I was texting a friend pictures of my new shoes (really) and I added in the text: it says Made in Italy on the back of the shoes so you know it’s good. This reminds me that part of the appeal of the small builders is that you are getting the work of an artist who is doing this work out of passion since no one goes into building bikes to maximize their income. Their art is making something specifically for you, to help you best enjoy your cycling experience. That’s awesome. I also thought about the use of gender pronouns when referring to builders.
Growing up, I learned that appropriate English permitted the use of the male plural pronoun to apply to any group of people who were not all female. While that may technically be permissible, it is not inclusive. Plus, when I think about builders, the name Julie Pedalino always comes up, though if I were to plan for another Ti bike, it might be from Mike DeSalvo instead. That could potentially involve a bike built by Mike DeSalvo and painted by John Slwata, whose a legend as an artist/builder, even though I’d favor Nick Crumpton for carbon over Land Shark. To me, a Landshark is steel.
I’m now wondering whether the last sentence was a run-on. I’m not going to further contemplate the issue because this is a rambling blog, mainly musing (yay alliteration) about bike stuff, which is only permitted in my garage, usually near the front door, along with my office. When I asked the boss about proudly displaying bikes in the living room, she told me I was funny. While I might have responded that while I know I am funny and it’s always nice to be appreciated, but I wanted to know if she approved, I realized that the real meaning of the response was what is abbreviated as NFW. As such, the bikes I need to enable me to write about in order to create content and therefore experience the carefree life of an influencer, must be stored and displayed in certain designated areas of the house. Those are not known as hash bars, but that would still be funny.
I was also going to mention Bre Rue when discussing female builders, but then I got sidetracked and she’s not building bikes any longer. She built a sub-700 gram carbon frame back when that was considered impressive. It still is crazy light, but now there are a few manufactures churning out frames that light on a larger scale. They are still really expensive.
I am now done for the night as far as I foresee.
The Coffee Ride Reporter 