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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As long as lance Armstrong hasn't ridden it, it has a soul. Otherwise it's the whore of Babylon .....
@frank I'll give this a shot, seems as good as an excuse as needed for some ridiculous Cipo porn!
huh, interestingly that last closing tag seems to disappear in the transition from the preview window to the post being published...I wouldn't worry too much though Frank, my money's on it being the rubbish browser my work's IT department foists upon us.
@Onno1990
Thanks man, I bet finding someone who can braze Ti is no easy matter either. Who knew it was even possible. You did!
I have many bikes, but as others have said, I don't believe these bikes come with a soul. The soul of a bike (more specifically the bike frame only) is something that is ignited at a given moment in time when the bond between rider and machine suddenly spark into existence. It's like that moment you first realize you're in love with another human, or your first child is born. An epiphany of the connection sparks a previously unrealized appreciation and bond that forevermore causes a divergent set of feelings and thoughts each and every time you ride or even think of riding that specific frame. The specific build around the frame is nothing more than a metaphor for clothing - fancy or cheep it's all irrelevant to the frame's soul.
Like I said, I have many bikes, but only two of them have a soul...
Ti and steel definitely have more soul than Al or carbon. Though my Scandium Merckx has a lot of soul, so much more than my Specializeds did, even though they were great riding bikes, they didn't have the 'sit and stare for hours' gene.
There's just something about thin, straight tubes that fat, swoopy carbon just doesn't capture.
A modern take on steel... hot.
@JFT
As above ..... I too am embracing the n+1 rule ...... however only one of my rides has a connection with me and I a connection with it ........ its about the story behind it and hence why I feel more as one with my new bike than any others. Through a serious neck injury, my older Trek "USPS" edition ...yes I said it, USPS edition ....lets not rant about FAN boys etc here ... thats a whole other can of worms...... well it was deemed to large for me and in order to again get riding the task of searching for a suitable steed was on in ernest ......6 months of searching / researching / pricing this and admiring that, the final decision came down to one bike, my Fuji SST.... yes its mass produced, no its not a fine italian steed with eons of history.... but it fits like a glove, I was drawn to it time and time again while other bigger brands tried to woo me with there promises ..... I kept coming back to her ...... so whether its a soul in the true sense of the word or a feeling you get when two become one, Im not sure..but regardless of this carbon steeds pedigree, its now part of me and part of my story... its no longer in a box, or part of a military style line up in a LBS somewhere.... its mine, its in the shed with covers on it when its not on the road ... so, just maybe, by default, she has a soul afterall !!
@Pistolfrom warragul
Mighty fine bike, we need a bigger image to better lust up.
@brett If you tell me that Wilier's yours I'm jumping on a plane to Welli for some Grand Theft Velo...Bel Mezzo indeed.
@brett
I don't think you can reduce it to material -- rather, it's a function of material x builder.