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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View Comments
@Haldy
Ok, I've probably missed this somewhere, but what is goin on there my friend?
@ChrisO
Steel, Mid Carbon (#9 Rig) and High End Carbon. Over a couple of years riding all around the same roads I reckon that High End Carbon is .8 to .1.2 kph faster than Mid Carbon and HEC is 1.5 to 2.4 kph faster than steel (some of this will be due to downtube shifters and 5 speed rear mech). This is over a lot of KM (many 1000s) mostly around 80 km rides and longer. The difference of HEC to Mid is most noticeable on climbs. It's particularly noticeable riding with my normal buddy, on steel sometimes he will beat me (particularly if I don't get the right gear with downtube shifters), on Mid I can get away but hard work, on HEC I can breeze away from him.
I'm certainly not a young, racing wippersnapper. Be interesting when I get Steel #2 up as that will have 11 Sp so looking forward to finding how that pans out in the scheme of things.
Guys, look at us...bickering...squabbling. We never used to be like this.
Who cares is it's carbon or steel? It's a bike, right? And what you like you like, so just go with your own judgement and don't judge other people's choices.
@ Brett - thanks for the photos from the operating theater!
Frame is obviously being built by a skilled artist and surgeon.
Your ability to find and remain within the V-Locus will be automatic.
Chapeau!
@ChrisO
This.
Anyone who claims that a carbon bike is uncomfortable "because carbon" hasn't ridden something like a Cervelo R3 or a BMC SLR, let alone a "comfort-first" bike like the Domane or the Roubaix
It's amusing that some think that the peak of material science is ovalized steel.
/Fred
Least anyone think I don't like steel, I think this is the most wonderful TT bike ever.
I near ly fell off my chair fucken laughing, steel bikes are no slower than any other, its the rider that's slower. maybe you need to visit rule V. LOL.
@The Grande Fondue
You can get a comfortable bike made out many materials, same as you can get an uncomfortable bike - it's called geometry. The point about this article is about the beauty and wonder of a handmade to measure steel frame, it will probably be lovelier to ride than any off the peg chainstore carbon jobbie. When the possibility of having a handmade carbon-fibre frame is a possibility for us mere mortals, I fully expect similar articles, and we all all express our wonder at that.
@Oli
Hear Hear! Next thing someone will start the helmet debate again . . . Ride what you have. Don't like it? Try something else.
@Oli
Right. I'm only concerned if it's steel -- really simple.