Have you ever dreamed of owning a custom bicycle? Sure you have! Well, the good news is that they now cost as much as stock bicycles–astonishingly expensive stock bicycles, but still:
Read on as one intrepid cycling journalist confronts his inner demons, undertakes a journey of self-discovery, and ultimately obtains the expensive green bicycle of his dreams:
And no, Stephen Roche is not the Stephen Roche:
Who was apparently found guilty of fraud back in 2022:
Presumably, while sunburned Freds pedaled around Mallorca on his cycling tours, he was living the high life in Hungary or something:
Seems to me he had it backwards and that should have rented an apartment in Mallorca while sending people off to Hungary, but what do I know about fraud?
Speaking of fraud, because mainstream bike companies now have the nerve to charge the average annual wage in Hungary for a single bicycle (it’s true, I looked it up), Roche (the other Roche, that is) advises his client to skip the S-Wanks or whatever and simply go custom instead:
So together they retire to Roche’s salubrious drawing room:
Where they have an intense one-on-one counseling session in which he discusses any “pain he’s suffering:”
Roche soon learns the hard way that he should have set some boundaries first:
Client: “My father never really listened to me, my mother was cold and extremely strict and had very high expectations of me…”
Roche: “Yeah, I meant more like is your saddle hurting your balls, stuff like that.”
Nevertheless, after receiving a diagnosis of attachment issues and low self-esteem, the client decides he needs an endurance bike because everybody knows all-road bikes are the new gravel bike:
And that’s when things start to get really interesting:
Look, what two middle-aged men get up to in a salubrious drawing room is their own business, but what exactly is going on here?
[Bike fitter confirming his client does indeed have wood.]
Also, this doesn’t seem very scientific:
Even Rivendell’s illicit back-alley crotchal measurement operation seems highly technical in comparison:
Like, couldn’t Roche at least have invested in a stump?
But clearly Roche doesn’t need those sorts of high-tech gewgaws, because all that bending over and squinting in the direction of his client’s undercarriage immediately yields dividends:
So he feels great, he’s riding better, and the pain is gone. (Well, the physical pain anyway.) Problem solved! So does he stop there? No, he does not:
I don’t have strong opinions about any of those bike companies, though I do think “The Highly-Regarded Mustard” is an absolutely fantastic name for a magician–so much so that I asked the AI to generate me an image of “A Professional Magician Named The Highly-Regarded Mustard”
Does he have four fingers on one hand and six on the other in order to distract the eye? Because that could very well be the key to his success.
I guess when AI really takes over and we have a hard time distinguishing virtual reality from physical reality people with too many or too few digits will be the tip-off that you’re inside the Matrix. Anyway, not a bad attempt on the AI’s part, though I was hoping for something more along the lines of The Amazing Mystico and Janet:
As for wheels, Roche sells him on some ridiculous set that costs more than a really nice bike, bringing the total up to over 14,000 British Sterling UK Pounds Sterling Per Sterling:
So that’s over 17,000 American Fun Tickets–but it’s still a better deal than the stock bike because it could have been cheaper. Even though it wasn’t:
Given the massive cost overruns and financial sleight of hand involved in this process, it’s only a matter of time before Gavin Newsom puts Warren Rossiter and Stephen Roche in charge of California’s high-speed rail project.
But to be fair, when you buy a custom bike you’re really not buying the bike:
What you’re buying is the attention. You know, the kind of attention you get from David French, who knows the best lubricants to apply to each part:
And that’s before he even gets to the bike!
He also wraps the bars with love–and from the sound of it, possibly some saliva:
Oh, I bet it is. Does he also tickle the underside of the bicycle’s saddle and whisper into its shifters? “You’re going to get so dirty on those endurance rides! You’re a dirty, dirty bicycle!”
It’s no surprise he’s now enjoying every inch:
And don’t get him started on the “speed accumulation!”
Because everybody knows speed accumulation is directly proportional to financial disbursement.