There are few technological advancements in modern history as simultaneously brilliant and humiliating as electronic shifting. When it works, it is a flawless demonstration of motorized precision. But how did we ever get to point that the most beautifully simple mechanical machine ever invented becomes completely useless unless it’s plugged into a USB port?
When the battery light finally flashes red and the motor gives out, you will experience these six psychological stages of sheer, unadulterated cycling grief.
1. Denial: Button-Mashing
It always happens at the base of a climb. You go to drop into the little ring, and instead of that satisfying, robotic bzzt sound, you get nothing. You begin furiously pounding the shift button like a teenager whose parents won’t be home for another hour. But smashing a knob won’t convince an empty electrical system to send a signal.
2. Anger: Writing Your Anti-Tech Manifesto
Once you realize the battery is genuinely dead, a primal rage takes over. You pull over to the side of the road, unclip, and start screaming into the void about the absolutely state of the fucking cycling industry. You loudly swear that you’re going to rip the groupset off your bike and replace it with friction shifters from 1986. You curse the concept of Bluetooth and burn effigies of SRAM engineers. You’ve charged everything but the actual machine you are riding.
3. Bargaining: Roadside Surgery
This is the stage where you try to outsmart the technology. If you are a SRAM AXS user, this is when you frantically unclip the battery from your front derailleur and swap it with the rear one, only to discover they are both completely drained. If you are a Shimano Di2 user, you start looking around for a heavy rock, wondering if physically smashing the derailleur cage will somehow knock it into a harder gear. You start making deals with a higher power: “If I can just get it into the 19-tooth cog, I promise I will never skip a maintenance wash again.”
4. Depression: 34×28 is Your Reality
The bargaining has failed. The system is dead, and the mechanism has inevitably locked your chain into whatever gear you were last in. Because the universe is cruel, this is usually your easiest climbing gear. You are 40 miles from home, the road ahead is completely flat, and you are permanently stuck in a granny gear. The sheer, overwhelming bleakness of the situation sets in.
5. Acceptance: Hamster Wheel
With no other options, you clip back in and begin the journey home at 135 RPM. It’s a cool 12 miles per hour. Teenagers on skateboards pass you. Grandads who smell like vodka shout words of encouragement as they pass you on Raleighs they’ve owned since 1972. You enter a zen-like trance of embarrassment.
6. The Walk of Shame: Calling for Extraction
Eventually, your hips begin to dislocate from the frantic spinning, or you hit a massive descent where pedaling is physically impossible. You pull over, sit on the curb, and open your phone. You text your significant other. When they arrive, they will look at your $10,000 carbon fiber bike and ask, “Did you get a flat tire?” And you will have to look them dead in the eye and give any excuse less embarrassing than the reality. Like, “No. I have diarrhea.”