Three Four
Week 21/22
Took a break from regular programming last week because it was birthday week and life is more fun without unnecessary pressure during birthday week. Another year, another revolution. Total thirty-four revolutions. Feeling the centripetal force a bit more these days.
This week and the last I’ve spent a lot of time riding around the city on my cheap touring bike. So much so that I’ve been really missing my café racer Jamis from back in Philly. So much so that I’ve spent an unreasonable amount of time in the last two weeks scouring the internet for used road bikes with a certain aesthetic. What’s the aesthetic? At least for me: no explicity angled top tubes (prefer closer to horizontal), and preferably of the same width throughout. Rim brakes only, but that usually is the case for true road bikes. Ideally, Italian or Japanese steel frame. Campagnolo gears/brake, but I can settle for Shimano and brake shifters (no tube shifters). When you put it all together, it’s surprisingly hard to find this mix, and when something does show up, you know it’s getting snapped up pretty fast. Or I will run into the odd Trek or Giant bike which are solid brands with a rich history, but don’t really spark the same joy. I’ve even flirted this week with the idea of taking on another side-project (because why not?) and building my own custom retro racer by sourcing a nice but used Italian frame amd parts individually. This is easier said than done and not only because nice-but-used Italian frames are even harder to find than nice-but-used Italian road bikes. Maybe these are just birthday week hangovers and I’ll be over it by next week. It is certainly not sparking joy thinking of all grease-work involved and having no patio, balcony, or workshop to actually do such a project.
The ultimate payoff would be to get rid of my SL card for at least the two months of summer but I don’t see that happening with the beater touring bike that not only doesn’t spark joy but actively takes away from it some days. And so, the search continues.
🥘 Food
📚 Reading
- Platform Engineering, by Fournier & Nowland (work-inspired)
- Grokking Simplicity, by Eric Normand (work book club)
- Every leaf that falls
never stops falling.