I had an idea for a post earlier today, but I ended up working through lunch and didn’t have a chance to get my thoughts together. Lately, I have been way too consumed with work to think about much else. Since I am too busy/stressed/mentally drained to post any topics of my own today, I’ll point you to an excellent post that I just saw on Belgium Knee Warmers (a great blog that you should check often if you don’t already).
The BKW post got me thinking; the road bikes that interest me run the gamut from lugged steel classics to the latest sculpted and heavily engineered carbon fiber wonder bikes. To be honest though, I would much rather ride the latter these days. As nice as handcrafted lugged steel road bikes may be, the material and engineering advances in high end racing bikes in the past few years are pretty incredible. I really like sleek new lightweight bikes so those are the bikes I most often want to ride (recreationally at least). Still, I don’t really find myself feeling attached to any new bikes. I like my Specialized road bike, but I could always sell it and get something lighter, sleeker, faster, and better. Recently, I borrowed a friend’s spare Dura Ace 10 equipped Scott CR-1 for a couple of rides and I loved it. I wouldn’t think twice about trading my road bike for that one. Does that mean the Scott has more soul than my S-Works? Not really, I think it just means that the CR-1 felt light, stiff, fast and, probably most importantly, new to me.
As much as I like new bikes, the bikes that I have a strange attachment to are the ones that I have owned for years but no longer really ride that much. I don’t ride my mid 1980s Pinarello nearly as much as my other bikes and I never ride my late 80s Marinoni, but every time I consider listing one of them on ebay, I just can’t go through with it. I guess I just have a hard time letting go. Does that mean that my old lugged steel bikes have soul and my newer ones don’t? I am not sure. Most likely I just feel an attachment to those bikes that I have owned for a long time go because of the memories that I have associated with them. All the dents and scratches that detract from the market value mean something to me. Of course, I might be convinced to part with those bikes for the right price. Does anyone want to buy a couple of 80s vintage lugged steel bikes; hardly ever ridden (this decade at least)?
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