On Mon, 13 Dec 2004 00:13:47 GMT, "Mike Jacoubowsky"
<
[email protected]> wrote:
>>I 'm 34, and I ride with a group of guys around my age--some younger, some
>> older. I am the only one riding a steel bike in a sea of oversized
>> aluminum,
>> titanium, and carbon fiber. After our last ride we got on to the subject
>> of
>> dream bikes. The usuals came up---Litespeeds, Colnagos, Trek 5900s, etc. I
>> mentioned that I would rather ride a custom lugged Waterford, a Richard
>> Sachs, or a Rivendell, and they all pegged me with the "retrogrouch"
>> moniker. Does it make one a "retrogrouch" to want to own a bike that's
>> handcrafted by an artisan?
>
>Perhaps the "grouch" part comes from your assumption that a Colnago, Trek or
>Litespeed isn't handcrafted by an artisan. I know of many people in
>Waterloo, WI (home of Trek) that would be mildly offended by the idea that
>something that many of them have been doing for 10+ years, with a great
>amount of skill and care, qualifies them as nothing more, in some eyes, than
>a mindless automaton.
{remainder of Mike's good points snipped for brevity}
I read the OP with an emphasis on the "custom lugged ... handcrafted"
part. Not that there isn't good workmanship in the bigger producers'
shops, but all the work that goes into a Trek, for example, also has
to go into a Rivendell, also for example. But there's some custom
work I'd expect out of a Rivendell that probably doesn't happen in the
Trek production line: design work for a custom Rivendell that's
amortized over a few thousand identical bikes on the Trek line; more
labor-intensive tube cutting and mitering for the custom bike; perhaps
there's still some lug cleanup that has to be done by hand that you
obviously don't do for a bike without lugs. And while some of the
Treks have some nice paint jobs, I haven't seen any mass produced
bikes from the last few years that have the beautiful pinstriping
around the lugs that some of the custom bikes have.
So yes, there's some good work that goes on in a production line. But
I don't know that's quite enough to beat the cachet of full custom.
(What the heck, he mutters, we haven't had a good flame war for a
week.) Can we start to label people who get grouchy in favor of new
techniques and methods as "neo-grouches?"
Pat
Email address works as is.
