I'm not wedded to any material.
I am. I used to be married to Ms. Steel. We divorced when she couldn't take off that excess weight. Then, I tied the knot with the more Svelte, exotic and glitzy Ms. Ti, but that crashed & burned.
Yeah, she was flexible, but what walked us into divorce court was her fast aging looks and she started looking heavy when compared to the younger models. I traded her in for a hard belly. The beauty was only skin deep.
I briefly entertained dating a **** named Ally Luminum while on the rebound, but everyone was talking about her crack so I steered clear.
A gal came along and she promised to be a spinner, but Mag Kneesium also proved to be a flash in the pan. I felt like I would never find love again.
Just as I was ready to give up on a long term relationship and thinking of going down dark alleys in search of cheap ferrous thrills, I found Ms. Right...Carla BonFiber! Curvaceous, fun and comfortable to ride, she is a fast living gal. Youthful and with spectacular beauty she looks sexy with or without her war paint. Our relationship has worked out well and I have to say that she was worth almost 40 years of waiting for! Most importantly, she has not only kept the weight off, she's actually lost weight over the last 10 years!
it will be made in China with genuine Italian decals and paint--exactly as the 21st Century gods demand.
LMAO! So true! Pay $5K and up for a new Pinarello Dogma10 only to find Fausto is now pronounce Feng Shui!
My Wilier's have never spent an hour of their lives in Italy and the smell like General Tso's Chicken.
CP is not an alloy per se. It stands for commercially pure and it is wicked flexy--like mid 80s Vitus flexy.
I know. I'm an aerospace engineer. I machine CP. While unalloyed by nature, we call it an alloy. As in, "Hey Leroy! Go get me a 1/2" x 1" bar of that Titanium CP alloy!".
Sure Mark Lynskey left in 06 and later started his own company, but I imagine that the lawyers involved in the sale made sure that all that tooling, craftsman and designs stayed with the new owners of Litespeed.
Lynskey looks like he kept a lot of his employees from what I saw when I nosed around their website...which is as dated and lacking in information found on other manufacturers' websites as his frames. It is painfully obvious both Litespeed and Lynskey are trading in the retro genre. And at least Litespeed is doing carbon these days.
These individual guys have their day and time.
Agreed. That lawyer friend of mine is making college tuition payment to Rob English, fully convinced all that beautiful carbon Campy Super Record group AND carbon ENVE wheels and ENVE carbon cockpit components actually 'fits' on a weirdly designed steel frameset. It just...doesn't. But I don't judge! Much...jeez...he's riding everything carbon EXCEPT the frame! What's up with that?
(Is anybody going to go out and buy a Klein?
NO! We laughed at them when they were new on the market. Recycled beer cans with derailleur hangers that snapped off. If I wanted a MASI 3V Volumetrica I would have bought a Masi 3V Volumetrica! At least I would have had style in an oversized fat tube bike.
Magic doesn't often strike twice. Is that why he's having some QA problems,
No clue, but busted Lynskey's sure seem easy to find.
All bikes can and will break under the right conditions.
That's what I've been saying all along. I broke a steel Colnago in the 1970's. I broke a carbon Wilier 3 or 4 years ago. I sure as Hell would have torn that Litespeed Flexible Flyer apart, given another year or three on it.
There is no magic bullet and thus why I'm into taking advantage of cheap cheap cheap carbon. Go fast today...buy another one tomorrow. Odds are the newer one will be lighter, stiffer, better looking and less money. That's why I originally posted the Ribble deal and the other carbon deals...they were...'deals'. Paying $3K for an Ultegra level bike made from anything up and including Peter Sagan's braided hair is not only NOT a deal...it's just stupid in 2017.
But, to each their own I guess. Being different for the sake of being different never appealed to me. Maybe because I already am? Heheh! Hell, Froze can't figure out why I have kept frames I've totalled out for 30 years.
Machines have function and nostalgia has little value unless it improves function. Carbon delivers that function.
I could haul out any of a dozen of my old machines and glue on a NOS pair of Clement Seta tires and ride L'Eroica tomorrow.
The question is 'Why?'.
Those rides are chock full of fat geezers and steel frame builders like Tom Ritchey huffy up hills in all their wool splendor. Living in the past. the so called 'Golden Age' of cycling...yeah...well, whatever. Buying and selling obsolete stuff like some sad flea market crowd. Well, good for them. I see no sense in riding a 7-speed Regina freewheel and hauling 24 pounds over hill and dale, myself, but no harm / no foul if they want to do that and get a charge out of it. If I want that kind of idiocy in my life I guess I could turn a screw and block 4 gears on my cassette and stuff a brick in my middle jersey pocket...my middle WOOL jersey pocket, that is. LOL! No. Thank. You!
Frankly, my next ride is my 'Golden Age' of cycling.
Now, before anyone gets Thoroughly Modern CampyBob wrong...I am not on the bleeding edge of technology by any means! Not even close. I do not yet ride a 600 Gram frame equipped with the latest telepathically actuated, Bluetooth communicating microprocessor-controlled shifting gizmos. Neither do I yet roll on a sub-Kg pair of wheels and there is not yet a ceramic bearing anywhere on any of my bikes. Hell. my seat stays aren't even the latest aero coupled versions.
But, in the immortal words of Wayne, "It shall be mine! Oh yes, it shall be mine!".