Why

Why

I went shopping at a store owned and managed by a friendly local rider. We’ve done the same group ride more times than I can count. And his store is the best in town.

Once our business was done, we started talking bikes. The topic of tire pressure came up. He told me he pumps his 23mm’s to 125 psi. I think I winced — the result of hours studying Jan Heine’s articles in Bicycle Quarterly and Grant Petersen’s Just Ride, etc. He asked me what I ran. “Forty-five to fifty,” I said. He looked confused, lacking the first-hand experience to factor that low number into his sense of what a bike tire (his touchstone being a 23mm) requires to perform well. (On my Hilsen are 35mm flat-proof Continentals.) I said a few things about the myth of high-pressure/narrow tires/speed but stopped because I could see I wasn’t getting through. Nothing new.

He wondered why I ride the Hilsen rather than my ti Litespeed Ardennes, which, though sweet and fine, I rarely use anymore.

“Comfort,” I said. “It’s so amazingly comfortable with the wide tires and low pressure, the leather saddle [something else to which he couldn’t relate], the 650B frame.”

So he’s comfortable on his carbon Specialized — he told me as much — and I’m comfortable on my ten-pound-heavier steel Rivendell.

What I forgot to say, what I should have said, is, “Plus I get to look at this.”

If I can’t explain the physics of comfort, how can I explain the aesthetic pleasure felt when looking down?

That silver quill stem, the Nitto handlebars, the Rivendell blue paint, the lugs and the lugwork, the twine-wrap, the fenders.

That's why too.

Roadysseus

8.14.17