So the Tour de France has begun, and so far I haven’t watched any of it. I also didn’t watch any cycling YouTube, despite the abundance of clickbait it persists in proffering:
OH MY GOD WHAT DOES MY MECHANIC HATE? I must watch and find out.*
*[Spoiler alert: your mechanic hates when you steal his tools and drop them down the steerer tubes of random bikes in the shop. He also hates when you kick him in the crotch. But most of all, he hates when you assume all mechanics are males, and he’ll lay a guilt trip on you for doing it, even though he’s a male.]
And OH MY GOD DO YOU THINK HIS GRAVEL CONVERSION WORKED?
I didn’t even have to watch it to find out it didn’t work because the bike is too small and it’s ugly.
I also didn’t have to watch this to find out the six things he wish he knew before he bought a gravel bike:
Without watching it, here they are:
- That I’ll be the billionth person with a gravel bike and a mustache
- That I’ll be the billionth person with a gravel bike and a dainty tattoo
- That gravel bikes are boring and overpriced
- That plastic bikes are boring and overpriced
- That internally routed cables are annoying and stupid
- That endless discursions on the relative merits of different tire treads like you’re the first person to ride a bike on a surface other than pavement is the most boring thing in the world, even more boring than plastic gravel bikes
No, I focused on riding this weekend, and while I’ve been doing much of my riding on this bike as of late…
…I was overcome with a sudden urge at one point to ride its very antithesis, possibly because we were celebrating Independence Day and the bike is the very embodiment of the sort of innovation for innovation’s sake and optimism bordering on delusion that is uniquely American:
However, I’m increasingly of the opinion that if you’re going to ride a carbon bike, you might as well ride one that’s completely insane:
You know the guy who dresses up as Elvis or Rambo or John Kreese from “The Karate Kid” for Halloween but he’s a little too into it and you have a feeling that he’d maybe do it every day if he thought he could get away with it? I feel similarly about the Y-Foil. It’s completely ridiculous, and yet when I’m on it I think, “Wow, this feels fast!” And it is fast, too, at least according to my very un-scientific testing. In fact, it was nearly two minutes faster than its younger cousin the LeMond Tete de Course (which was in turn slower than the A. Homer Hilsen!) over a distance of 18 miles, though to be fair it was sporting the Tri-spokes and not the Rolfs, and also it wasn’t yet equipped with the Rock Shox Ruby suspension fork, both of which I can only assume would reduce its aero advantage.
As for that fork, it basically replicates the effect of riding a road bike with a sensible width tire, with the added benefit that if you hit a bump when in lockout mode (which is the way you’d want to ride it almost all of the time) the abbreviated rebound makes a loud “POP” sound like opening a bottle of cheap champagne or returning a serve in tennis. I do unlock it every so often on descents with rough pavement and I do appreciate it in those circumstances, though again, it basically just replicates the effect of riding a more sensible tire. I would certainly never, ever deign to ride a modern road-oriented bicycle with a suspension fork (much less a Y-shaped frame design), but since everything on this bike is deeply obsolete and long out of production I don’t find it threatening or offensive and instead just enjoy the over-the-top silliness of it, sort of like sexism in old movies.
In fact, I was going to return it to Classic Cycle after the ride, but by golly I couldn’t quite bring myself to do it. Even though it’s by far the least necessary bicycle currently under my purview, I nevertheless enjoy having this zany wild card in the deck. And apparently I’m not the only one:
Oddly I never heard from this would-be Y-Foil captain:
Perhaps the bike wasn’t in his size, but if he needs something larger here it is:
That seatpost is positively Seussian.
Anyway, as much as I enjoyed the Y-Foil I did need to wash the taste out of my mouth the next day:
Oddly, going on nothing else but feel, the Cervino feels like the second-fastest of all my bicycles after George Plimpton’s Y-Foil. I somethings think it has something to do with all the cup-and-cone bearings, though it could be as simple as the fact that the lack of any low gears really doesn’t give you any other choice but to ride fast. It could also have to do with the 30mm tubular tires, which are positively dreamy, or perhaps just the psychological effect of being transported to a simpler time when families rode together in matching sweatsuits, which today is the sort of thing you only see in Wes Anderson movies:
And nobody wore helmets, not even babies:
I wonder how they got him to smile like that. Perhaps they Scotch taped a picture of Big Bird to dad’s posterior and his pedaling movements made it look like he was dancing. Either way, that kid’s about 44 years old today, and if he grew up to be completely and boringly average then statistically he earns $64,844 per year, weighs 206.9 pounds, is 5’9″ tall, and owns a gravel bike.