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

  • @Adam I think you stated the sentiment very well. When I crashed my Pinarello Montello (bent front fork, arch in the down tube) the bike was dead -- and was left behind in a spiritual sense. I quickly worked on finding a new (better) frame to replace the feeling -- my own bike soul.

  • My favorite all around. Have a C59 which is perfect for me as far as carbon but this is my first love

  • The TSX MkIV. There's a lot of love in the sunlight glinting off the record hubs, chainstays and shifters. I find myself nearly riding off the road as I get a bit mesmerized by it all on a sunny summer day.

  • @Cyclops

    Companies do crazy things. Porche has a sedan now, too. Doesn't make it right to buy it. Putting Campa on a BMX bike is one of the five things you can do in Velominati to get excommunicated. I don't want to see you go, so best we keep a lid on 'er, right?

    And I agree that in many ways it cooler to be a douchebag like us and get to build the dream bike rather than a Pro who has to ride whatever they're given.

  • @936adl

    This. This is the reason a handmade frame has more personality than a molded one. Those details will put a smile on your face every time you look at it. Amazing.

  • Bikes have a soul, or at least a personality or character.  Personally, I think it's easier to see that soul if the builder crafted the bike with intent, passion, and love.  I don't think that those characteristics are inherent in any one group of bicycle manufacturers or framebuilders; bikes with soul can come from the Americas, Italy, Asia...  Although I will confess that my very first good bike, back in the late eighties, was a Bianchi Campione del Italia because I was a neophyte Italophile and felt that it had more soul than the American bikes of the day.  Pity I couldn't have afforded something better, back in those high school days.  It's still down in my paren't basement twenty years later, though, waiting to be resurrected.

    The shop that I bought if from used to say that a bike wasn't yours until you'd ridden it more kilometers than the dollars it cost.  Maybe that's what it takes to start seeing its soul...

  • @frank

    @Cyclops

    Companies do crazy things. Porche has a sedan now, too. Doesn't make it right to buy it. Putting Campa on a BMX bike is one of the five things you can do in Velominati to get excommunicated. I don't want to see you go, so best we keep a lid on 'er, right?

    And I agree that in many ways it cooler to be a douchebag like us and get to build the dream bike rather than a Pro who has to ride whatever they're given.

  • @cognition

    The shop that I bought if from used to say that a bike wasn't yours until you'd ridden it more kilometers than the dollars it cost.  Maybe that's what it takes to start seeing its soul...

    I'm liking the sound of that shop.

1 10 11 12 13 14 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