I posted this picture as a joke in yesterday’s Anatomy of a Photo piece, but I find myself going back to it over and over, captivated by the way the light gleams off the peloton as they race by. Gleaming metal bits – hubs, cranks, spokes, handlebars, stems, frames, toe clips, all reflecting light from a thousand discrete points as the bunch rolls by, is a thing of the past.
Something of the romanticism of our sport has been crushed under the inevitable advancement of technology, as little by little each handmade alloy component on our bicycles has been displaced by a machine-built carbon replacement. It started with the clipless pedal’s succession of the toe clip; robbing us of the shimmering vision of sunlight reflecting off the metal clips from 200 riders’ feet as they approached from the distance. Today, even the metal shifting cables on the modern bike have been replaced in some cases by the rubberized cables of electronic drivetrains.
I look at my cherished R3 and, while I fully embrace the advantages and conveniences provided me by it’s modern technology, there is hardly a silver component in the lot. Even most of the alloy components like the stem and bars have been anodized black. Just the hubs and spokes, and little bits of the front and rear mechs are silver, but even those pieces don’t have the polished luster of the machines I see in the photo here. I wish I knew who took this picture because I’d love to offer him a beer. It’s a work of art: the long shadows, the bikes leaning in unison into the corner, the looks of determination on the riders’ faces, but most of all, the way the light is exploding out of Greg LeMan’s bike.
So, next time you find an old bicycle leaning against a tired wall, it’s aluminium components glistening in the sunlight, take a moment to linger and contemplate the beauty of it’s componentry. You will be standing before a relic of a bygone era when the grace and elegance of our great sport was enhanced by the glistening light radiating from the machines that carried our great heroes.
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Not to hijack the thread, but how does one obtain an avatar?
Isn't it great how everyone who starts a sentence out like that, does exactly the opposite. Not to be a jerk but...
@frank
geez, I went to the troble of getting the valve stems at the bottom, the chain in the dog, the fucking grass, water and horizon perfect, and you pick me up on a +\- 5 degree crank infraction? Tough marker...
The bars are the originals still, I have a set of Ritchey Classic bends coming next week, $30 off TradeMe! They will be teamed with the ITM 130mm stem, and Fizik tape. Also have a San Marco Regal saddle on its way, then we're done (except for a front Campy skewer).
@michael
Oh yeah, try Gravatar.com
@michael, @Brett
Yeah, we use gravatard like most other sites. It's one of those technologies that's so genius it was inevitable. When I was studying Computer Science, one of the hot topics was the best approach for finding a globally unique identifier, which is logically a challenge because you have to come up with an approach for picking a value that no one else will ever pick ever again in the history of time. Gravatar is genius because an email is necessarily unique globally. It's not a GUID because every time you pick the email address it's the same as the time it was before, but it's a good place to start. Anyway, I digress, and I'm already afraid I've opened up the nerd can here and am going to shut up.
Synopsis, go get a Gravatar at http://www.gravatar.com/ and you'll have a sweet avatar.
Not sure if it's been posted elsewhere, but here is the link for entries for 2011 Tour of Flanders
http://sport.be.msn.com/cyclingtour/rondevanvlaanderen/2011/eng/
@frank
No fair. I had to figure it out on my own by searching for information about avatars in the WordPress technical documents. I figured it was some sort of obscure right of passage.
@roadslave
That is pretty sweet! When I someday (hopefully) have the cash to vacation in bicycling-specific destinations, that type of thing would be super fun.
I was actually thinking of the Tour of Flanders today, as I was riding around in the West Hills of Portland and I kept spotting yellow "Lion of Flanders" stencils on the pavement. Once a year there is a Ronde PDX ride, covering 76 km and 1406 m of elevation gain. I've never done it because I'm perpetually two months from peaking, but it seems pretty damn brutal.
Well let me tell you about my gravatar experience, I had apparently registered there years ago with a long dead email address that was forwarding to another long dead email address and eventually I got logged in after about an hour of dinking around.
I watched the Aspen Circuit race that year...your photo brought back lots of good memories. thanks.
I love the performance of my modern carbon bike, but the looks of it, and the components, don't do much for me. Eh...it's nice looking, but I never find myself staring at it.
On the other hand, checking out my Tommasini with C-Record, silver everything, now that gives me serious carbone...
This love of shiny metal bikes and bits actually isn't that bad, it just gives us all a reason to own one modern carbon bike and at least one classic steel bike.
I absolutely hate black hubs, spokes and rims. Eck. Give me silver all the way!
Has anyone tested the new electronic shifting? I'm curious.