endur-bro is color coded

cycling, like many sports, is heavily weighed down by silly marketing and sham-tech intended to cajole consumers in the the newest/fastest/lightest/largest thing that will simultaneously brush their teeth while doing their taxes.

my mind first turns to the current craze around "gravel bikes". i am not the first to say it, but i grew up riding gravel roads because that's what we had, on mountain bikes -- same justification. the cycling industry, particularly un the u.s.a., has done an amazing job of making riders think that their cyclocross, road, or mountain bikes are not appropriate for local grand fondos or gravel grinders (aka road group rides). with an impressive wave of the capitalist wand there is now another branch of the industry packing garages across tan suburban divisions in every state. blek!

now to the point. ENDURO! at the outset i saw this genre as another attempt to sell bikes to people who have to much money, while creating a more chill way to race those bikes.
basically DH racing, without the necessity of a chairlift: roll along chatting with friends until you race your ass of on the descents.
it seemed like good old mountain biking, but people were/are paying a LOAD of money for it.
then i tried to think through the positive bits of enduro's new popularity, and came up with several. here they is, in no particular order.

• bikes are becoming more fun to ride, with slacker head tubes for fun descending, and shiploads of R&D going into making rear suspension work well on climbs, under breaking, for light and heavy riders, as well as on rock plunging DH tracks. 
• xc bikes are also moving in the more fun "trail direction" and are making mountain biking more accessible for folks who want to learn to ride. yes you can ride/race many of the same trails on a rigid single speed, and you will likely learn some skills that you would not on a squishy bike, but not everyone wants to do everything the hardest way possible. why not make bikes that are fun for everyone, and the only buriers are guts, skills, time, comfort, humility, and a willingness of other wonderful to teach new ways to ride things. 
• trails can be built with more technical features because bikes are more capable of handling the terrain. we don't have to smooth out every bump if our bikes and skills can both grow to deal with larger challenges. 
• the aesthetic side of dirt bikes and gear are moving away from lycra and eating disorders and moving toward comfort and protection. though there are folks who will trash talk their friends who show up with the wrong flannel pattern for a fall trail ride, many riders i have run into are stoked to ride in clothes that they might wear off the bike and feel good about their bodies therein. also, anyone who knows me would know that i am stoked to color match my digs and wear colors that mostly look like bubblegum ice-cream form the 1980's. All kinda rainbow! 
• i feel that there are a lot of other salient positive elements that the enduro genre has added to trail riding, and these are the few that initially came to mind when i asked myself "what does enduro have to offer?".