I've been meaning to have a discussion about the differences between various types of bicycles for a while -- this is as good a place as any, I reckon.
Like most of us, I rode a lot as a kid. When I turned 15, it was mopeds, and later a small motorcycle. At 22, I turned back to cycling, and since I was a student with no money, I got a low-end Peugeout of the (I believe) carbolite variety and rode that for everything; mostly commuting and some loaded touring.
I've never had a proper high-end road bike; the closest is probably the 87 Moser with Aelle frame, sew-ups, and Triomphe groupset.
Presumably the ride and handling wouldn't be much different with the higher-end models.
Exactly once in my life, namely the first time I rode a proper 'racing bike' -- a late-70s Peugeot -- did I get spooked by twitchy handling. That lasted about until the end of the street, then I started getting used to it. I've ridden lots of different bikes, and while I can tell slow handling from fast, a few hundred yards down the road I tend to forget about it. Once a bike fits, it's mostly just a bike, and nobody builds anything really crazy anyway, so we tend to get absorbed in the minutiae.
To read, as an example, Grant Petersen's writing on geometry, you'd be afraid to get on bike with crit geometry at highter speeds. Ad copy for randonneur bikes make similar points. But in my younger years, I'd take the Moser downhill at 45 mph and surely was contemplating things like tubulars coming unglued, but the handling wasn't a concern. Last year I got a CAD3 Cannondale and rode it a few times, even just across town as an errand bike. Yeah it feels a bit different than my touring bikes, and the aluminum bikes feel different than steel, but none of this seems a big deal to me.
The one requirement I have is that my bike go straight down the road when I ride no-hands, and they all do, with various levels of stability.
Here are some shots of my stable.. the long-winded message is that I'd ride any one of these anywhere, and the decision which one to take on a century would depend on the weather and the need for fenders, or super-low gears, and maybe most of all, whether I can get the handlebar high enough so my neck can take it. That property known as "handling" would be somewhere lower than "weight" and higher than "paint color."
Can you-all relate, or does that just mean I'm numb to the finer points of cycling?
No need to be gentle.
cheers -mathias
