Just ordered a road bike for €2,000. Technically this is GAS, because I already have three road bikes:
Peugeot 103, which was my second road bike. Downtube shifters, 27.5" rims. I rode my first hill time trial on this stretch of road. I also flipped the bike over myself. Quite weird if you see your bike fly over you.
It sits in my parents basement and I tell myself every year, that I’ll revive it in the summer. My mom bought this for me from a shady character at the train station because I was in love with the bike. I genuinely didn’t think it was stolen. So, I can’t sell or scrap it.
Centurion Megadrive 1998 - Aluminium frame, 9-Speed 105 group with STI shifters. Now out of commission, but rideable. The problem with this bad boy is that it is too long for me. Essentially, I bought the wrong size, which is down to the 90s being a rather extreme cycling era. I raced two crit races on this and a bunch of amateur events. My top speed was ca. 60 mph / 95.4 km/h. Several smaller training crashes, but no broken bones! I think I rode ca. 25,000 miles or 40,000 km on it, not sure because this was pre Internet.
Stevens Aspin 2008 - This one has a funny backstory! I wasn’t riding my Centurion a lot anymore and was pretty much broke. I mean, I sold my only bass amp. I kept a €10/day budget for everything. So my friend’s dad just gave the bike to me. A former top of the line superbike, for free. In it’s current state it looks sorry, but I rode it in snow, hail and rain. I raced a few events on it, most notably the 24 hour “Rad am Ring” in a four member team. At 4 a.m. in the dark I feathered the brakes down Fuchsröhre so I wouldn’t get thrown off by the thrashing wonky frame. You can see that I tweaked saddle and handlebars because, once again, the frame is too big for me. I made do.
Rose Pro SL Disc Ultegra 2022 - I test rode this “endurance” road bike yesterday. It is slightly heavier than the Stevens, which tells you something about the gift that was. But I felt at home and comfortable. Let’s hope it arrives in one piece and I can just enjoy it. It feels like this bike thing is coming full circle, starting on and coming back to a red bike. The plan is to impress a beautiful girl with this and when she chats me up, I tell her “Oh, by the way, I play the bass.” Then we kiss.
That’s an interesting bike collection. Quite different periods and styles
The disk brakes could cause the higher weight of the new bike. Yeah sure, we need some debate about those vs rim brakes here as well to replace the good old roundwound/flatwound dilemma (or P vs J as well…)
But I can’t not post a couple of pictures of my latest bike. It’s almost one year old now, but I ordered the frame before buying my first bass, so I didn’t limit my budget too much. It’s based on a custom steel frame for a road (not race!) bike. I assembled every single part, wheels included.
It’s not the fastest bicycle out there, but it’s perfect for my use - it can be comfortably ridden in every weather condition on every road
I haven’t considered a custom bass yet, because I still don’t know exactly what I would need or want. I will probably try to build one myself at some point, though.
Luckily there is a huge instrument choice on the market for way more affordable prices than a new bike
The Rose is a beaut! Excellent components but personally I was never a fan of disc brakes. Too much hassle to deal with compared to rim brakes and they’re heavier.
I bought my first road bike a little over 10 years ago. I couldn’t afford a car at the time, so I went on Craigslist and found this really crappy Cannondale R400 for sale. Didn’t know anything about road bikes at the time but the guy drove it to my house & let me ride it around first which was nice and I think I paid around $350 for it.
Spent the next several months customizing the bike. New seat, pedals, crankset, derailleurs, wheels, brakes, handlebars, electronics…basically I replaced every part of the bike except the frame. It was so much fun to learn how to build a bike and was especially helpful when things would go wrong cause I never had to pay a shop to fix it.
I loved it. It was my custom beauty. I rode that bike so much it was obscene. I think within the first year I had put on almost 2k miles. I remember one summer in particular I did a few hundred miles in a single weekend. Talk about being saddle sore. It was awesome.
Then, about a year later I bought my first car so the bike wasn’t really needed as much. I would still ride to the 7-11 or to a buddies place if they were nearby, but I found the bike starting to collect dust in my garage. Every time I would ride it again I would remember thinking to myself how much I missed the ride. The summer breeze blowing by as you zoom down the trails on Lake Washington…can’t beat it.
My wife & I moved just over three years ago and it took a bunch of u haul trips back and forth to get everything out. My bike was in the garage overnight during our move, and someone broke in and stole it. I was so bummed. Even if I wasn’t riding it anymore it still had such sentimental value to me. Plus I had easily put close to $2k into the thing. I looked everywhere for it. Craigslist, offerup, pawn shops, Facebook groups for stolen bikes, etc.
Never got the bike back and I haven’t ridden one since. That is the story of my bike.
