I've Got Your "Forever Bike" Right Here

Good morning!  Or for those of you living in Australia:

,,ƃuᴉuɹoɯ pooפ,,

Since I know you're upside down.

To start your week off right, first eat a nutritious breakfast that's chock full of nutrients (pretty sure Froot Loops contain the full complement of vitamins), then read my latest Outside column about how many cyclists are lured by the siren song of the so-called "Forever Bike:"

At the moment I think my oldest bike* currently in service** is my Ironic Orange Julius Bike:

My archives indicate I bought the frame on a popular Internet auction site for $150 in 2008, so it's not even very old in the grand scheme of things.  Still, I certainly didn't plan for it to be a "forever bike."  Rather, I'd been intrigued by the Pompino for awhile since back in the aughts there really weren't too many frames like this available here in Canada's dried up udder--and by "like this" I mean steel singlespeed frames with rack mounts and fender eyelets and decent clearance and stuff.  (Though by today's standards the tire clearance is minuscule***, funny how frame spacing fashion fluctuates like pant cuffs.)

So yeah, if in 20 years the IOJB is still in service and all my other bikes have been replaced then that would mean...well, something.

Anyway, spring has sprang, and here in New York the weather is very gradually improving:

Spring also means the return of bike racing, and I began my season this past weekend with an outing on my non-forever bike:

Despite the primitive rime breaks, puppet-string drivetrain, and non-crabon wheels I give this bike an A+ as a park racing bike, and it definitely felt a hell of a lot better in that capacity than the Renovo.  (Which is not really a fair comparison since that's not what the Renovo was whittled for, but anyway.)  As for my own performance, I'd give it a B-, even though I generally prefer to grade myself on a pass/fail basis.  By that metric I suppose I technically failed in that I didn't cross the finish line with the rest of the group.  However, I did hang in there until the very last lap, and only lost contact the last time up Harlem Hill.  I was also encouraged by the fact that I felt way better this year than I did at my first race last year; in fact in the final third of the race I was fairly certain I'd finish with the group without a problem...until on the penultimate lap the gaps got a little harder to close, then on the final climb I just kind of slid off the back like a fried egg off a spatula.  Still, I completed the allotted number of laps, and was in the pack most of the time, so that's gotta count for something, right?

Regardless, it's all just training for the highlight of my season, which is of course Eroica California:

Last year's gimmick was I rode the Nova Eroica route on a brand-new gravel bike and then the Classic route on a 100 year-old one-speed bike with a coaster brake and then wrote about it for Outside.  This year's gimmick will be even gimmickier, and of course I'm giving away both the bikes I'll be riding to the first two people who find me at the ride and call "dibs."  It's all just my way of giving back to the cycling community--by which I mean I don't feel like schlepping two bikes around California with me.  Anyway, you'll read all about it in Outside afterward.

I never imagined being a semi-professional bike blogger would be this difficult.


*I have an older bike, but it's currently a frame locked away in storage

**Bike only sees occasional service as it lives in Queens as my velo-à-terre

***I had no idea "minuscule" was spelled with a "u," I always thought it was "miniscule," go figure