When I picked up my new bike a few weeks ago, I found out that disk brake road bikes have become a thing since I gave up cycling 7 years ago.

My first thought upon seeing this was that it’s awesome. Of course, when I went online to do some research, I found that this is a subject just as controversial as what the best chain lube is.

Anyways, we’ve been out riding quite a bit over the past few weeks and I think I’ve come to a conclusion on the subject: disk brakes are freaking awesome on a road bike. My wife rides an older Giant FCR with V-brakes, and my new Fuji Sportif has some off brand disk brakes. In dry conditions, there isn’t much difference between the two but it’s been raining a lot lately, and in order to get our miles in, we’ve been riding in the rain. On a few occasions I’ve stopped my bike, only to have my wife roll past me a ways before she’s able to get her v-brake bike stopped. It became really apparent when we were rolling down a steep hill and I was trying to tell her something while going slow. We nearly collided and she yelled at me because she couldn’t go slow enough down the hill when applying her brakes without colliding with, or overtaking me.
I’ve even got on her bike and tried to lock the wheels when they’re wet, and I can’t do it, even giving the brake lever everything I’ve got.

I purchased some kool-stop salmon brake pads at the advice of the internet to try to spruce up her brakes in the wet conditions were having, but I still think her next bike will have disk brakes.

Argue if you must, but I can’t think of a reason I’d ever go back to any rim brakes, v-brakes or calipers, or anything.