Out With The Old...

Well, this is it, we're now passing under the flamme rouge on the final run-in to the holidays:

(Team Santa's leadout train looks a little ragged.)

As for my wooden sleigh, with my foot on the mend I've been riding it regularly, and I think maybe the creaking's coming back:

(Boy those wheels ruin the bike's already questionable aesthetics.)

This has only strengthened my resolve to transition the Renovo from pampered bike to all-season workhorse, which I find deliciously decadent given that the retail price for this bicycle was a bladed spoke's width shy of $10,000.  Perhaps one day it will be as scuffed, worn, and familiar as the surface of the local bar, who knows?  Either that or it will collapse underneath me like a game of Jenga.  

Regardless, as a member of the highly rarefied $10K Club--albeit one who snuck in the back door as Renovo sent me the bike to review and then conveniently (for me) went out of business--I read this recent review of the Moots Routt RSL with interest:

$10,000 is undoubtedly a lot of money for a bike. But when it's amortized over a lifetime, and when it's as good as the @MOOTSCYCLES Routt RSL, the numbers suddenly make a lot more sense. https://t.co/J03OjqbI8l pic.twitter.com/ZLrDOCKESl

— CyclingTips (@cyclingtips) December 17, 2018

Now, I've ridden a Moots--two in fact.  (What is the plural of Moots?  Is it "Mootses?"  Or is the plural the same as the singular, just like its phonic cousin, "moose?")  This was of course during my trip to the IMBA World Summit in Steamboat Springs in Two Thousand Aught Fourteen:

On the way to which I checked in at LaGuardia behind someone traveling with a rat who has nearly the same name as me:

Anyway, during my visit the people at Moots were kind enough to hook me up with two (2) Mootsusses, those being this 27.5" YBB mountain bicycling-style bicycle:

And this road bicycling-style bicycle, which with its rim brakes and limited tire clearance and non-gravel specificity is of course now totally "obsolete," sarcasm intented:

Which is precisely my point.  See, I know firsthand that Moots make nice bikes.  Really nice bikes.  Like, I really wanted a Moots road bike after that ride, even though I got dropped immediately and spent the whole time lagging like 10 bike lengths behind the people with whom I was riding.  Therefore, I'll readily buy every word of James Huang's praise in his review of the Routt--except for this:

The Moots Routt RSL is anything but cheap, but I’d argue that it’s far from a bad value. It’s among the best-riding and performing gravel bikes I’ve ridden, it should be laughably durable, and it’s impeccably constructed. Everything on it — from the bottom bracket threads to the rear brake tabs to the dropout alignment — is utterly perfect. It’s a forever bike in the truest sense, and amortized over that kind of time, even this bike’s asking price suddenly seems almost reasonable.

People have been justifying titanium bikes as "the last bike you'll ever own" for as long as companies have been making bikes out of it.  However, in a delightful bit of irony, the sorts of people who buy titanium bikes are exactly the sorts of people who are unable to commit to a bicycle for more than a few years , since bicycles become "obsolete" (sarcasm intended) so quickly.  Freds used to lust after Litespeeds and Merlins whilst justifying the price because the weapons-grade titanium would survive the nuclear apocalypse, but how many of these babies do you still see rolling around?

And forget about mountain bikes:

And yes, even that Dura Ace-equipped Moots I rode a mere four years ago is already sadly outmoded by the standards of anyone shopping for such a high-end bicycle.  So while the Routt has all the de rigeur features it won't be long before it seems as quaint as that Litespeed with its threaded fork and chunky old-timey downtube cable stops and clearances optimized for 23mm tires.

Again, to be clear, I have no doubt every single bit of praise is warranted.  All I'm saying is that, whether it's made from titanium or crabon or steel or wood, an expensive high-end performance bicycle is always a terrible value, even if it's completely indestructible.  That's not to say I have anything against people who buy them--far from it.  Indeed, as a middle-aged Fred I'm long past resenting people who spend lots of money on bikes, and I'm using a goddamn Renovo as my winter trainer for chrissakes.  I just think it's important to be honest with yourself: you're gonna want some shit in a few years.  And as long as you're comfortable with that, by all means go for it.

Bikes are a funny thing: people obsess over tensile strength and fatigue life and all that sort of stuff, but by far the most destructive force is a tiny tweak in standards.  A few millimeters' change in spacing standards here and there will destroy thousands of bikes instantly.  You have been warned.