Chopper the ex Copper
Alpinestars Fan
Tscchhhh, nostalgia. It ain't what it used to be.
Murders, lots of them, I've seen Morse and Lewis.What's going on in Oxford and Canterbury?
I've never spent that on a complete bike!as someone pointed out - have you seen the price of (some) cassettes?
Most of the yoof are listening to 80/90s music according to SM videos. The best of retro would still cost a fortune to get remade today. Gravel bikes are in and many just copy iconic retro designs because they are still ‘cool’. The way things are going in Oxford and Canterbury I have a feeling original retro bikes will become a must have to be seen on in 2/3yrs
If I'm keeping it retro, that's for me. And if I choose to build it up not retro, that's for me too. When I think about most of my old bikes, they're a mix of old and new. I don't have the budget typically to do a really nice job with a retrobike and I do like a few of the mod cons - well ok, late 90's / early 2000's tech.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 geffect.
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?