Okay, now this is a devious spam text:Normally I just block and delete, but I came very close to answering this one.Hey! This isnt Grant but I am one of his acolytes! What was the gift? Was it Scottish cotton? Was it a LoNo derailleur?!? I really wanna know! Can I see a pic? I have a gift too? Here is my mailing address, SSN, and banking info!But while I may be an unabashed Rivendell apologist, Im also a velocipedal omnivore, and lately I have been riding a bicycle that would no doubt make Grant Petersen reach for his Sackville motion sickness bag:Im not even sure the thumbshifters I put on it would do anything to mitigate his symptoms:Speaking of which, the commenter known as Grouchy Doc asked the following question:Okay, Ive been staring at this all morning. As a pretty avid mountain biker who unabashedly likes squish, I cant figure out how you would shift those top mounted thumbies when on technical or rough terrain? Please help, I dont want to have start drinking early today!Now, I should point out that the good doctor and I have clearly different standards when it comes to shifting. In fact, this is the same person who sent me a Campagnolo Super Record 11-speed drivetrain because it wasnt good enough for him. Meanwhile, Im perfectly content to shift a bike with sticks:Also, I suspect Grouchy Doc probably knows a lot more about bikes than I doas do most of you, for that matterand doesnt really want or need an answer to this question.Still, I maintain Im the ideal person to answer this question, rhetorical as it may be, because he specifically mentions technical or rough terrain, and anybody who reads this blog knows I am a thrill-seeking adrenaline junkie who knows a thing or two about that:No, I am not a man who is afraid to juggle with fate:Or Osage oranges as the case may be.And fine, the fact that I spent pretty much the entirety of my prime mountain biking years riding singlespeeds might arguably disqualify me from opining about shifters:Yes, I will freely admit that a mountain bike with gears of any sort still feels decadent to me, however crude, and even if I had to shift it with my foot:[Im not supposed to tell anybody this, but Rivendell is coming out with a LoNo foot-shifted bike. Its just like a regular one, except it has a left-hand drivetrain.]But keep in mind I wasnt just any singlespeederI was the 183rd-best singlespeeder in the world:To put that in perspective, heres the 183rd-richest man in the world:No, he isnt as wealthy as Musk or Bezos, but hes still worth over thirteen billion dollars, which isnt exactly chump change.That should give you a pretty good idea of how awesome I am. Basically, Im the singlespeeding equivalent of a multi-billionaire. So that gives me the right to force my opinions upon you.Okay, so thumbshifterslets take note of the position:Now it might look a bit of a reach, but its nothing like the difference between, say, integrated road bike shifters and downtube shifting sticks. Really, the difference between thumbshifters and mountain bike trigger shifters is more like the difference between bar-end shifters and integrated road bike shifterssure, youve got to move your hand a little more, but its really not much at all.Also, the name notwithstanding, you only really need to use your thumb sometimesspecifically when youre downshifting:And even then youve still got a decent grip on the, uh, grip.Of course, upshifting from your lowest gear could require use of your index finger:But if the derailleurs already more towards the middle of the cassette you can often just kind of nudge it:Why yes, there is:This doesnt require you to remove your hand or any of its digits from the grip at all.Add to all this the fact that you dont need to use any finesse at all with a thumbshifter and you really sacrifice very little in the way of control. (Of course all of the above is reversed if you use a LoNo derailleur, and yes, I briefly considered using one, since I have not one but two of those old XTR derailleurs in the LoNo version, but sometimes youve got to know when to quit tinkering.)As for the Anti-Riv, part of the reason Ive been riding it lately is because its fall and the woods are a very pleasant place to be:The other reason is that in addition to thumb-ifying it I also took the time to address some other nagging issues too, and now its running quite smoothly indeed:Inf act its running so well I rode it all the way to The Forbidding Trails Behind The Mall instead of driving it there like I usually do:As I rode my cutting-edge mountain bike from 1999 it occurred to me that over the past few years Paul from Classic Cycle has treated me to something of a chronological survey of the modern mountain bike, starting with the American M-16 from 1990:Then came the proto-gravel (PRTO-GRVL) Specialized RockCombo, though I guess thats technically older than the M-16 since its from 1989, but whatever:Then came the first of my off-road test-cycles to feature some form of suspension, from1991, maybe?It wasweird, but then I denuded it of its worst components, and after that it wasnt a bad bike at all:The next bike also had suspension, but it was considerably more refined and sophisticated:And now here we are:Of those, the RockCombo and the AMP have been my overall favorites so far; the latter because it was so light and fast-feeling, and the former because it really was just a great all-around bike. (Id still have the RockCombo if I didnt already have so many other great all-around bikes.) The GT is certainly the most capable trail bike of all the bikes above, and I admit Im enjoying the relatively plush suspensionthough I also admit Im psychologically troubled by this whole region:Remember how I said Im prejudiced against threadless stem adapters? Well, I find the Front Derailleur Stub even more troubling. The Front Derailleur Stalk on the Wife Oil was positively elegant in comparison:Then theres the i-Drive, which seems to do exactly what its supposed to do, so no complaints there. However, its clearly a complicated work-around to avoid using the Horst link from the AMP. So in a way its like having a threadless stem adapter in your bottom bracket, which I find distracting.I guess I just like simple stuff.But maybe Im overthinking it.