Categories: The Bikes

Does a Bike Have a Soul?

Colnago Master. Photo: Cicli Berlinetta

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!

Gianni

Gianni has left the building.

View Comments

  • @Gianni

    @frank

    @Nate

    @brett

    @Nate

    @brett

    I don't think you can reduce it to material "” rather, it's a function of material x builder.

    For sure, some carbon bikes have soul, that's why I said ti and steel have more...

    I think it comes down to being handmade verses coming off some assembly line...its the imperfections that give it character. Still, I love my molded R3 as much as any bike I've ever had or seen - and to my eyes it certainly inspires me to sit and stare for hours.

    Frank, I almost wrote you for this photo before I posted this article. This photo says it all. Can we love our inanimate objects? Yeah, here we are. "Come on up on the bed with daddy and lets watch us some Tour"

    Is that a cigarette dangling from the fork drop-out?

  • 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.

  • 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

    @Cyclops

    This article speaks to my, uh, soul on many fronts.  Firstly, I've long maintained that ANY Italian bike running anything other than Campagnolo is anathema.  A Colnago running Dura Ace?  I wouldn't even give it a second glance, let alone think about swinging a leg over it.  Back in the day, when I was a mechanic, if you brought you DeRosa with Shimano 600 in to be worked on chances are I rubbed my nut sack on your bar tape.  I think the opposite is equally true.  A 3Rensho with C-Record track hubs?  That would be weird.  It goes without saying that any American brand (Trek, Specialized, Cannondale, etc.) has Carte Blanche when it comes to gruppos.  I really wanted a Campag Record equipped Trek 760 (in beaujolais) back in the 80s.  My current bike #1 is treading a kind of twilight zone.  It is a Look 586 running SRAM Red.  I justify running an American Gruppo on it because there are no modern French components worthy of such a fine bike.

    All this coming from a guy who rode a BMX bike with Campa hubs, which makes me throw up in my mouth a little bit. Pot, kettle, mate. And the Apostle Museeuw disagrees with your view on Italian  steeds with a Groupsan.

    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

1 9 10 11 12 13 18
Share
Published by
Gianni

Recent Posts

Anatomy of a Photo: Sock & Shoe Game

I know as well as any of you that I've been checked out lately, kind…

7 years ago

Velominati Super Prestige: Men’s World Championship Road Race 2017

Peter Sagan has undergone quite the transformation over the years; starting as a brash and…

7 years ago

Velominati Super Prestige: Women’s World Championship Road Race 2017

The Women's road race has to be my favorite one-day road race after Paris-Roubaix and…

7 years ago

Velominati Super Prestige: Vuelta a España 2017

Holy fuckballs. I've never been this late ever on a VSP. I mean, I've missed…

7 years ago

Velominati Super Prestige: Clasica Ciclista San Sebastian 2017

This week we are currently in is the most boring week of the year. After…

7 years ago

Route Finding

I have memories of my life before Cycling, but as the years wear slowly on…

7 years ago