old man yelling at clouds content

[bicycletricycle]

i was at a shop yesterday holding the broken parts of one of these trek front ends in my hands, huge weird stem , proprietary bar, gigantic fork, etc, etc. The whole thing is just not appealing, PIA to assemble/maintain, soon to be impossible to get parts, 600 dollar handlebars, but also just kinda ugly (to me anyways). When all assembled and cleaned up these fully integrated modern front ends can look pretty nice I admit and this one isn't the best example perhaps but I was just kind of revolted. Later I was at home looking at some bikes with Nitto pearls and salsa quill stems and I just felt better about the world.

I guess I am an old grump.

I have a similar experience at the auto repair garage. I saw the whole frond end of a W12 powered Bentley at the euro shop the other day. hoses and crap all over the place. You have to take the whole bumper bar and lights off to get to basically anything on the engine. I liked the looks of the car but looking inside I just think-

It isn't just not enough juice for the squeeze, same with the weird integrated trek bar thing.

rant over.

visual aids found on web
trek-madone-slr-9-disc-project-one-stem-top-739953844 by bicycletricycle666, on Flickr
5185097982_8de60416c7_b by bicycletricycle666, on Flickr