Yesterday I mentioned I’m currently laying the groundwork for a new bicycle. While I refused to divulge what exactly that bike will be, a few of you made guesses, but I’m sorry to say you were all wrong. The bike I’m getting is in fact the Canyon This Freaking Thing:
Just kidding!
No, a reader recently reminded me of that Canyon thing, and you may recall it’s the bike with those crazy handlebars:
Which evokes either this optical illusion:
Or an old-timey biplane, depending on how hard you squint:
You’ve got to admire the engineers at Canyon, because until now there simply wasn’t an elegant way to get your handlebars higher…
Speaking of quill stems, most of you naturally assumed I was getting a Rivendell, which I’ll neither confirm or deny, even though it’s painfully obvious what the answer is. Specifically, one reader mentioned the Gus Boots Willsen, which looks like this:
If I were getting a Rivendell–which I’m not saying I am, mind you–I’d certainly be intrigued by this particular model. However, ultimately I’d most likely decide against it, since it does seem like it would overlap too much with the way I use my Jones. Instead I think what I could really use would be a deluxe version of the Ironic Orange Julius bike, only with gears:
In fact, now that I think about it, I even got those bars from Rivendell.
Anyway, the IOJB lives in Queens now (I’m there often and one should always have a velocipede-a-terre), and I’ve certainly got plenty of drop-bar road bikes, so a fast-yet-upright bike bike I could hop on and ride for three hours in a t-shirt and flip-flops seems like just the ticket…
…though that describes pretty much every Rivendell, so that doesn’t really narrow things down very much.
I guess you’ll just have to wait and see what I end up with. (I’m looking forward to finding out myself.)