Staying socially acceptable in mountain biking is a little bit like trying to navigate your way through a salt marsh sometimes.
If you run forward too quickly and decide to try your hand at trend-setting, there’s a good, solid chance that you’re going to end up neck deep in a puddle of mud, sputtering and spitting out arguments that, however valid, will be deemed completely incomprehensible thanks to all the salt and mud slowly engulfing your face and windpipe – the salt and mud in this case being metaphorical for the insults your unscrupulous riding partners are forcing down your throat thanks to your estranged choice of vehicle.
Even if the trend you’ve decided to adopt does become standard practice down the line, you’ll get absolutely no credit for picking it up early. Ask any given early adopter of the 29er.
If you stand still in the salt marsh, meanwhile, you’ll just start sinking slowly into all of the salt and the mud. Sure, it takes a little longer for you to become completely engulfed this way, but slowly but surely, as your tech gets older and older each year, you’ll find the jibes and judging glances becoming increasingly frequent until you are, again, stuck deeper in the mud and salt than we are in this analogy about mountain biking being a salt marsh.