It was wet and cold yesterday but I rode anyway:I got wet and cold.Still, I felt very much at home on the Milaukee, a bicycle which is now entering its 11th year of faithful service. Also, for the record, Ive been riding this bicycle on Very Small Rocks since it was new:Keep in mind that this was a mere two years after gravel was first invented.Amazing, right?Plenty of people would probably consider the Milwaukee an old bike, but it certainly doesnt feel that way to me. Sure, thats partly because I had it refinished and I treated it to a new drivetrain, but it also doesnt feel old because I myself am old. See, when youre 20, 10 years is 50% of your life. But when youre my age its awell, its a smaller percentage, I guess? Look, Ive never been good at math, especially percentages. The point is, when you get to a certain age, 10 years ago seems like yesterday, which is why when your smoke detector starts going bad youre like, What the hell? I just put that goddamn thing up there! and conclude that it must be faulty. Then you fall off the stepstool while changing it and break your hip.Im so old I remember when fixie riders used to use absurdly narrow bars:Now they use absurdly wide bars:More legerage, I guess, but tragically they cant squeeze between cars anymore:Its also been several generations since New York City was actually gritty and dangerous. Now everybody looks gritty and dangerous, the most dangerous thing theyre likely to encounter on the streets is dorks on e-scooters:Anyway, I was thinking about the Milwaukees age because as I was attempting to bring my core temperature back up after my ride I came across the following article:Apparently, according to a survey, their readers get a new mountain bike every 3-5 years:TIL that in 2025 the average passenger vehicle on the road in the USA was14.5 years old. Though I cant say how old the average mountain bike on the trail is, its certainly much younger than that. Based on our own surveys, most riders buy a new mountain bike every 3-5 years. And new bikes are great! The technology changes rapidly, and I would argue todays bikes are a better value than theyve ever been.Speaking of being old, TIL that TIL stands for today I learned.YLSNED.So apparently mountain bike consumers are so fickle you must cajole them into keeping a bike thats a mere five (5) years old. So in this context, a mountain bike made before 2016 is positively ancient:Such is the fast pace at which mountain bikes evolve:Mountain bikes have evolved faster than any other type of bike in the last 20 years, andmountain bikes released only 10 years ago will look extremely outdated to experienced riders. Does this mean mountain bikes made before my 2016 cut-off are bad bikes? Heck no! In fact, there are plenty of older mountain bikes that I think are awesome (I still love my early-90s Fat Chance Yo Eddy and 2013 Salsa El Mariachi).Butwhen Im looking for a mountain bike to recommend to customers, family, and friends, I tend to stick to bikes made within the last 5-7 years. As a business that specializes in buying and selling used bikes, TPC also prefers to buy mountain bikes in that same age range. Heres why:By the way, that article from The Pros Closet is itself already three years oldso old that The Pros Closet subsequently went out of business and then reopened, in what was the most indifferently received comeback in all of cycling:The only thing that changes faster than mountain bike tech is private equity financing. In any case, we take it for granted that mountain bikes change more quickly than road bikes and other types of bike. However, looking back, Im not entirely sure thats trueat least not for the past 10 or so years. By way of researching this, I traveled back in time via the Specialized website and had a look at their 2015 offerings (that being the year I got the aforementioned Milwaukee). Here was a high-end road bike in 2015:Here was a high-end trail bike:And here was what would have been considered a gravel bike:Though they did also have those hip-for-the-times steel AWOL bikes:So hip in fact that Ultraromance was the official spokesman:Now lets return to the presentthats 2026, in case youve lost track. Today, a corporate road bike looks like this:A trail bike looks like this:Heres the latest iteration of that gravel bike:And it seems like theyve given up on the hipster touring bikes altogether, no doubt ceding the market to the boutique companies because they just werent pulling it off:By the way, I asked the AI to generate an image for Steve Buscemi How Do You Do, Fellow Kids? Meme Only With A Bicycle Over His Shoulder Instead of a Skateboard, and heres what I got:Wow, its both adorable and horrifying to watch the emerging digital consciousness as it does its best to piece this stuff together, like an infant struggling to assemble the weapon with which it will one day murder you. I mean Im not saying its going to go that way necessarilyhey, AI may turn out great, who knows?but in the meantime, at least based on this image, I certainly wouldnt want it doing surgery on me. I can imagine going in for that hip replacement after trying to change the smoke detector and leaving with my leg attached to my head.As for those bikes, while the geometry of the mountain bike may have changed, Id say that the other bikes have changed more profoundly. The rim brake road bike completely disappeared, the gravel bike of yesteryear is basically the road bike of today, and a 20-something buying a gravel bike today is basically buying the mountain bike his father bought in the 90s. And the Milwaukee? Forget it. You basically cant buy a bike like that anymore. That thing might as well be a pennyfarthing.But the biggest change of all is that all those bikes are also available with an electric motor. How do I feel about that? Ask me in another 10 years when I finally surrender.