Originally Posted by
smd4
My personal "grail" bike doesn't really matter to the question. Why do I want to build another bike? Do I want to re-create my youth somehow?
I did. For me it was partly the circumstances under which I lost contact with the first "good bike" that I owned (a 1978 Raleigh Super Course, which was stolen in between the time I finished college and joined the Navy), but I also had not done any appreciable amount of riding for the intervening twenty years. A couple months before I replaced it, I located a 1972 Fuji Finest, and by the time I got the Super Course on the road, it didn't seem anywhere near as special as it had when I was in college and able to ride tirelessly in the 52/14 combination. I suspect that while we both can attribute the desire to nostalgia, your experience is likely to be different from mine. The odds of you feeling the let-down of the experience may be lower than mine.
This said, my journey into the hobby and subsequent proliferation of bicycles began during that period of time. It has been a satisfying hobby/adventure thus far, and I plan on it continuing for many more years.