Does a bike have a soul? I can’t make that argument, I don’t think I do either, actually. But we do invest a lot of emotion, pride and dare I say love in our bikes. We form emotional bonds to inanimate objects all the time. My favorite old dead car had to sit in the driveway for another year falling further into rusty disrepair before I had it towed away. On an American call-in radio show Car Talk, a caller asked if the engine was a car’s soul and if the car had a new engine put in, did the car lose that soul? This led to a discussion of where else its soul might be and I was more than amused to have them suggest the soul resides in the headliner of the interior.
My Merlin, with its recently discovered hairline crack can’t go into a dumpster when finally put down. It would be like throwing your dog’s corpse into a dumpster. Hopefully there is a market for alloyed titanium and it can be recycled, re-smelted, reborn as a (gasp) golf club. Or does it go over the mantle? Or out to stud? Or a desperate last ditch back alley surgery?*
Do pros bond with their bikes? They can’t, they are on new bikes every other week. There would be a lot of weeping at the service course if they did.
I’m not quite in the market for a replacement but I could be heading in that direction and it brings me to conundrum number two: what are you buying when you buy a new bike? In the old days if you lusted after a steel Colnago Master you ended up with a steel bike made in northern Italy. You were buying into an Italian artisan fantasy aided by the fact that the coolest professional you liked rode a Colnago. Many years ago a American friend did just that and found out the Colnagos shipped to the USA were made in a second Italian factory, more the apprentice shop. My friend’s Colnago’s rear dropouts were misaligned by almost a centimeter, rideable but not the Italian ideal. Ernesto was not working on his bike. Truth be told, all these bikes were made on some sort of assembly line made by underpaid possibly bored workers. What coming out of a factory isn’t?
Now if I want a Colnago, there is a very good chance it will be made in Taiwan on an assembly line by underpaid possibly bored workers. The same factory will also be knocking out Giants and Scotts. The good news is the rear dropouts won’t be out by a centimeter. They will be close to perfect. My point, if I have one, is the euro-fantasy part of this is gone.
If you need your frame to have a soul there is still hope. I’ve been lucky in that my last two bikes were made in shops I actually walked in, looked at the racks of tubes, spent a little time breathing the air in there. My steel bike was built in a one man shop, a standard 60 cm frame but built for me for $350, a sum at the time which was outrageous to the non-velominati. My Merlin was second hand but I went to the factory and spent some time there helping to restore its luster and put on new decals. If bikes had souls they would be imparted by the builders who put a lot of effort and some love into transforming some uncut tubes into something as fantastic as a frame. The soul might still be there in the small shops like Cyfac in France or Moots in the USA where the person who selects the tubing might be the same person as the one who joins the tubes and worries over that frame’s details. But they don’t have souls or spirits, do they? Native Americans believe inanimate objects do. If a rock does, if a stream does, maybe a bike does. Or more likely I’m full of it, a frame is just a hunk of carbon or metal and it’s all a matter of design, execution and price.
If your Colnago EPS is built in Italy it would be in this place. Does this add or subtract to the euro-fantasy?
*the little known bottom bracket-ectomy, where the old BB is milled out and a larger BB 30 is neatly welded in, voila, ridable bike!
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@Gianni
Is that a cigarette dangling from the fork drop-out?
I just recalled how much soul I could have purchased by choosing a Spumoni scheme!
Seeing Frank in bed with his Cervelo is like watching a porno with Oprah in it; yeah, she's a woman, but you don't want to see her naked.
You can have your bike built by Soul
Moots.... Cyfac... Hmmm... Nice.
Another way to look at one's dilemma, and one way I like, is that every ride had on your bike is part of a journey. It is not infinite; the bike isn't either -- unless for some Ti frames -- and finite moments are what make the best in life. I hope you find the next frame/bike to provide more of that ephemeral magic.
@loser
You are aware that Campagnolo made a full BMX gruppo bitd, right?
And that Cinelli made BMX frames and stuff too?
As far as the LoF goes that's one con to being a pro - you have to ride what you're paid to ride regardless of soul.
I don't think its been said here, but a bike does not have a soul, nor does a car. If you were to change every piece of the machine one at a time, you would eventually have a completely different machine with the same soul. The only place for a soul to exist is in the rider or driver, and the soul represents the bond that you have with the machine.
The soul that we feel is our own body harmonizing with the machine. Notice how no-one suggests that blenders have a soul? There is no harmonizing a blender. When dishing out copious amounts of The V, the bike feeds back into your guns with every pedal stroke telling you how its rolling, how the chain is gliding, that feeling is the soul.
Ever been on a climb and thought that the bike wants to go faster than you can? The bike doesn't have a soul or a voice that is literally telling you, but through your legs you can feel its stiff and agile, and that if your lungs would only let you push harder, a better harmony could be achieved.
@Adam
"You can say I'm in love You could say I'm insane.
But no one understands me Like my darling Lorraine."
Shaw -- Open Season
@Adam My toaster has a soul.
@unversio You must love making toast :D