Further to Friday’s post, there’s riding with dignity, and there’s getting aero, and never the twain shall meet:
Yes, when it comes to appearances, cutting a fine figure and cutting through the wind are mutually exclusive. Either sit up, look good, and ride slow, or else cheat the wind like Bernie Madoff cheated his investors by strapping an inflatable dorkal dorsal fin to your back, or riding a vintage clown bike, like I did yesterday:
This was the first time in awhile I’d ridden George Plimpton’s Y-Foil, a.k.a. The Charity Ride Destroyer in all its glory, right down to the Tri-Spokes:
By the way, shortly after heading out I realized in a panic that I’d forgotten the little crack pipe thingy you need in order to inflate them:
So I stopped and checked and fortunately it seemed like my mini-pump would work without an adapter should I need to stop and fix a flat:
The last thing I need on a Sunday morning is to be stranded 20 miles from home with an unrideable Y-Foil. It would be like one of those anxiety dreams where you find yourself naked in public. Actually, even riding a functioning Y-Foil is kind of like being naked in public, but at least you’re moving fast enough that people aren’t quite sure what they’re seeing and are unlikely to recognize you.
The Y-Foil wasn’t the only Trek I rode this past weekend, either:
While the Y-Foil and the Tete de Course are very different bicycles, they’re similar in that they’ve both extreme in their own way. With the Y-Foil, Trek went as far it could with frame design, only to get its hand slapped by the UCI. The Tete de Course came just a few years later, and with their hand still smarting they stuck to a traditional frame design, though they executed it by gluing together the most expensive materials they could get their hands on to make sure you couldn’t afford it:
Ultimately, both are perfect examples of the extreme lengths bike companies were willing to go to in order to replicate the plush ride quality of a slightly wider tire.
Speaking of wide tires, it wasn’t all tight clearances and stretchy pants this past weekend, and I also rode not one…
…but two Rivendae:
If the measure of a weekend is how many bikes you managed to ride then this was a good one.