It all started with a harmless comment from a clearly younger newbie...."Apart from a few die hards on retrobike, who cares if you mix old and new stuff".....or words closely to that effect.
Its been stuck in my head for several months now.....it won't shift and it's kinda making me uncomfortable.....
Its raised a lot of "in head" questions about what i ride and more why I ride the bikes I do.
I like old kit....I understand it all, I think its better made (but lets not get sidetracked) and I thought it gave me the bike i needed/ wanted.
Then I built my OAP special...and starting with a blank page and building a " retro" bike i need, kinda changed my philosophy a bit.
Now I've seriously started to wonder if " keeping it retro" isn't actually making things worse fo myself! Im not saying im about to abandon my retro kit, more that maybe an approach of mix and match might be a better option. After all as the guy said "who cares".
He could be right.....so....on my daily rides, I basically see nobody as I live in a very rural part of our green and pleasant land. Even on the road, 2 hours rarely produces more than a handful of cars etc. Aided by some basic maths the number of people i see divided by the number of people in the world is basically as close to 0% as your going to get....... Then out of that zero percent you deduct the percentage of the people do see, who dont know anything about what im riding and those who don't care even if they do.....lets say that's 99.8%. So having included that figure in my calculation, mathematically he's right "nobody cares".
So why do I feel as I do? Is putting a new Thomson stem on my 1995 rocky mountain going to kill me, will the retro police turn up and incarcerate me, will I be forced to throw the bike into a hedge everytime a shoal of mamils passes.....well oddly no.....it seems not.
So, who are we keeping it retro for?
Yes, im sure there are some great bikes worthy of the imaginary mtb museum, but its not most.....and none of them are mine!
If its purely nostalgia, that fine so far, but as I've found it comes at a cost to your riding.....im not 19......get over it!
If its group membership and a need to belong, then face facts.....its cold and lonely in space....and nobody can hear your screams......even if you do have riser bars with barends and non amberwall tyres.
So why are you keeping it retro again?
Its been stuck in my head for several months now.....it won't shift and it's kinda making me uncomfortable.....
Its raised a lot of "in head" questions about what i ride and more why I ride the bikes I do.
I like old kit....I understand it all, I think its better made (but lets not get sidetracked) and I thought it gave me the bike i needed/ wanted.
Then I built my OAP special...and starting with a blank page and building a " retro" bike i need, kinda changed my philosophy a bit.
Now I've seriously started to wonder if " keeping it retro" isn't actually making things worse fo myself! Im not saying im about to abandon my retro kit, more that maybe an approach of mix and match might be a better option. After all as the guy said "who cares".
He could be right.....so....on my daily rides, I basically see nobody as I live in a very rural part of our green and pleasant land. Even on the road, 2 hours rarely produces more than a handful of cars etc. Aided by some basic maths the number of people i see divided by the number of people in the world is basically as close to 0% as your going to get....... Then out of that zero percent you deduct the percentage of the people do see, who dont know anything about what im riding and those who don't care even if they do.....lets say that's 99.8%. So having included that figure in my calculation, mathematically he's right "nobody cares".
So why do I feel as I do? Is putting a new Thomson stem on my 1995 rocky mountain going to kill me, will the retro police turn up and incarcerate me, will I be forced to throw the bike into a hedge everytime a shoal of mamils passes.....well oddly no.....it seems not.
So, who are we keeping it retro for?
Yes, im sure there are some great bikes worthy of the imaginary mtb museum, but its not most.....and none of them are mine!
If its purely nostalgia, that fine so far, but as I've found it comes at a cost to your riding.....im not 19......get over it!
If its group membership and a need to belong, then face facts.....its cold and lonely in space....and nobody can hear your screams......even if you do have riser bars with barends and non amberwall tyres.
So why are you keeping it retro again?
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️ any moment now!!
