Categories: Accessories and GearDefining MomentsFolkloreIl ProgettoNostalgiaThe Bikes

La Bicyclette, Part II: Scars

Coppi’s Specialissima carries the scars that tell a story.

We meticulously care for our bicycle, stopping only just short of pampering it. Through ages spend coveting, building, and riding it, we become attached to it and its beautiful finishing details – the luster of the frame’s finish, the angle and sweep of the bars, the gleaming white tape, the tires, the wheels – all perfectly curated and cared for. Though we anthropomorphize it; the bicycle is, at its core, a tool. It is meant to be ridden. It is built to carry us to the heavenly heights of our sport’s legendary Cols and into the jarring hell of the Pavé du Nord; our machines will be subjected to vehicular transport, to ruthless baggage handlers, to rain, mud, snow, to crashes, and to careless accidents that come to it by way of its daily use. As the bike’s cosmetic perfection fades, it gives way to a beauty told through its scars: derailleurs and ergo shifters ground down in a crash, crank arms rubbed by countless revolutions of the pedals, chips in the frame’s finish from road rocks or gouges in the paint from a stubborn signpost used to improperly lean our machine against.

Through our journey, we have lost hold of the boundary between rider and machine; each wound inflicted upon la bicyclette is a wound inflicted upon our very flesh. It is the Way of Things. The ride is the cathedral where we worship, and the bike is the mechanism that carries us through this journey of discovery, beauty, pleasure, pain, triumph, and tragedy. I would much rather see my cherished #1 cleft in two upon the cobbles of Northern Europe than have her waiting at home, immaculate and flawless.

This damage is nevertheless categorized into good scars and bad scars. Good scars enliven the narrative we weave upon our machines and includes benign crash damage, rub marks on the cranks, besmirched bar tape, rubbed-off logos on the nose of the saddle, or that spot along the top tube where your knees have dulled the paint through total commitment to finding the V Locus. My Bianchi EV2, on its maiden voyage after replacing the original frame destroyed in a crash, was to be subjected to a catastrophic failure of my Mektronic drivetrain in a town-line sprint. The derailleur autonomously shifted, the chain snapped, several spokes broke free from the rear wheel and then rapped upon the rear triangle, tearing giant chunks of paint from the seat and chain stays. I nearly crashed and my new frame had already lost its cosmetic perfection, but these marks help tell a story which would be the poorer for their absence.

Bad scars, on the other hand, include the several dozen ding marks scattered about your frame and wheels from the time you carefully packed your bike into a travel case but neglected to remove a loose allen key which then spent the duration of the 12-hour flight to Europe bouncing around inside the case. Or perhaps that time someone helpfully leaned your bike against a car and someone drove off in that same car before you had a chance to move it, like I did to my dad’s new Merckx the first weekend he had it, as he was preparing for his first ride on it. And, of course, the time-tested rite of passage: replacing your forks after driving into the garage with the bike still on the roof.

Through use, our beloved machines will lose their cosmetic perfection. We do our best to avoid them, but once the pain has faded, the narrative of our time together speaks through the scars left on La Bicyclette.

Vive la Vie Velominatus.

frank

The founder of Velominati and curator of The Rules, Frank was born in the Dutch colonies of Minnesota. His boundless physical talents are carefully canceled out by his equally boundless enthusiasm for drinking. Coffee, beer, wine, if it’s in a container, he will enjoy it, a lot of it. He currently lives in Seattle. He loves riding in the rain and scheduling visits with the Man with the Hammer just to be reminded of the privilege it is to feel completely depleted. He holds down a technology job the description of which no-one really understands and his interests outside of Cycling and drinking are Cycling and drinking. As devoted aesthete, the only thing more important to him than riding a bike well is looking good doing it. Frank is co-author along with the other Keepers of the Cog of the popular book, The Rules, The Way of the Cycling Disciple and also writes a monthly column for the magazine, Cyclist. He is also currently working on the first follow-up to The Rules, tentatively entitled The Hardmen. Email him directly at rouleur@velominati.com.

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View Comments

Dan O says:

Jul 6 2012 at 12:58 am

Great post - my thinking also. Good scar: Anything that occurs while bike in motion. Lame scar: Anything that occurs otherwise.

One of my mountain bikes has all the usual good scars: Worn crank arms, various scratches, and other proof of off-road action. It also has one bad scar: On the seatpost, where another bike rubbed against it while being transported. Lame.

Pisses me off every time I look at it...
withnails says:

Jul 6 2012 at 1:45 am

My name is withnails and I too have a scarred bike. Prior to a Sunday ride my VMH lovingly got my #1 out the garage in preparation for my ride. Sadly, she is unaware of Rule #65 and leaned said bike against the edge a brick wall, leaving a small but intensely annoying scar on the side of the top tube. It was only my love for VMH and her good intentions that prevented me for filing for divorce. I've since said that she doesn't need to help get my bike ready as the "chain's too oily".
Jeff in PetroMetro says:

Jul 6 2012 at 4:40 am

@withnails "Chain's too oily." Well played.
Beaconjon says:

Jul 6 2012 at 5:22 am

Spot on again! Great article. Bikes are for riding and as such gain the scars of use.

Here's one for you though, I lost a load of the graphics from my anodised S-Works E5 last year as we drove down to the Alps, bike on roof, through some of the worst rain I've ever encountered. Could this be described as a good scar? Ok
I wasn't technically riding it at the time but it was involved in a pre-epic ride journey. Or am I just being a knob?
Dennis Wurster says:

Jul 6 2012 at 10:04 am

Beau-sage.
frank says:

Jul 7 2012 at 2:39 pm

@snoov

Yes, yes, yes. Although we love our bikes, we also love to put as much torsion through the frame, cranks, wheels, chain and bars as our body can exert. It's after all what they are built for and I hate hearing of folks avoiding certain roads because they're a bit bumpy, and not to minimise punctures. Some scars are worse than others though, the ones caused by careless placement especially, a Rule #65 failure.

No kidding, the timeless advice imparted by stronger riders than me is to the question, "How do you make it go so fast?" is usually something like,

Oh, you just try to break your handlebars.

I see.

Along the lines of road abuse causing damage to the bikes...wow. Go ride the cobbles for a week (upcoming KT2013 announcement being made imminently) and you'll learn a thing or two about what kind of beating your bike can take and not assume any actual damage. Amazing how much tougher wheels and frames are than we give them credit for.
frank says:

Jul 7 2012 at 3:06 pm

@Souleur

if your not scarred, your not riding! I look at some peoples rigs and wonder, are you even riding that thing? Its freakin pristine...too pristine.

I like seeing the knicks in the tyres, the symmetrical grooves in the braking surface (not the carbon though), the grit that accumulates under the fork between the 'thorough' washings , and the crap that is under the fi'zi:k Microtex, thank Merckx its covered!

I am really mulling the cathedral/tool analogy around, that was insightful Frank

I wash my bike like I'm paid to do it, and keep #1 spotless, #2 even more so because it gets ridden less (sorry, girl), and #3 the least because it takes the most of a beating, but they are all kept annoyingly clean.

That said, a close look will slow signs of heavy use; no logos on the shimano cranks, the logos on the saddles worn off or in various states of being worn off, the odd scratch, and worn-smooth hoods. Its a thing of beauty, that.

@Dan_R

I always thought Stevie Ray Vaughan's #1 guitar - First Wife, as he called it - was such a great-looking guitar. Just beat to shit through use. To this day, when I see a guy playing a flawless guitar, I think, "He must not play that very much."

I once took a perfectly good Les Paul and sanded down all the areas I thought should be worn out. I shouldn't have done that - they all wound up being bad scars. But the sentiment was right; I wanted my guitar to look like I love it. But the path was wrong; I should have just played it until it looked that way.
frank says:

Jul 7 2012 at 3:14 pm

@Duende

Bad scars include chips in the paint on the top tube acquired when a four-year old's game of fetch with the dog in the house results in the dog slamming into the bike and bringing it crashing to the ground.

It quite possibly feels that way when it happens, but that's a story that tell's itself! It starts with "four-year-old" and "fetch" along with the scene of "in the house" and builds from there.

Gold!

@velocodger

Thanks for the reminder...I forgot to clean and put a little lube on the fork dropouts...it is a source of creaks....a tip I gleaned from a young but very competent mechanic. A noisy bike drives me crazy.

And the QR-levers as well. My Merckx that's maddening!
@versio

That, all around, is a beautiful bike. How many of those do you have around?

And, with this subject and that Corsa Extra in your stable somewhere, I'm going to say what I think should have been said a long time ago: That MX Leader of yours is crying to me across the ether for you to pull out the quill adapter and begging for a real stem (Cinelli X/A) worthy of that bike's heritage to replace it.
frank says:

Jul 7 2012 at 3:32 pm

@Mike V

This reminds me of a long ago time when Nelson Vails was building a new road bike (Team Raleigh for the visual image) in the shop I was soon to be working at. I was visiting the shop at the time he was finishing the build. Upon completion, he reached over for a ball-peen hammer and gave the top tube a nice little whack resulting in a small dent. He said, "it's going to happen eventually, I just like to get it out of the way."

Oooooooooooooowwwwwwwwwiiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeee. I appreciate the sentiment and it might be rather effective, but that just hurts.

@mcsqueak

@snoov

It's after all what they are built for and I hate hearing of folks avoiding certain roads because they're a bit bumpy, and not to minimise punctures.

There is a local hillclimbing ride here, where the first hill is up a gravel/dirt trail, roughly 8km long and 300m in elevation gain. It's hard-packed and not too bad as long as you're not riding it right after a heavy rain. I've heard of people using a close-by paved road instead, so they don't mess up their fancy bikes. Seems stupid to me.

I actually heard someone complaining about their bike getting dirty on the way up the climb. I broke in with "It's a tool, it's supposed to get dirty, it'll be fine" and they returned with a "oh yeah, I guess...".

Then again, I am the idiot that took my road bike down what would better be described as "singletrack" the other week when I was exploring a local hill I'd never been up, which is a nature preserve as well. Going down that on a road bike was a bit dicey to say the least, but I managed to not crash!

You are coming along nicely, Pedalwan. @Scaler911 is doing will to guide you.

Speaking of that singletrack, I've spent the last three days in Winthrop, Washington - most beautiful place on Earth - reconning what appears to be thousands of miles of perfect mountain gravÃ©. I have the workings in my head to commandeer G'rilla's GravÃ© Cogal to Snoqualmie Falls (or supplementing it) and do a Gaveur Cogal up in the hills out there. The identified route involves something like 120km of perfect gravel roads over three of four passes, with a final section of singletrack better suited to hiking or a mountainbike (and with an escape-hatch gravel bypass for all the pussies) which will round out the pain nicely. Nothing like ending an imperial century with a full-on hike-a-bike CX course. Anything less would be wasted.

And, I'll plan on buying a keg of Imperial IPA for the campsite from which we'll start and end. I'm thinking August. I'm thinking I might be riding alone.
frank says:

Jul 7 2012 at 3:34 pm

@Jeff in PetroMetro

@mcsqueak I pedal with my heels turned in, like a ballerina. So I wore the paint off my chainstay. Good scar.

Thought I might venture that you pedal with your heels pointed towards the V-Locus, which is more than just turned in.

Definitely a good scar. Any news on the repair?