BSNYC ADD Time Capsule

I just excavated the time capsule I buried in the early 90s. Even though you should leave a time capsule in the ground long enough for a completely new generation to dig it up and appreciate it, I didn’t have the patience, hence the “ADD.” I pulled out some interesting stuff, including a Mavic Zap group, one of those stupid split-downtube Colnago Bititans, a Rock Shox Roubaix road suspension fork, and a whole slew of machined mountain bike components in an assortment of anodized rainbow colors.

So now it’s time to fill it back up and bury again, which I’ll do over the weekend. Here are some of the things I’m putting inside:

A Track Wheelset With Lime-Green Velocity Deep-V Rims
We should all have a good laugh when we pull these things out 10 years from now. “God, remember when people actually used to ride these things?” At least we’ll be able to unlace the wheels and re-use the hubs. Unless the whole thing boomerangs on us and they’ve gone retro-chic by then. I guess we won’t be laughing in that case.

A Picture of a Guy With a Beard

A lot of the guys who ride lime-green Velocitys also have beards. This picture will allow us to fondly recall a time when people wanted to look like the evil Russian guy in “American Flyers.”

A Set of Dura-Ace Triple Road Cranks

The compact revolution has allowed thousands of road cyclists to dispense with their ungainly triple cranksets. Sure, on the road you still need the wide range of the triple for applications like touring, but the days of the race-level triple are surely numbered. So it should be fun to see this thing in 10 years. We can reminisce about a time when heavyset riders made rationalizations like, “Well, Roberto Heras used one on the Angliru.”

Roberto Heras

Remember that guy?

A Whole Bunch of 10-Speed Road Cassettes

This is more of an investment than anything else. I figure I can sell these for a whole lot of money to the retrogrouches who refuse to upgrade to 14-speed.

A Whole Bunch of Chris King Headsets

Another financial investment. Regardless of whether they're worth the price, nothing inside our outside of cycling holds its value like these things. This is not an endorsement, it's just a fact. You can’t even get a used one cheap on eBay. I’ve tracked the retail price of these things over the years against the price of gold and the indices of all the world's stock markets and believe me when I say they offer a better return than any of them. As long as Mr. King successfully continues his anti-integrated headset scare tactics I’m putting all my money in his headsets.

A Mountain Bike With 26-Inch Wheels and Rim Brakes

It may be that when we wheel this thing out we’ll all ride around on our disc brake equipped 29ers or 650Bers or whatever other size they come up with, laughing at this primitive machine with its diminutive wheels. Or there may have been a nuclear apocalypse, in which case hopefully I’ll be alive to ride it over miles and miles of scorched earth, having a great time regardless of wheel size.

A Pair of Tubeless Road Wheels

“What’s that, Grandpa?”

“Why, it’s a set of tubeless road wheels.”

“What does that mean?”

“Well, it means you don’t need to use an inner tube.”

“Oh. Well, why did they think that was a good idea on a road bike?”

“I don’t know, Grandson. I don’t know.”