GhostRider62

I get the aesthetic perspective, my recumbent bike is inherently ugly and I abuse it accordingly. I want to vomit sometimes looking at it. Want to hear irrational? I keep all my expensive uprights just to give me hope that someday I can ride them and to recall the fond memories riding them. Weird, right?

guachi

As a cinephile and physical media collector I doubt this is actually true. When the movies were new, they looked fine as the film was still new and unscratched. Though a lot depends on what you mean by "up-to-date". Wizard of Oz (Warner) and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (Sony) have both been rescanned and released in 4k HDR and look amazing. Same with the releases last month of My Fair Lady (Warner) and the four Indiana Jones movies (Paramount). My word, do they look good. Many older movies that are released in 1080p on blu-ray (by Criterion or Warner Archive) are cleaned up audio and video-wise and released with original mono PCM tracks.

Cinephiles, who lay down actual money for these releases, are ecstatic for good releases.

MattTheHat 

Projecting a whole lot of things he didn't say? Here are two statements I was responding to:

"As I just said, there's nothing wrong with activating your reward centers with an enjoyable but unecessary, in-budget upgrade for an activity habitually engaged in."
"Maybe all your purchases have brought you the joy you priced them at. If so, lucky unusual you."

Those statements project a bit of moral superiority to me.

63rickert

One more go round for this, because the stories will be recirculated forever. Campy USA came out with the ‘speed modulator’ routine pretty much as a joke. A few in the industry were still allowed to have a sense of humor. I sure do remember Bill Woodul, the Campy mechanic working out of the Campy van, free neutral support at the races, rebuilding one set of calipers after another, patiently explaining that the brakes were still working even after the owner had sabotaged them in every imaginable way, and that said owner should acquaint himself with how well the brakes worked when returned to normal before the race started.

Campy Nuovo/Super was above 90% of the pro peloton for about 15 years. If you really believe they never worked then you must believe no one was racing those years. They just played pretend. Eddy just put on a show.

Modolo mentioned above was just not as positive as Campy. Sold like hotcakes. Everybody had to have them. Bernard and Greg used them. Greg and Bernard used them at speeds no one else approached before Savoldelli arrived.

What has improved is cable casings. Far better now. Cables unfortunately are less reliable. I personally have stripped the mushroom off the top rated top price replacement cable and even worse watched my wife do same on a descent. On that occasion I did grab her saddle wires with my right hand and bring both bikes to a halt with the front Mafac only. One sixty year old caliper stopped two bikes. How much more performance do you want?We are strictly on Campy cables now. Even though we know perfectly well they are made in Taiwan. My wife is 71 years of age, barely 100 pounds, never accused of strength, has bad arthritis in her hands. You won’t get her Campy brakes away from her.

MattTheHat 

Agreed!

Mark Stone

Without reading through all the other responses, would parts become an issue on the 1978 road bike? I had a 1984 or 5 Trek 520 touring bike I traded off to a shop because I was unable to find reliable parts (chainrings, brakes, etc). I guess a collector of fine bikes would know sources, but not me. Do you find it a challenge to find parts?

GhostRider62

Most bike shops won't have parts to maintain nor the interest.

The DIY maintenance is easy and generally parts are not hard to get. You are really talking about bearings, pads, chains, chainrings, and freewheels. Only freewheels were a challenge but that could be different today, I don't know. A 13-26 Suntour Ultra-6 is not easy to find, but lucky me. I have several

livedarklions

OK, but I think you have a very bad ear, then. I freely admit that it is my brain that feels rewarded when I am happy with a purchase, and that I haven't received enjoyment from purchases I thought I would. I'd suggest you note that the word "joy" is actually the root word of enjoy.

livedarklions

I think it's weird when someone doesn't have any idiosyncrasies. And while I'm at it, I hope you can ride them again someday as well.

livedarklions

[QUOTE=guachi;22133415]
There's been a whole lot of restored film noir movies that were either considered lost or existed only in such bad prints as to render watching them painful. When you see them restored, you really can appreciate the impact of the black and white visuals. To paraphrase myself from above, none of the charm of watching old movies had anything to do with bad splices, scratched images and soundtracks or, for that matter, faded color. Seeing these films in as close to their original presentation as is possible is often a revelation, kind of like seeing the Sistine Chapel ceiling after that was restored. It totally gives you a different impression of the art.

By the way, two kinds of old movies I find need to be watched in a theater to really work--musical/dance movies really need the very big screen, and Marx Brothers movies, because the lack of a laughing audience really screws with the comedic timing.

MattTheHat 

[QUOTE=livedarklions;22133508I'd suggest you note that the word "joy" is actually the root word of enjoy.[/QUOTE]
Really? The root of enjoy is…JOY? The BF is chock full of learnin’ today!

Flatforkcrown

That’s kind of sad. My bike purchases bring me joy. I got joy finding a steel de rosa for $500, joy building it back to road worthiness, and joy every time I ride it… and it even has downtube shifters!

GhostRider62

The ride brings me joy, the bike is merely an implement. Purchasing brings me no joy. It is usually the opposite. Building up a bike isn't a heck of a lot of fun for me. Some enjoy it. I consider it a necessary task that I would never trust a shop to do. Remember PeeWee Herman's love for his bike? I don't get that. They are just tools.

livedarklions

I'm pretty sure that's supposed to be sarcastic, but the point that we often talk about deriving joy from material objects is staring us in the face with that expression.

As to the word "enjoy", it's really weird. It used to mean "give joy", now it means "take joy from". The "en" part changed meaning, but the "joy" part did not.

https://medium.com/@bradcostanzo/enj...d-c14b7e725e0b

Rejoice in the complex etymology. Stop looking for insults where none were intended.

livedarklions

Well, I'm going to say it--rides on some bikes are a lot more joyful than rides on others. For example, I actually love riding on my Serotta far more than I do my Giant--the ride quality is better, I'm faster, I like looking at the machine, and it just fits me better. Now we can get all semantic about it and figure out if the additional joy I get on that bike can be attributed to the purchase of that bike, but I don't think it's too much of a stretch to say that the purchase of the Serotta brought me joy because if I hadn't purchased it, I would likely have continued to ride bikes that I don't enjoy riding as much. I don't think that's the same thing as saying the purchasing of the Serotta brought me joy, as actually buying it was neither a pleasant or unpleasant experience.

BTW, I don't think sentimental attachments to particular material objects is an unusual thing. I don't have much of that, but I don't consider it unusual when someone does.

PeteHski

I enjoy both bikes (being an engineer) and riding bikes. For me those two things are not mutually exclusive.

50PlusCycling

Most "innovations" are marketing. The market always needs something new to waste--I mean, spend their money on. We don't: have to look very hard to see how much innovation there has been in cycling. We can look at stage records in the big races over the years and compare the performance of our modern bikes with electronically shifted 24 speed drive lines, disc brakes, carbon fiber frames, and wider tires to the earlier 12 and 14 speed steel frame bikes with skinny tires of the 70's and 80's. Surprisingly, you find that modern racers are not really any faster than they were back in those days, and stages today are slower than the last 90's and early 2000's when so many riders were doping. The big races today are not 100% clean today, or they might be even slower.

What are the worst examples of nonexistent innovation? In road bikes it is sloping frames and disc brakes. Both of these "innovations" are purely exercises in marketing. A sloping frame cannot possibly be made as strong an old parallelogram frame, disk brakes add very little improved stopping power in exchange for their complexity, and this complexity makes it impossible to change wheels quickly during a race, meaning a flat tire means a new bike, which is utterly stupid, and something which is not done even in motorsports racing. Then there are the countless electronic devices and training aids, such as power meter cranksets, heart rate monitors in the like, which are marketed to making training scientific, but once again, riders that use these "technological terrors" are no faster than the top level riders who competed without such devices.

shelbyfv

I regularly see both of these features.

dedhed

The beauty of the old steel bikes is the ability to upgrade/update to newer components, rather than try to replace existing ones if you choose

​​​​​​https://www.bikeforums.net/early-bri...i-s-ergos.html

livedarklions

Sorry, but this is all kinds of wrong because average speed of UCI riders is an absurd measure of innovation effectiveness. There were several innovations in the design of bikes that increased speed that were specifically banned by the UCI. The limits on speed are almost entirely dictated by two different factors -- the power of the motor (which really can't be redesigned without genetic engineering or PED) and wind resistance. The latter is readily addressable as an engineering matter through posture changes and/or cowling, but the UCI has determined that certain advances in those (y'know, the ones that actually work) are out of bounds for safety or other reasons. I'm not here to argue about whether UCI should have done this, but to point out that UCI has essentially frozen the basic technology at a certain point, leaving engineering to be limited to redesigning things that can only have very marginal effects on speed.

Taking this out of the racing perspective, the big advances, such as they are, in the area of consumer bike have really been in the ability to produce frames in all sorts of shapes, making a broader range of cycling activity accessible to the general public. Again, if we use speed as the measure of innovation, this will look terrible, but that's because the speed limitations could only be seriously overcome by putting riders inside of cowling or putting them on very low-profile recumbent bikes, and people aren't buying that stuff for practical reasons.

Sloping frames are practical, btw, because the materials have advanced to the point that the loss in structural strength caused by the shape is too small to matter. It's about fit and posture.

I tend to agree that disc brakes on road bikes are really a solution in search of a problem, but consumers seem to like them, so what do I know?

Kapusta

The double triangle design is so stable that the difference between sloped and straight top tubes is completely irrelevant in any real world.context.

What IS relevant is allowing a frame to more easily fit a wider range of riders and allowing more standover.

Also, for bikes that are not strictly pavement bikes, a sloping top tube allows more options for suspension posts or droppers (the latter more for gravel bikes). Or in my case I sometimes stick an extra water bottle holder on mine.

If nothing else, the extra seat post length can allow a CF post to provide more give.

I mean when I really think about it, the only real upside to a level TT at this point is that some people like the look of it better (not me).

Disc? I’m all in.

Metieval

Setting racing aside.

Setting marketing aside.

I love my disc brakes, because I can easily swap between a 700c wheel and a 650b wheel on the same bike. 700x25 okay, 700x45 okay, 650x50 okay.

At the end of the day, marketing can say whatever they want. I will simply buy what works best for me.

My other nagging question with this thread topic in mind, is why does stuff like innovation have to be an on/off switch? I get it accepting change is hard. Accepting individualism even harder.

I've spent the last few days thinking. Simplicity is awesome, and innovation has also brought us some simplicity.

My easiest maintained bike was my freewheel single speed. I sold it because being limited to 700x25.
Thinking of the future, and with parts hard to get. Tire sealant can be home made.

So I think the innovation of tubeless wheels and tires is a good thing.

What would my mix of innovation and Simplicity be? A carbon 29er hardtail with a rigid fork set up as a singlespeed , drop bars trp cable brakes. Tubeless ready wheels and tubeless tires. Again innovation Plays a part in this as bb30 pf30 allows for eccentric bb conversions for running singlespeed. Like beer components.

Thanks I really didn't need another bike, but now I'll probably go start looking at Niner air9 rdo frames.

63rickert

There is no difficulty at all finding parts for a ‘78 Trek. Biggest problem would be bike people who intentionally walk away from knowing or even seeing anything about bikes not born yesterday.

If you wanted to make your old Trek a museum piece with all original parts to catalog specs that becomes a little harder, but certainly possible. If all you want is service parts that fit there is no problem at all. If you continue to have problems just start talking to the next person you see on an old bike. Consider buying a complete old bike as a parts bike.

63rickert

Sloping frames have been in continuous production since the 1880s. Second rate esthetically to my eye but all sorts of situations where a sloping top tube is the obvious solution. Which is why they have continued for over 130 years.

UCI has all sorts of rules I’d rather not defend. Most of those that riders like to hate on are purely for safety. The rule that gets the most attention and resistance is the one about keeping the saddle 5cm behind the BB. Very simply, sitting forward greatly increases the chances of flying over the handlebars when applying front brake. It’s physics. Many would rather deny physics than be told what to do. UCI has to draw line somewhere. Keeping the rule simple and universal is the only way to have a rule. Of course they screw themselves by enforcing erratically. The short rider who gets a DQ for being 4.5cm back has a real gripe. UCI has the choice of accepting a certain level of gripes or just having no rules.

Those who want to race with recumbents or with fairings can compete with IHPVA.

Racing Dan

Id argue any 1/2 decent modern road bike is much better than a top 1978 bike. Thinking back my first road bike vas a used steel bike with Shimano 600 and 20mm (!) tyres. It had a 6 speed cassette with friction shifters and was geared to fit Superman or Hulk. It had brakes that didnt really brake, the frame was soft and the FD was rubbing under load. Comfort was non existent with the rock hard tyres helped by a non ergonomic seat. etc.

Compared to my recent commute, an alloy Fuji with 28mm, sis shifters, disc brakes, genuinely useful gearing and a crank that shifts well and doesn't rub, its not even a contest. The new one is in every respect a better bike and, in sure, much cheaper, than the bike from my youth.

That said, im not sure where the bike industry is supposed to go from here. Its as if there is nothing left to invent. Id would like to see DI2 and power meters come down in price tho, and bike computers with better software and faster processors.