That's not a robot right there.
Live music is better than recorded music. It’s a given. Having that connection, where you’re sharing the same space as the artist is a unique experience that can’t be replicated on a plastic disc. To receive the gift from the giver personally is a moment of intimacy not possible if it arrives in a package in the mail. To be able to garner instantaneous gratitude, be it by applause, cheers or a smile is the reward that the artist lives for, else they wouldn’t be there. Showing appreciation for the gift returns the favour in kind. The performance feeds the audience, and vice versa.
Vinyl records hold the same sort of appeal that steel bicycles do; both materials revolutionised their respective industries and held the mantle of the best, the only choice, for decades. Then both were usurped by smaller, lighter composite materials and while the convenience and perceived performance they offered took over on a wholesale scale, a handful of purists held on to their Electric Ladyland limited edition LPs along with their Colnago Masters and Merckx Leaders. Vinyl may have been suddenly deemed cumbersome, inconvenient to use and harder to source, but it still offered a timeless sound quality that just had something about it, something that CDs and MP3s would struggle to achieve.
Same with steel bikes. There’s an indisputable and indescribable feeling that comes in the first few pedal strokes on a steel bike, and like pulling out that dog-eared copy of Hunky Dory, you know exactly what you’ll be getting, and you’re gonna like it. Picking up a hand-built bike from the person who made it is like going down to the studio to grab a signed slab of wax that Nick Cave hands to you himself. Straight to you.
Where the vinyl record remains round, grooved and black, the steel bicycle’s tubes remain round, straight and flat. You can’t improve on what’s proven. What’s perfect. Only the touch of the hand of the artist can make each one unique, where things that are really just simple things (a record, a bicycle) can be themselves set apart by the signatures laid upon them by their creators, curating originality (Jagger, Jaegher). To say it’s pretty special to see your own bicycle being made, your name on the tubes as they come together to be joined forever by the heat of the torch and the deft touch of the electrode, would be a modest assessment. To finally ride it, might be impossible to describe.
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A beautifully armed steel battleship posted by Campagnolo Srl -- Facebook
@brett
What we have here is my stainless steel( KVA MS3 Tubeset) sitting in Don Walker's jig getting ready for him to braze together after mitring up the tubes. I have a long, long standing love of custom frames( I have 5..above will be 6..) and Don has been the provider of 4 of them( once I get the above frame from him next week). I met Don at the 2008 North American Handmade Bicycle Show in Portland, ordered a track frame from him,and a great friendship has blossomed as a result. I've gone to several shows since then and helped him run his booth as he is too busy running the whole show to spend alot of time in his booth.
@unversio
The SLX frame of power..sorry..you search is in vain..I already have it. :-)
It's the DeRosa on the left in this photo.
@Haldy
[ Gandalf voice ] "O, there is just the one... and it does not share power! DeRosa..."
@Haldy
Also works as [ Seinfeld voice ] “O, there is just the one… and (let me tell ya) it does not share power! DeRosa…”
@Gianni
My riding buddy just pulled down his Alexi Grewel paint-scheme/edition Pinarello. It's red, white, blue and yellow. Hadn't given it much thought as it hung up in his bike garage, as it was dusty and the tires were old and worn. He decided to pull it down, give it a solid polishing, and get her up and running.
The paint is absolutely beautiful. He paid a fair amount of it back in the 80s, a price that still sounded high. But wow, what an beautiful bike. He didn't like the narrowness of the original Campa hoods so added some new ones (maybe Tektros?) that have brown/natural hoods and drilled levers. He's my Sensei, what an eye for detail on a bike. And, he just took delivery of a C-60 in matte black with the Italian tricolore on the ST, yikes, what a machine!
On live music. One of the best periods in my life was during graduate school when I lived in Washington, DC. I used to attend 2-3 shows a week, bands I'd kinda heard of, bands I knew nothing about, bands friends suggested. I'd go to small and mid-sized clubs and pay $5 or $12 to see some great bands, quite a few of them having gone on to be legitimate Rock Stars.
It was an awesome time, as I was just getting into road cycling. I had a perfect routine, one beer, one whiskey as I got the bike prepped, then a b-line one side streets to the venue, around a 15 minute ride. As I was locking up my bike the mellow buzz of the drinks would set in, I'd enter right on time to see the show blast off, having calibrated the publicized start time vs. band-time. Best shows were at a small club with a barely rising stage, so you were almost on the same level in a low-ceilinged room.
I'll never forget walking in to have my ears blown off by Death From Above. I was there to see another band, but those two dudes were spectacular.
I really like the bit of data about the relative speed of Steel / Mid-range-carbon / High-end-carbon. I can corroborate somewhat using my own samples of 42-year-old-Steel / Moots titanium / Modern-oversize-Coloumbus-life-tubing-Steel. I wish he also had a modern steel bike to include in the mix. My modern steel has a comparable speed difference over the antique steel as the HEC over the down-tube-shifters steel. 35mm vs 28.6mm in the down tube (and other comparable bits) makes a profound difference.
@Haldy
You are the man. So is Don Walker by the look of his work. Supporting the frame builders, like you and Brett are doing is important. I always spend too much time drooling over Cyclingnews's yearly photo-fest of the NAHBS bikes. There a lot of talented people making beautiful who might not be making much money but love the work.
I used to work for a boat builder who would swear, at every launching, when he realized how little money he made or how much he lost, this was the last one, ever. And of course he is still at it, thirty years later.
@Haldy
Don is awesome. I 'met' him at Cincy3 a couple years ago when I was racing and came to the top of the stair run up where he had his tent. My chain came off and as I was trying to fix it he just stood there holding out a cup of beer. Finally he said 'oh, come on!' I laughed and took the beer. I was so far behind at that point that each lap Don had another beer for me. It was one of the most enjoyable cross races I've done.