a philosophical question...

forty-four tooth crank...
Originally uploaded by divine_gear

what makes your bike yours? or better yet...what makes your bike you?

there is a belief that the bike is just an extension of you, at least physically. this i can't argue. however, when/if the bike becomes an extension of your personality?

here i am making reference to my slider cross bike. why do i bring this up? well; when i was working at another bike shop, a friend of the owners came in and they started talking, and it came out that i rode there. the gentleman stated that 'this is your bike. isn't it?' and he pointed at the slider. i asked, 'how did you know?' he replied 'it just seems like your [(personality/style) paraphrased].' now how is the slider my personality?

i believe that there are key things with a bike that maybe only you know or have done, that does not necessarily effect the bike, but may affect you, in some way. my examples with the slider are the fact that i have carbon spacers. why? the frame set is steel. i'm not saving weight. other things that i have done/changed if not only for my eye...i have a king headset that is their rasta color set [the paint job is called rasta flame] to match the frame; well i changed the top cap color (which should be green) to blue. no reason. just something different to look at. i recently put on a dura-ace cable gear thing. you know...the little gear guide that the cable feeds through to tell you what gear that you are in, that all the hard-core roadies get rid of...yeah, i put one on. xtr rear del. when i was asked about that, my response was 'well, if xtr is able to take mtn biking, it can take a cross race.' meaning i'd rather have that level of reliability than something made for road riding. i have old school xt brakes. one inch headtube. one-zero-five brake/shifters. my cross wheelset is old school rolf vector pros. my bar end plugs have lights. an i.f. fork, which is white to off set the rasta flame paint job...also i'm not rasta, so why that paint job? i just saw it in the vicious paint list, and said 'hell ya.' so how does all of this 'explain my personality?'

is it the fact that all of this is non-conventional? and i didn't go out and say 'this' is what i'm going to do. i sat back and made choices that made sense to me. i know that there are 'better' parts out there, but i chose to go this route. i could have a sweet pair of zipp three-zero-three cross on here, but that wouldn't make sense to me.

so why bring all this up?

well, for a couple of reasons. one; i take what the gentleman said to be a huge compliment. because who else has ever heard that? sure, we've heard things like 'sweet bike', 'nice ride', and those types of things, but to say that a bike brings out who you are? second; the frameset is working on ten years old. it's steel. this is not going to last forever. what am i able to do next that will still bring out my personality? all parts are able to be transfered over, except headset; but what frameset would bring about the same affect? yes, affect.

i would stick with vicious; however, what about ti w/ painted panels? panels that are painted rasta flame? to keep the 'soul'.

these are the questions that plague my mind. even though i'm well steeped in philosophy, the big questions don't plague me as much. this is what plagues me. nice.

namaste...