Ask an O.G.

Dear O.G.,

I think driving a stick shift is a total O.G. move and should be respected. My wife says that for me to prefer this “outdated technology” is an “affectation” (her words). What do you think?

John A, Seattle, WA

Dear John,

I have both kinds of car. It’s useful to know how to handle a manual transmission if you ever plan to rent a car in Europe. I also happen to think driving a stick shift is more fun, but it’d be hard to cite that as an advantage to someone disinclined to learn. The important thing is that you mansplain the manual gearshift process to your wife, using terms like “synchromesh” and “double-clutch.” That should get her off the subject so she’ll stop insulting you about your “affectation.”

Dear O.G.,

How are you, a middle-aged white man, gangsta? I can’t believe you call yourself that.

Leslie H, Dallas, TX

Dear Leslie,

The “G” does not necessarily mean gangsta, or even gangster. I wouldn’t even say the “O” is necessarily for “Original.” And the name wasn’t my idea … you should talk to my publisher. (If you can get him to listen to you, I’d love to hear how you accomplished that.) By the way, this is by far the most common question I get. My eyes are rolling as much as yours, believe me.

Dear O.G.,

I’m guessing you’re a vinyl guy, huh?

Amanda T, Los Angeles, CA

Dear Amanda,

Actually—and I hope this doesn’t destroy my O.G. cred—I’ve never owned a record player. I remember a reel-to-reel tape recorder in the ‘70s (outdated even then) that my brothers let me mess around with, but for playing music I had nothing but cassette tapes until I was an adult. CDs came out when I was in high school. The first one I encountered was in my school locker; I was turning the jewel case over and over in my hands trying to figure out what the hell it was when my locker partner happened upon me and burst out laughing. I did buy a CD player when I was in college, but it was to replace the one I borrowed from a pal (so I could play borrowed CDs) which I unfortunately broke. I didn’t start buying my own CDs until my early twenties, but again, that’s not because I ever had records. (Well, I had one: the John Williams score to “Star Wars,” which my parents bought me to play on their stereo.)

Now, if a music lover still has the record player he bought as a teenager, and all his original records, plus perhaps a few select purchases to round out his collection, I’d consider that O.G. But when wealthy people buy modern turntables with multi-layer plinths, decoupled motor systems, and carbon fiber tonearms, and painstakingly replace their CD or MP3 collections with pricey records, that’s more of an epicurean thing than O.G. (Not saying it’s bad, mind you. Just not O.G.)

By the way, if you meant something else by “vinyl guy,” such as attire, you’ve got the wrong guy!

Dear O.G.,

Nothing says O.G. more than a real appreciation for a good wine vintage … am I right? As the oenophile I imagine you to be, what are your favorite harvests?

Terrence H, New Haven, CT

Notwithstanding my very sincere insistence that the G in “O.G” doesn’t exactly mean “gangsta,” I’m really not sure how a fine wine aficionado could be called O.G., even though a respect for tradition is inarguably O. In any case, I’m sorry to disappoint … I don’t know the first thing about wine (though I have tried my level best to fake it).

I’m guessing there’s pretty good overlap between wine and coffee lovers, so I will go ahead and share my opinion about O.G. coffee (even though nobody’s asked). First of all, its polar opposite is the Keurig, which ought to carry as much stigma as chicken nuggets. I consider pour-over to be the best way to make coffee. Until the 1950s it was the main method, but then instant coffee became hugely popular during the convenience-addicted post-war era. That lasted until the ‘70s when cheap electric drip coffee makers became available. Pour-over is becoming more popular, maybe even hip, but I think I can make the case that it’s pre-‘50s O.G. I grind my beans by hand (so I don’t wake up the whole family with the earsplitting noise of an electric grinder), and I use a cone made of porous stone, which isn’t an old technology but sure feels old.

Dear O.G.,

What is your absolute favorite O.G. move, and why?

Far and away the most satisfying O.G. realm for me is using—exclusively—a traditional double-edged razor. This is a product that’s far cheaper than its modern equivalent, does a better job, is better made, looks nicer, and is produced by companies that clearly have no interest in glib, glossy marketing. I’m so fond of my O.G. razor, I wrote an ode to it which you can read here. Thanks for asking!

Dear O.G.,

Getting back to an earlier reader’s question, about music on vinyl: for someone who doesn’t own a record player you sure seem knowledgeable about the modern technology. Do you know whereof you speak?

Keith W, Chicago, IL

Dear Keith,

Not at all, actually. You caught me … I’m a total poseur.

Dear O.G.,

What’s more O.G.: classical art (e.g., Old Masters) or pop (e.g., Warhol, Lichtenstein)? Obviously Leonardo da Vinci was a rockstar, but then, that’s so long ago. Is there an expiration date on O.G.?

Tricia P, San Francisco

Dear Tricia,

I think an endless debate could be had among those two art schools, not to mention all the other ones (e.g., modern, postmodern, contemporary) that would claim they’re the most O.G. I do not want to venture into that fracas. But I think the more important distinction, particularly because so much art isn’t seen in museums, is between human art and A.I. “art” as the latter starts to replace more and more real work, from street fair posters to advertisements to crap you can buy on Etsy. I’m sure you can already sense my position on this; for a full discussion, replete with a drawing challenge I issued to both ChatGPT and my daughter, click here. Suffice to say, A.I. can never be O.G. It’s the antithesis.

Dear O.G.,

I happen to know you’re a veteran cyclist. How does this mesh with your O.G. approach? Do e-bikes, electronic shifting, and disc brakes make you throw up in your mouth?

Robert S, Thousand Oaks, CA

Dear Robert,

I’ll start with your specific examples and then address the bigger picture. I think e-bikes are not only just fine, but probably inevitable for most of us … they may well extend the number of years (and hopefully decades) I can continue to ride. I’m also completely in favor of non-cyclists buying e-bikes for transportation, because even if e-bikes don’t honor the purity of traditional cycling (can you sense my “blah blah blah” here?), they do mean fewer cars on the road. Sure, go on all you want about what a menace these unskilled but fairly high-speed e-bikers present, but I’ll take a 15 mph impact from a 40-pound e-bike over a 25+ mph impact from a two-ton car. (It’s not like e-bikers have cornered the market on roadway incompetence and inattentiveness, after all.) But I will assert two caveats: 1) no kid should ever ride an e-bike (details here), and 2) e-bikes shouldn’t be allowed on nature trails (see here).

Moving on to electronic shifting, I do think it’s a solution looking for a problem, and though I’ve given it two solid auditions (click here and here) the earth didn’t move for me either time. But my next bike will surely have it (it being the new normal), and people seem to like it well enough. Same with disc brakes: I love them on my mountain bike, you can run carbon rims, blah blah blah damn, I’ve even boring myself here.

All this being said, these new road handlebars that flare out, and the goofy brake levers that stick out like chicken wings … they’re hideous. And what’s with the weird fork crowns on BMC road bikes? They look like the fork on a cheap mountain bike! Aesthetics are being sacrificed at the altar of performance and that’s just anti-O.G. So many modern road bikes so dorky, they can even make a guy like Julian Alaphilippe look like a dweeb.

You know who was the O.G. road racer, with a perfect bike to match? Bernard Hinault.

(Don’t even get me started on Jonas Vingegaard’s aerodynamic helmet.)

Dear O.G.,

I think part of being O.G. is just sticking to your guns and not following along with the status quo, like how Eminem won’t use Auto-Tune. Do you live by this kind of credo?

Wanda R, New York City

Dear Wanda,

I think there are two fundamental ways to buck the status quo. You can either observe the conventional wisdom, evaluate it, and decide to reject it—like Eminem—or you can be oblivious to modern trends and just bumble your way along doing whatever seems to work. My favorite example of the latter is my dad, who—despite having been a college instructor in Boulder, Colorado during the late ‘60s—was totally unaware of Birkenstock sandals and, decades later, after failing to observe three huge surges in their popularity, totally thought he discovered them, like they were some obscure thing.

Often I do stubbornly defy the status quo. I think I was the only teenager in Boulder in the ‘80s who didn’t have an earring; I never used Biopace chainrings on any of my bikes; and I eschew all social media (except, begrudgingly, LinkedIn), all in defiance of the norm. But other times I’m willing to follow the status quo but only after considerable delay, out of sheer ignorance. For example, in matters of music, I’ll be barely aware of a band or singer for many years until finally I start to wonder who it is I’ve been hearing, and hearing about, for so long, and then I’ll investigate. I discovered Eminem in 2003 (four years late), Sublime in 2011 (fifteen years late), and The Black Keys in 2023 (twenty-one years late). In the latter cases, I wasn’t defying the zeitgeist … I’d just fallen behind. You might say I was O.G. in the sense of “Oblivious Guy.” (Of course it’s hard to remain ignorant now that we have Spotify. I have a love/hate relationship with it … the ad hoc selections it plays after the end of an album often trick me into listening to really anodyne, soulless stuff for oddly long periods before I suddenly think, “What is this crap!?”)

I wouldn’t say I consider this late-or-never tradition a credo, but it does affect my life. Probably the biggest single effect of finding my own way, without regard to conventional wisdom, was choosing to major in English despite everyone around me (even then) assuring me that with that lowly degree I’d never get a real job. They were wrong then, and they’re wrong now, as I discuss at length here. (My younger daughter is currently earning her English degree, with minors in Art and Philosophy, and I couldn’t be more pleased.)

As for the day-to-day effects of this approach, a big one is how much I use the public library. I just looked at my loan history from the Berkeley library, and in the last 144 weeks I’ve checked out 289 items (books, movies, CDs), for an average of two items a week. That doesn’t even include what I get digitally through Kanopy, Libby, and Hoopla (details here) and from the Albany Library. In a society that’s thoroughly embraced Amazon, streaming platforms, and video games, I think libraries are 100% O.G. And yet I know plenty of adults who don’t even have a library card.

Dear O.G.,

What’s the point of clinging to all these established ways when A.I. is obviously going to change everything over the next decade or so? Preferences that might seem old school and noble now will just become outdated, outmoded, outmaneuvered, and over. Not to be a dick about it, but I think this has to be said.

Ron B, Atlanta, GA

Dear Ron,

You sound like the blowhards gleefully predicting the demise of printed books based on competition from e-books like the Kindle. Society needs a term for people like you … technophiliac, or maybe digitopian. Look, I won’t deny that A.I. is a powerful tool for making many tasks more efficient, but that’s not a purely good thing. I’m all for ChatGPT helping me with HTML scripting or making DNS routing changes, but its essays are a) inferior to a real writer’s, and b) dumbing people down. The very word “essay” is from the French essai meaning a trial, attempt, or test, deriving from the Latin exagium, a weighing or examination. The point of writing an essay is to explore an idea, create and test hypotheses, and ideally learn from the effort even as you’re crafting something others can read. The point of a teacher assigning an essay isn’t to educate herself on a topic via her students’ papers; it’s for the students to grapple with the difficulty of writing and improve their brains. At least, that’s my O.G. perspective. In a shocking New Yorker article I read recently, a college professor interviewed several students at top universities about their blatant use of A.I. to write papers for them, and the success they’ve had (at least, from a grade perspective) in doing this. Here’s a crazy example:

A sophomore at Columbia studying computer science told me about a class where she was required to compose a short lecture on a topic of her choosing. “It was a class where everyone was guaranteed an A, so I just put it in [to an A.I. platform] and I maybe edited like two words and submitted it,” she said. Her professor identified her essay as exemplary work, and she was asked to read from it to a class of two hundred students. “I was a little nervous,” she said. But then she realized, “If they don’t like it, it wasn’t me who wrote it, you know?”

These students might think they’re pulling a fast one, but what happens when they graduate and still don’t know how to think? How are they going to impress anyone during a face-to-face dialogue—whether it’s a job interview or a cocktail party—when they don’t have ChatGPT to generate insights and pretty sentences for them? No less an O.G. than the rapper Ice-T (whose fourth studio album, “O.G. Original Gangster” helped popularize the term), rapped about the problem of school dropouts trying to sound impressive:

How you gonna drop science? You’re dumb
Stupid ignorant, don’t even talk to me
In school you dropped Math, Science, and History
And then you get on the mic and try to act smart
Well let me tell you one thing, you got heart
To perpetrate, you’re bait, so just wait
Till the press shove a mic in your face…
And they ask you about the game you claim you got
Drop science now, why not?

Notably, he wrote that song in 1989, before an A.I. existed that could enable a useless student to fake his way through school. Sure, modern A.I. can help you get a degree, or program a computer, or write a basic email, but it’s not going to make you an interesting person. Ultimately, thinking for yourself is the real O.G. move.

Dear O.G.,

That last response? And your conclusion, “Thinking for yourself is the real O.G. move”? You’ve got to be kidding me. That’s pretty much the cheesiest thing I’ve ever read. I think in your case O.G. stands for “Old Geezer.”

Dana A, Albany, CA

Dear Dana,

I know. You’re right. You got me. I’m tired. I should really edit my stuff before I post. Looks like that pompous, overblown sentiment slipped past my publisher,  too. Sheesh.

An O.G. is a syndicated journalist whose advice column, “Ask an O.G.,” appears in over 0 blogs worldwide.

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From the Archives - The CarbonTech Debate

Introduction

I just read a profile in The New Yorker about Grant Petersen, the founder of Rivendell Bicycle Works, a company which makes retro steel bike frames with touring-type geometry, which are built up (generally) with upright handlebars and puffy tires. They’re the kind of bike that you’d put a big weird Brooks saddle on, from which you’d hang a hand-tooled leather bag containing perhaps an old fashioned tobacco pipe, a silk handkerchief, a pince-nez, some hand-tied fishing flies, a leather-bound book, and maybe even a beautifully crafted letter opener. You’d dress up in flannel and loafers and ride this bike to the brewpub or coffee shop where crumbs would get stuck in your beard. Myself, being someone who (somewhat) recently advocated in these pages for modern aerodynamic wheels—the better to cheat nature and ageing with—I can’t really relate to the vision of low-speed, low-intensity, woolly hipsters on kinda heavy, needlessly lugged bicycles that cost $2-5K but aren’t much faster than my $265 1981 Miyata 310 … just a lot more elegant.

All that being said, I do respect Petersen’s ethos, and bristle a bit at wealthy wannbes on excessively high-performance racing bikes wearing skintight $200 Rapha jerseys. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate that these guys are supporting the bike industry, and it’s their money to spend on whatever they want (and better this than a jet ski or a $1K bottle of wine), but the sport starts to look a bit silly when it tips too far into this high-end poseur realm, and the Lycra is stretched over a pot belly. Wool both hides that belly better and excuses it, because nobody is pretending to be a pro racer.

I’ll also admit that I sometimes get a bit nostalgic for an era when cycling was more affordable, and more Euro, and cyclists were more like outlaws, or at least outcasts. Many years ago I even sent an essay of my own to the Rivendell Reader, which they were nice enough to print (and which you can read here). This push-pull between tradition and tech has been with me for decades and today I offer you the below dialogue among a couple of college racing pals and myself, which had originally circulated among our bike club. I won’t share the entire thread, but here is the gist: one friend, T—, had asked about stripping the paint off of his beloved carbon fiber Miyata CarbonTech 7000 so he could repaint it. Another friend, R—, pooh-poohed the idea, saying that sentimental value notwithstanding, the expense of restoring the Miyata (hundreds of dollars) would be silly, and it would be better to buy a new, superior frame. This touched a nerve with both T— and me.

Here’s a picture of the bike in question, from the catalog, with the laughable thou-doth-protest-too-much opening line, “Put any misgivings about the reliability of carbon fiber out of your mind.”

The CarbonTech Debate – October, 2007

On October 23, 2007, at 6:33 PM, T— wrote:

Yeah, but your so-called “new far-superior modern” frames are fugly and not worth the price. Watching the peloton these days is like watching the detritus from a McDonald’s garbage can blowing down the street in a wind of eau de cologne.

And repainting the Miyata certainly isn’t silly for a few hundred, or even twice that, frankly. I know this bike rides well, damn well, because I raced it for two years, to quite a few significant victories (a few of which I believe you were taking up space as pack filler [sorry guys, this what R— likes to bring out in me, thus his use of the words “silly” and “modern,” and I am sure he is giggling near-uncontrollably (there are innocents reading this one R—, so behave ourself)]).

Are you telling me I can find a decent frame for $3-500 that will ride as well? In an industry that is increasingly pre-fabbed and preoccupied with production costs and experimental methods, where riders are more likely to be listening to 50 Cent than anything else, where frames are offered in S, M and L, and with bad angles, I doubt there is much out there that would fit the bill without breaking my little bank. In fact, triple that amount and I might only be getting close to something in steel, and double it again to get something close in carbon.

Also, R—, what “modern” bikes today capture the imagination like the ones mentioned in the recent exchanges? Sorry, rhetorical question, but you knew that.

T—

On Oct 23, 2007, at 11:58 PM, Dana Albert wrote:

Well, I don’t know about the rest of y’all (though I can guess), but I for one am giggling like crazy. Sizzling stuff. If I had a “pleasure vein” in my forehead like Dr. Shimano (aka G—, cc’d herein) it would be ready to burst. Naturally I couldn’t stay away from such a delightfully bombastic fray.

Can you really strip a cawbun fibuh frame? I thought it would damage its fontanel or something.

Given the most impressive of T—’s victories on that Miyata (national collegiate road race in ‘90, for those on this distro who weren’t there), I would personally have the frame bronzed if it (and that achievement) were mine, except that the bronzing process is almost sure to damage cawbun fibuh. Sentimental value is too rare these days, especially with regard to bikes. And as I’m about to get to, only the irrational, emotional part of our minds could conscionably champion the modern bikes.

To love a modern bike is to abandon your senses as would a fool-for-love. Why? Because they’re just whores, that’s why. First of all, you can’t count on them. They’re not designed to last, because the pros they’re designed for all have multiple bikes they jettison at the end of the season, if not mid-season. These bikes are not designed to withstand crashes, because that’s what the spare bike on the team car is for. Remember stage 17 of last year’s Tour [de France], when ‘Roid Landis soloed, and flatted at one point? He dismounted the bike and just dropped it on the ground like a piece of trash. I didn’t necessarily expect him to set it down carefully or hand it to his mechanic, but he could have at least winced or something.

And yet ... I did love my Orbeas. Both of them [though actually I ended up having—and breaking—four before I gave up]. To the very end, each time, I was just smitten. I’d be working in the home office down here and glance over at Fava [my late Orbea] leaning there against the wall, and I would sigh. Why? Sheer good looks? Well, it did look cool. And had flair. But no, it was more because I’d immediately remember what it’s like to ride that bike. Man. T—, you really would have to ride a modern bike to appreciate what R— is talking about. They’re amazing. That first ride on Spentje [my nickname for my first Orbea]... I’ll never forget it. I swept up Spruce two minutes faster than I ever had before. Two minutes! All I could think was oh my GOD, I can’t believe this! It was like having a 40 mph tailwind or something. And then on the basically flat section of Wildcat before South Park? Man, the bike just accelerated like nobody’s bidness, and those modern wheels, you feel like you’re just slicing through the air like, well, like a Ginsu steak knife or something. (T—, I know you’ve had some pretty trick time trial wheels, so maybe that part wouldn’t be quite as noticeable to you.) And on the downhill? More plush than any steel bike I ever had. As far as the riding experience goes, they’re simply better in every single category—except that you can’t get attached to them.

Because they break! What a drag that is! Going back to my old steel bike, Full Slab, after each Orbea broke and I had to wait for a warranty replacement ... those were dark, dark days. And Full Slab was full Dura-Ace, hollow crank, hollow BB, titanium here and there—not like some ancient thing (other than that godawful frame). Even with the modern wheels, I was miserable. Just miserable. It was like salsa made in New Jersey, or wearing a beige shirt to a bank robbery, or trying to get good tech support from some offshore guy making his developing country’s paltry minimum wage. You might as well just bag it. Now, I’m not saying your Miyata CarbonTech 7000 would be like that, but it would be on that side of the coin. (My backup bike, an aluminum/carbon Salsa, is very much of the modern era. It’s fast, really fast, kind of O-Thank-God-fast after Full Slab, that wretched thing of evil.)

But these modern bikes ... they break! It’s ridiculous. I didn’t even get 10,000 miles or two years out of either bike. They break for no other reason than they’re not made to last. Now R—, I know what you’re going to say—it’s just Orbeas that break. Bah. The only reason you don’t hear of other bikes breaking is because the modern riders treat them like the whores that they are, discarding them out of boredom before they ever have a chance to break. The modern cyclist has the fickleness that only wealth can bring, like an investment banker who trades in his wife every few years for a younger, hotter model. Nobody wants to keep a bike long enough to get attached to it (people don’t even name their bikes anymore!). Modern bike consumers are like junkies building up a tolerance—they can’t wait to have that exhilarating feeling again, the one I described a couple paragraphs ago, and they’ll buy and buy and buy to try to get more of it. They’ll never get it again, of course; you can only jump bike eras once every decade or so. They’ll shave off a few ounces each time, but they won’t drop five pounds while picking up extra stiffness and yet comfort. They’re just tinkering, at that point, and if they ever quit doing that and tried to love the same bike year after year, that bike would give out like a faulty boob job, quickfastinahurry, I don’t care what company made it (or, rather, had it made under the auspices of their brand).

Now, you make a pretty good point, T—, about bad angles in the modern frames. I assume you’re talking about the compact geometry, that makes an expensive road bike look like a BMX bike, with two feet of seatpost showing and a stem with all that rise (and/or gobs of headset spacers). But even beyond the aesthetics, I have a problem with the epidemic of cawbun fibuh frames out there (or “plastic bikes” as my pal P— calls them). What’s wrong with cawbun? As a material, nothing—I think we owe most of the comfort of a modern bike to cawbun. But you don’t get to pick your geometry anymore! And let’s face it, the stock geometry for the American market is about as reasonable as the stock ingredients in an American deli sandwich. All these short top tubes, steep seat angles, ultra-short chainstays, high bottom brackets—it’s garbage, pure garbage. Specialized made a big to-do this spring about how they spent all these millions (!) to get Tom Boonen a longer top tube, because the poor guy was having all these back problems. S, M, and L indeed. Straight-up pure garbage. And you get these new Time bikes (I think it is) where the seatpost comes built-in, and you gotta cut the top off to fit. Well, what if you guessed wrong? Or decided you hated your saddle (and who wouldn’t, these new things with the big valley down the middle, for paranoid stockbrokers whose prostates are shrunken by bad living, with so little leather you couldn’t make a child’s coin purse out of it) and bought a new (or better yet, old) one with taller or shorter rails? Screwed, simply screwed—go drop another three grand. For all that money, you get stock geometry ... somebody forgot about ergonomics somewhere along the way. It’s like buying a suit at the factory outlet store and they won’t tailor it for you. That’s my gripe with full cawbun. Certain modern frames, Cyfac and Orbea among them, offer custom geometry because they’re made out of metal tubes that can be cut to the perfect size by a human who knows what he’s doing, instead of you having to settle for a frame that seems to have been extruded somehow, like a giant robot taking a dump.

[This is the frame geometry I came up with for my Orbeas, which was absolutely perfect, but which is why the warranty replacements took so long. The name “Fava” refers to a joke I made to T— once about compact geometry … I said of it, “I think of it kind of how I think of lima beans. They have a right to exist, but I don’t know why anybody would want them.” After my first Orbea, the company adjusted my design to be semi-compact, as you see below. All the important characteristics were maintained with an only slightly sloping top tube. I told T—, “I wouldn’t call it a lima bean. A fava bean, maybe.” Click the image to study it at length.]

Oh, Lord, who needs caffeine? I’m ready to brawl! Against whom? Anybody! Everybody! Like D— W— rushing onto the soccer field because a fight had broken out ... did he know who started it? Did he care? No! He just started swinging! Full of the spirit, like when he won that sprint in training, sat up, and yelled “FUCK!” (By the way, T—, that’s what it’s like to ride a modern bike, if I haven’t made that clear enough.)

The question is, what is the bike for? To appreciate aesthetically, as a connoisseur? Or to go as fast as you can, to defy the ageing process and deny that your glorious youth is behind you? Both are worthwhile pursuits. Spiritually speaking, though, this dichotomy is worthless. Now, I’m not sure if rhetorical questions are ever supposed to be answered, but I’ll take a crack at your last one, T—, about which modern bikes capture the imagination like the glorious bikes of yore. My answer is, precious few. I hear people rave about Cervelos. Meh. And Felt ... that’s not even a real bike company, that’s somebody’s silly made-up brand. Scott? Please. A marketing company trading on their good reputation for skis. Skis! I’m offended. What else? R—, I know you love the way Treks ride and I’m quite sure they’re brilliant. But let’s face it, they’re the Dell Computer of the bike world. Next. Ridley? Ugly and terrible. And what’s with these pro teams riding Cannondales? Have they no shame? Nuff said on that sad topic. Man, I’m actually starting to get depressed. Even Orbeas, that weird Spanish brand we’re probably mispronouncing, are starting to get a bit trite. I can only hope the ugliness of their cawbun versions scares off the new enthusiasts by the time I get my new [aluminum] one, if I’m even that lucky.

Okay then. Needless to say I have more I could say, in response to the other excellent points made in this long and growing email chain, but it’s waaaaaay past my bedtime.

Dana

P.S. I’m not going to proof this thing and I’m sure it’s riddled with clumsy mistakes. I grant you permission to heckle me one time, in aggregate, for all the mistakes.

Epilogue

In case you’re wondering, my lengthy tirade about modern bikes ended up being kind of a last gasp. My best friend rides a Cervelo, with hydraulic brakes and electronic shifting no less, and it hasn’t even occurred to me to give him a hard time about it. I myself have—and love—a carbon fiber Scott mountain bike. I rented a Felt for a week of cycling in the French Alps and liked it just fine. The modern, carbon frame I have now is a Giant (the second-best-selling brand in America) and has lasted for over ten years and about 50,000 miles. On top of all this, T— himself, unable to elegantly repair a knackered rear dropout on the Miyata, eventually succumbed and has a carbon Trek that he bought from R—. Oh well … at least we put up a fight.

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