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Lunatic drivetrains

Remember three years ago when I made a gemlog post (one of the very few which doesn't also exist as a phlog post, due to uninsteresting historical details) about unconventional bicycle drivetrains, and I described 2x1 and 3x1 drivertrains (as in, 2 or 3 chainrings and a single rear cog) as being "definitely the lunatic fringe of drivetrains"?

My 2020-03-29 post "Unconventional driverains"

It turns out than none other than Grant Petersen himself has semi-recently experimented with exactly this setup, using a beautiful vintage Shimano Crane derailer as a tensioner with a modern Shimano singlespeed freewheel on the rear and a triple chain ring with a front derailer, declaring it "not your grandfather's three speed". And Riv GM Will has done something similar with two chainrings and no front derailer, exactly as described in my old post. Will doesn't even need to get off the bike and dirty his fingers to downshift, he can do it with his foot!

Grant's post from this June with his three speed Platypus

Older post mentioning Will's foot shifting (Ctrl-F for "party trick")

Now, okay, "Grant Petersen does it!" is not exactly a refutation of something being "lunatic fringe", but we are now talking high pedigree lunacy, at least. I can be confident that it's a strange idea but not a stupid idea, and that this kind of setup can be made to work perfectly well for any of the kind of riding I'm likely to do. If I'd followed through on those musings I might have beaten some of the people I look up to to the punch!

But I didn't, and probably still won't anytime soon, because believe it or not earlier this year I bought the first derailered bike I've owned in over thirty years. I'll write about it in another post sometime.