timtak

I get the pop music theory and largely agree. I started to listen to pop music in about 1971 (age 6) and I don't like hardly anything after 1992. The first bikes that I rode, however, were steel with down tube non indexed shifters. I can't remember the ride quality but I want indexed brifters. The first bikes that I owned were aluminum and I now don't like them due to their bone shaking rattle. I got my first comfortable carbon bike when Lance Armstrong was still in the TDF.

Now I have Lance Armstrong's bike. A Trek Madone 5.2 SL 2007 in Ultegra 5700 plus Dura Ace DR in ten speed, I don't think I want anything "better". No, I would like electronic shifting but can't afford it, and can't see that it makes all that much difference. The Ultegra 6700 last (?) not under the bar tape shifting is so easy and good. I had been using 105 5800 for a while and thought it great, but the front shift on the 6700 is so much easier that I thought the wire in my 5800 had snapped, it was so hard to shift up. The horizontal top tube and 13.5cm head tube of the Lance Armstrong bike puts me in an areo position.

Are there any "aero road bikes" that are aero when taking into account the rider position? If such exist then I want one (my Look, from the LA era is getting there but the carbon is a bit less springy) but if not then they are a step backwards. "Aero" is only aero if it takes into account the whole package (bike plus rider). If the "aero road bikes" are upright then they are on balance, in toto, anti-aero and thus bollox (or for fat people).

Or is it that the pop music theory needs to be modified: people love the bikes that they wanted when they first fell in love with bikes?