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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@Cyclops
I was so excited to see that someone had registered the username Loser, since it would lift me from a lowly place on the velomi-totem pole (who's lower that a minion? A loser!) and I was getting all gee'ed up for the hazing. Imagine my disappointment when I see what you've gone and done, changing Frink's name to loser. I hope you're not suggesting anything there Cyclops.
@Adam Well said man. The feedback between bike and body is a beautiful thing, the harmonizing, as you say. I actually do harmonize with my blender when I return from Sunday ride: mango juice, many frozen apple bananas, some vanilla flavored protein powder. Oh lordy, it's heaven in a pint glass.
@gordo
Oh man, the yellow Colnago. Yeah, it's hard to argue with those bikes. Especially the chrome head lugs and insane paint. I would love to own those two bikes of yours. That is a proper "quiver".
@936adl
All the keepers have been salivating over your ride. It's TFM man. Is it a stainless Reynolds tubeset? It seems from the video they tig weld parts then braze something else, maybe the seat stay/seat tube wrap. Either way, awesome bike, nice paint.
@frank
Thank you for this, if you didn't post it I would have.The honest exception to the rule, a C40 in 7700 just looks right, especially in Mapei livery. With a pedigree including the aforementioned Apostle, Ballerini, Tafi, Olano, Steels, VdB, Bartoli, Bettini, Rominger, Friere and on and on, these bikes have a soul and character like few others. The azzurro bar tape remains nut sack free, to suggest otherwise is sacrilege.
@frank
Don't come crying to me when you go ass-over-tea kettle on the CX-V because you were sliding around in the snow with 2x4s attached to your feet instead of catching big are and learning bike handling skills as a yute.
big air
Does a bike have soul? Of course it does. It is a lot easier to identify it in a steel bike but it also exists in carbon bikes, so long as it is lugged and has straight tubes. A bike's soul resides within its top tube. How else can you explain why bikes with sloping top tubes have no soul? It flows out, down the seat tube and through the drain holes under the bottom bracket unless the top tube is level. A sloping stem also hastens the loss of soul. Everything on this bike has been changed except the main frame and forks but its soul has been maintained. There aren't many bikes racing today that have soul.
Great stuff, Gianni! Ha..."a lot of weeping at the service course..." I often wonder such things about PROS - do they unite with the bike in the same way, what's it like to no longer do any maintenance of your steed, and on.
Very sorry to read about this hairline fracture. The first I've heard of this.
I like all my bikes a whole bunch and they are all special in their own way. I see some of them as pure tools - fast, off road - but some of them are just a joy to ride and have.
Pistol - I agree. I own a few steel bikes with ol' geo. I own one carbon race bike that has a TT slope. It's fast, but it just doesn't do it for me, just a tool, just a bike. Something is in that plain, original main triangle, I do think. You're onto something, friend!
@Gianni
Yep, it's a Reynolds 953 Stainless tubeset. The frameset in the video is 853, but i understand the process is similiar. The seat stay wrapover is a rourke signature, and this is only the second one that was done in bare stainless. It's a lot of work to do, and a fairly pricey option, but the finish is just lovely.
The video really does capture what it's like to have a full custom build put together by Rourke's. From the fitting, to choosing colour schemes, to the waiting, to finally taking delivery. It's not a cheap way to by a bike, but absolutely worth every penny. And along the way you know evey single person involved in the process. I'm a lucky man!
@mxlmax
Been trying to get a wheelset out of those guys.
Emailed about the S2.0 three weeks ago. He says they're out of them, waiting on next year's to arrive. Email us again in a couple of weeks.
Emailed again yesterday to see if they're in yet. His response was, exact quote: "unfortunately not".
No mention of when they might arrive, no offer to, I don't know, email me when they do get in.
Just odd if they do want to sell stuff.
@frank
Now this is why I love your site. Suggestions for the other five? Or have they already been articulated and I've missed that?