beng1

Neither I, nor the half of the country the US census bureau says is living low-income or below the poverty level can afford to buy any pro road bike. If they said the bikes had to be steel round tubing of straight-gauge, no electronics or computers and no carbon-fiber then maybe more would be able to, more amateur racers too.

And rudypyatt, I doubt any local bicycle races would care how old an entrants bike is, they never cared about my bikes. 25 years ago I ran a 12-speed motobecane, and last year I ran the 10-speed Huffy from the early 70s and nobody said a thing about it. There were a dozen or more other older riders on older bikes too out of the 160 or so entrants in that local time-trial.

And Himespau, it would not do society any harm to mandate that art be part of events, a world without art, a world just fixated on technology and profiteering and pride is pretty ugly, and that is what we have right now. To me making art is not about getting attention for myself or having pride, it is about giving to the world and humanity, having your actions be a function of love and not yourself. It happens less and less in the West.