What is more seductive than a ribbon of road vanishing into the fall foliage?
And what is more repulsive than the sight of a late-90s’ freak bike?
But here’s the thing about bikes: if you really love riding them, they all win you over eventually. (Okay, not all, but most. Or many. Or a lot of them.) For years, I ridiculed the Y-Foil, a wildly dork-tacular bike that was the very antithesis of the classic materials and silhouettes I hold sacred. But you know what? I really like riding it! There, I said it. See, here’s the thing about the Y-Foil: you know that phrase, the most clichéd five words in all of cycledom?
Laterally Stiff Vertically Compliant
Since the dawn of time, bike reviewers have told us that this material or that material possesses magical qualities that can render a bike laterally stiff yet vertically compliant. “Crabon filters out high-frequency vibrations.” “Titanium has a springy ride quality.” “There’s nothing like the magic carpet ride of classic steel.” And so forth–none of which really stand up to scrutiny, since whatever the bike’s made of you’re basically just sitting on top of a rigid diamond. Yes, some bikes are undeniably smoother than others, but you’re never sure if it’s the material, or the geometry, or the seatpost, or the saddle, or the tires, or just how you happen to be feeling that day. (I’ve absolutely found a bike to be sublimely comfortable one day and borderline painful the next–your “fitness” such as it is on any given day informs quite a bit about how your bike feels.)
But the Y-Foil is different: it’s not a diamond. (Well, mostly. I guess there’s kind of a diamond in there.) Instead, you’re sitting on a beam–and the beam flexes. And unlike, say, the rolling diving board that is a Softride, the flex is quite subtle–subtle enough that it feels like a normal diamond road frame, until you hit some rough pavement or something, at which point you realize you are in fact undeniably suspended. It climbs like a normal road bike, it sprints like a normal road bike, it does everything else like a normal road bike, but at the same time you’re isolated from the most jarring shocks and vibrations. Is the frame design more effective than, say, a 32mm tire or a leather saddle? Not necessarily. Are those a better way to improve ride feel? Almost certainly. Still, the fact remains: the Y-Foil is indeed laterally stiff yet vertically compliant, a quality that few if any traditionally designed frames can unequivocally claim to possess regardless of the parts that are bolted to them.
Again, the problem of harsh-riding road bikes has since been addressed thanks to wider tires and all the rest of it, but at a time when anything wider than 25mm on a race bike was considered unthinkable, the Y-Foil did indeed “improve” upon the traditional racing frame by being simultaneously more aerodynamic and more comfortable, qualities that were long considered mutually exclusive. Does that make the Y-Foil a noteworthy success in the context of the era in which it was designed? Or is it the rolling embodiment of how ridiculous it was that everyone insisted on using narrow tires at all times?
I say it’s both, and that we should laugh at it and appreciate it.
But yes, before the UCI cracked down on non-traditional frame designs at the end of the 1990s, it’s hard to appreciate just how intent frame designers were to eliminate the seat tube once carbon fiber made it possible to do so. Here’s another example, which a reader reminded me of recently:
The Y-Foil can confound the eye when you’re expecting to see a diamond frame, but at the same time it’s a design with its own internal logic, and once you realize it’s not a traditional frame your brain quickly come to terms with it. That doesn’t mean you like it necessarily, only that it is what it is, which is a bicycle unto itself. The Kestrel however is basically a traditional frame only without a seat tube, so no matter how long you look at it your brain wants to put that seat tube back:
Speaking of the Kestrel, my time with a 4000 was one of the most significant bicycle relationships in my cycling life, and recently I happened upon yet another contemporary review:
These words were both chilling and prescient:
Granted, the timeline was a bit off–Trek’s top-of-the-line bikes were full carbon five years after the 4000, but most others’ weren’t:
But here we are in 2024, and if you head out onto the popular roadie routes in your area you’ll see that the “mantle of progress” (I’m not even sure what that means) has certainly won out:
Though I would argue that the prognostication regarding steel being relegated to the “nostalgia market” was not borne out. Sure, nostalgia may be part of the reason steel’s still around, but it’s mostly because you still can’t beat the combination of durability, price, and performance:
The wide tires give it Y-Foil smoothness, you can put fenders and stuff on it, you can carry more than one water bottle, and as a bonus the seat tube helps protect you from road spray. (You don’t want to be out on a bike without fenders when it’s really wet outside, but you don’t want to be out on the Y-Foil when it’s even slightly wet at all.)
Some opt for progress while others lament it:
Meanwhile, it’s not all abandoned Citi Bikes around these parts:
I mean there are a lot of them, but the city has also added a lot of bike lanes, which means we can now take a family ride to Little It’ly almost entirely via bike lanes and greenways:
Of course I took the Platypus, as it’s my dedicated leftovers hauler:
That’s also bread from the bakery of the guy who wrote an op-ed against the very bike lanes we used to get there:
I can’t tell if the joke’s on him or us.
Actually, the joke’s on all the people sitting in traffic–except for the ices guy, who like us was making the most of the Indian summer warm fall weather:
I guess progress is what you make of it.