Kids are funny. Ever notice that for a kid, everything is either really really good, or really really bad? As my kids have grown, and are now getting to an age where they have preferences for one brand of something or another, I notice this more and more. Either something is perfect, and has no problems at all, or it's terrible, and has no value or redeeming qualities. These qualities are even applied to products that my kids don't even own, or have any experience with. My 12 year old will have a very strong opinion about the reliability of a brand of car, even if he's never been in or around a Jaguar.

These days, lots and lots of people are asking about disc brakes. I've noticed the same kind of 'all or nothing' thinking sometimes when I'm answering questions in regards to disc brakes. Even customers who've never owned a bike with disc brakes seem to think that they work so much better on every type of bike that there would be no reason at all to consider rim brakes on their bike.

One recent example was a customer that I was working with who wanted a tandem using disc brakes. We worked back and forth for several days via email, and he even sent me a picture of his existing bike with the type of disc brakes he wanted (or at least what I thought was his existing bike). Eventually, the customer called me and we discussed final details over the phone. In his emails he was so specific on disc size, brake brand etc. that I assumed that he had always ridden these brakes and simply wanted a second bike set up the same way. As we talked, he was clicking around on our website and looking at some of our online customer scrap book.

As we talked further on the phone, he asked "I noticed that a lot of your tandem customers are riding cantilever brakes. Why is that?" I told him "a lot of my tandem customers prefer cantilever brakes." "Why would anyone want cantilever brakes?" He asked. "Well" I said "some prefer to keep their bike lighter, some have bikes designed for packing up for air travel and cantilever brakes make that job a lot easier. Most of my tandem customers ride on the road, and find that disc brakes don't offer as many advantages for road riding as they do dis-advantages." He said, in what seemed like disbelief, "with all the improvements in disc brakes, and how well they work, I just can't understand why anyone would ever choose a non-disc brake." I said, "well, I'm not proposing to build your tandem that way. You obviously have disc brakes now, love them, and I would never suggest that you stop using them." "I don't have a bike with disc brakes" he said, much to my surprise. I asked, "didn't you send me a photo of your existing bike with disc brakes on it?" "That wasn't my bike. It was a picture of a bike that I liked and wanted to pattern my tandem after." He now informed me. "Have you ridden a tandem with disc brakes?" I asked. "No" he answered. As it turned out, he had no experience with disc brakes except for the advertising and blog entries that he had read. I was stunned that his opinion was so strong about a product that he had never tried.