Unlocking the mystery of bike jargon (part 1)

Aero

Aerodynamics. Did you know that at 30km/h, nearly all of your energy is going into pushing the air out of the way? A lot of money is spent by bike and component manufacturers, and therefore riders, on cheating the wind. More aero = faster. And for many, it’s cooler too.

Bars

Handlebars. This is a word on its own, as in ‘those are wide bars, man’, but it’s also used as a suffix: for example, 

• TT-bars: Time Trial handlebars (see ‘TT’ below)
• drop bars: curly road bike handlebars
• flat bars: which aren’t always actually flat
• riser bars: ‘flat’ bars which come up higher, closer to the rider. So, yeah, not actually flat. 
• gravel bars: a subset of drop bars (see ‘Gravel’ below)
• alt-bars: Alternative styles of bars which don’t fit nicely into any of the main categories.

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Bikepacking

Think ‘backpacking’ but with bikes. Adventure cycling, which could be

• carrying clothes with you on a multi day trip and staying in B&Bs
• carrying your tent, bed, stove and camping out.

You could be forgiven for thinking that this is just ‘Touring’ but with flannelette shirts. And you wouldn’t be far wrong, but bikepacking usually has an off-the-beaten-track element.   

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Brifters

So a portmanteau is a word that’s a mashup of two other terms. Like ‘Jeggings’ or ‘Skorts’ or ‘Spork’. ‘Brifters’ is an unfortunate road cycling portmanteau - a combination of ‘brake levers’ and ‘shifters’. On road bikes, brakes and gears are usually operated from the same lever. Someone thought it would be clever to combine the words. It really wasn’t. 

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Clutch

Many modern rear derailleurs (see ‘Derailleur’ below) are equipped with a clutch which dampens the derailleur’s bouncing on rough surfaces. This means your chain doesn’t fly around as much and is much less likely to come off the front sprocket (chainring). A clutched rear derailleur is a must-have on any off-road 1x setup (see ‘One-by’ below).  

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Derailleurs

They’re brutal but they work. Derailleurs are wonderful and awful. From the French word for derailment (as in trains), derailleurs literally force your chain to de-rail from one sprocket to the next. It’s a simple, blunt-instrument kind of mechanism. Derailleurs are the best combination of light weight, reliability, cost effectiveness and robustness that we have for a human-powered, chain-driven machine. Other ways of changing gears exist, but they’re either heavier, more expensive or both. The derailleur is the main reason your bike can have such a wide gear range. It’s also the reason your bike needs servicing more than you’d like. 

Feeling enlightened?

That's the end of Part 1. Keep an eye out for the next one!