Having skipped several “Wooded Wednesdays” recently I more than made up for it before the weekend with a “Forest Friday” ride of several hours:
Of course there’s been one significant change since I instituted “Wooded Wednesdays” and now, which is that most of the leaves that until recently were attached to the trees being beautiful are now on the ground being annoying. Fore example, they love getting stuck in your V-brakes:
There’s really no point in clearing them out because as soon as you start riding again you just pick up more, so after awhile you have no choice but to reconcile yourself to the “VrrRRRrrrVrrrRRRrrr” sound and pretend you’re riding a motorbike. The leaves were also deep enough in spots to obscure trail obstacles, which is especially challenging on the diminutive 26-inch wheels of yesteryear, and at times I seemed to find myself nearly hub deep in autumnal detritus. And sometimes I couldn’t even see the trail at all, which resulted in several wrong turns in the places where I have less than back-of-hand familiarity with the terrain.
Between all that and the fact that after a couple hours or so I really start longing for bars with more hand positions, or at least some sweep, the Jones would have been a better choice in virtually every respect. But what can I say? I felt like riding the AMPer that day, and I can live with my choice:
One of these days it will go back to Classic Cycle so I might as well make the most of it.
Of course, if you want more comfortable bars on your AMP research, there’s really nobody stopping you:
I asked the AI to generate the “Just Buy A Rivendell Already” award so I could give it to this bike, and here’s what it came up with:
I wonder if there’s another AI that could give this one some help with its reading disorder.
In other tech news, can we please stop with the 3D-printed everything? First it was titanium bikes, now it’s steel bikes:
I mean sure, it does take a “full working day” to complete:
But keep in mind that’s an Italian working day, which means someone in Taiwan could make it in about 15 minutes.
It also maintains “the classic ride quality of steel:”
The result maintains the classic ride quality of steel, but in an incredibly sleek, modern-looking bike with modern features. Welds are smoothed and hidden, and the head tube is shaped to match the non-round profile of their stem’s base and fork crown, creating a tightly integrated look.
Okay, I love steel bikes, and at this point I’ve ridden lots and lots of them. Nevertheless, I still have no idea what “the classic ride quality of steel” is. It seems to me this is a meaningless phrase that makes about as much sense as referring to “the classic taste of fruit.” I mean what kind of fruit are we talking about? Apples? Oranges? Pineapples? Tomatoes? Is the fruit fresh? Dried? Crushed and fermented? Smothered in syrup and then canned?
Mmm, delicious.
And what is the point of a steel bike that looks exactly like a crabon bike and is compatible with none of the stuff you’d want to put on a steel frame?
As the Italians say (or at least a popular Internet search engine’s translator says), “Sconvolge il suo stesso scopo:”
I begrudge nobody their modern plastic speed-cycle if that’s what they’re into, and if you want electrical shifting and dick breaks and T47-86 and UDH and THX 1138 and all that other stuff then by all means go for it, but it seems to me that if you’re going to get a steel Colnago then you should just get a steel Colnago:
Finally, going back to the leaves, people are generally awful about picking up after their dogs, but they seem to be especially awful about it at this time of year. I don’t know if they can’t find it in the leaves, or they’re just more inclined to say “Fuck it,” but the end result is the same, and I always seem to manage to roll right through it. This makes me furious, though I suppose it could be worse and someone could be smearing it directly on my bike:
This is more of that “culture” New Yorkers are always boasting about. Is it any wonder people pay so much to live here? Last week in Brooklyn I saw someone standing next to a tree wrapped in Christmas lights and using one of the pointy bubs to scrape shit out of the tread of his shoe.
Come to think of it, maybe that’s what was happening here, only in the absence of a Christmas tree they had to resort to a bicycle.