When you ride all year long there’s not much need to give your bikes a spring tune-up since you’ve been keeping them more or less in tune anyway. However, the so-called “Normcore Bike” is a different story, as it’s currently my elder son’s commuter. This means it’s often hastily lashed to bike racks and left out in the rain, so for the safety of both bicycle and rider I gave it a bit of a going over yesterday:
As I took the above photo I heard a splash from that little pond in the background, and just barely managed to get a shot of what I assume to be a Red-tailed Hawk [I have since been informed it’s an osprey] snatching itself an early dinner:
As one of cycling’s preeminent bird photographers I should probably start carrying an actual camera around with me, but this was the best I could do with a so-called “smart telephone,” pinch-zooming, and subsequent cropping:
As such, the images are a bit blurry, but you can tell that he hawk has either a fish or else a gigantic bird erection:
Nevertheless, even these fuzzy images are more than sufficient to convey the grace and might of this airborne killing machine:
And as it flew off into the evening sky I marveled at its power and efficiency:
Similarly, while not exactly a bird of prey, the “bird of meh” that is the Normcore Bike is also graceful and mighty, and I marveled at its power and efficiency as I ran through the gears during my test ride:
My fondness for the Normcore Bike is not because it’s more graceful and mighty that other road bikes (it’s really not), but because it’s an utterly competent road bike that can be had extraordinarily cheaply–the odd ambitious seller notwithstanding:
That’s got to be some kind of record:
While I believe in capitalism and a free market, I must say that we in the Bonded Trek Community frown upon of this sort of rampant speculation. I mean at least throw some bar tape and a pair of fresh hoods on there! This is like one of those real estate ads where they show you a pile of rubble for a million dollars and say, “Bring your contractor and your imagination!”
Speaking of the Bonded Trek Community, I’ve got quite a bit of perspective on it, for not only do I have a “lowly” 1200, but I’m also the temporary custodian of the rarefied and exotic carbotanium LeMond Tete de Course:
Glued-together bikes moved to the fore in the 1980s:
In addition to those Vituses (Vitae?) there were also those carbon-and-aluminum Specialized Allez (Alizé?) and Giant Cadexes (Cadeces?):
But I’d say it was Trek who really ran furthest with the concept. They first began sniffing glue back in 1985:
And by 1989 (the year the Normcore Bike would have been new) they had a whole line of bonded bikes, from entry level aluminum to high-end models incorporating carbon fiber tubes. Arguably, this culminated in the aughts with the ultra-luxury Tete de Course, until gluing metal to metal and metal to carbon finally went completely out of style shortly thereafter. I mean how could you sell a bonded bike like the Tete de Course today anyway? Consumers have long accepted that carbon is the material of choice for high-performance bicycles, so why the hell would they be interested in a bike where it’s glued to something else?
But cycling is no less fashion-based than clothing, and whether it’s bikes or pants you can count on every bygone trend eventually making a return. For example, this past August, I mentioned you can basically buy a custom made-to-measure 1991 Trek 2300:
This company, Framework Bicycles, appears to work on the Seven model, that being giving the customer sufficient rope with which to hang himself by allowing him to specify every single aspect of the frame’s geometry, however ill-advised–and as this review shows, sometimes there’s nothing more dangerous than fancying yourself an expert:
The cycling media tends to go heavy on the word salad, and the desert hipster website from whence this review comes is its Sweetgreen–lots of ingredients and a high-end presentation, but still, you know, a salad. It all starts out well enough, with the reviewer confident that his self-professed expertise in the “all road/gravel/rando/touring sphere” will result in the perfect bicycle:
However, things quickly go awry when he loses himself in strange musings about circles and triangles:
I think this is what happens when you consume cannabis and attempt to explain that a bike should fit you good.
While the prose only grows more inscrutable from there, it nevertheless becomes plain that he is attempting to express nothing less than his very essence in the angles of his artisanal glued-together frame:
I tend not to believe that the answer to what ails us as a society is “more organized religion,” but when people are so lost and dissatisfied that they’re trying to find spiritual and creative fulfillment in a bicycle geometry chart you can’t help but wonder if perhaps one of the major faiths holds the answers they seek:
If you ever find your need for complementary numbers so in need of soothing that you are tempted to self-engineer a custom bicycle in an effort to spark joy in your subconscious, simply print out the chart above, punch a hole in it, and insert some sort of dial. Then spin that dial, and whichever symbol it lands on, just go to the nearest house of worship that matches it and do whatever they say. Don’t think, just obey. Typically I wouldn’t recommend this, but if you’re this profoundly lost you’ll be much better off in the long run.
Alas, instead of surrendering himself to the Spinning Wheel of Faith, he moves forward with the bicycle as planned, and it comes out all funky and ass-backward:
This leaves him not only unfulfilled, but so bereft of joy he is contemplating giving it away.
Shoulda picked up an old 2300.