Originally Posted by TheKillerPenguin

I bought my first bike off a man with a handlebar mustache named Hamish, the first time I rode it the world turned black and white and I started smoking hand rolled cigarettes. It was a vintage pre-war (WWI) Bruttomaiale, it was made out of wood. See back in them days you had 3 choices in equipment construction. The lowest was pig iron and only the Austro-Hungarians rode that junk but we could never figure out what their deal was, then there was Steel which was the latest fad in war waging and ships of the line but wasn't trusted by the minor imperial players (like Italy where my Bruttomaiale originated), and then there were the various types of wood which were tried and tested over the millenia. To save on rotational weight the wheels were constructed out balsa and the spokes were attached via horse glue, the frame itself was a sturdy lacquered oak naturally. The only drawback to the balsa wheels was that when you rode when it was raining they had a tendency to disintegrate underneath you, and that's how I broke my collar bone for the first time. Great race bike.