We shouldn’t care about the jargon used to sell mountain bikes, argues Mitchell Scott’s funny, engaging essay, Riding in the Age of Confusion, where he says that all the technobabble is alienating, prevents more people from adopting the sport, and denies mountain biking its central appeal: the simple act of getting out on the trail and away from the complexities of computerized daily life. He uses skis/boards for a perfect analogy: “We don’t really care if our snowboard or skis have a triaxal weave, or if they’re balsam or spruce or monocoque foam core or not. We just want to know if it shreds. If it will shred for a long time. And if we’re getting maximum shred for our buck. It’s more about ‘what’ this thing can do, and less about ‘how.’

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