hub other than a good-old Sturmey Archer AW3, but that's mainly because all the contemporary designs require stupid, ugly shifters. K and I are trying to design a modern Clubman, in ti, no less... and it's really rather difficult to strike a balance between minimalist design and full functionality. The shifter gets you every time.

  On the front end, however, things are really looking up. There are a half dozen dynohub designs available, and at least a couple of decent roller brakes. My next bike will be a fixed Audax with a Shimano HB-IM50 up front, which provides more than enough stopping power for our flat terrain.

  Besides the obvious aesthetic advantages of a hub-n-brake rolled into one, the IM50 is reasonably affordable and light weight. An IM50 including steel skewer, but without the roller unit is 420g, which is only 80g more than a high flange Formula. Personally, I like the way roller brakes feel, too. But best of all, once installed... the dang things are bulletproof, weatherproof, and gosh darn it: maintenance free. And as much as I love the cantilevers on my winter bike, they are none of these things.