What's your thoughts on bike and component weight?

Howard70

Adventurer
Has anybody switched to a heavy steel bike and not minded the difference?
Do you spend the time and money it costs to go lighter on components on a recreation bike?
So - two years and three months late:

1. No. I switched from a heavy aluminum bike (old Cannondale Scalpel) to a couple of light-weight carbon bikes (Salsa Mukluk but plus tires in place of fats, and a Salsa Cutthroat) and loved the difference!

2. Yes, I spend time and money to get the lightest recreational bike I can. I do long, remote exploratory rides and often end up with several miles of hike-a-bike where I'm carrying the bike across terrain I can't ride (Danny MacAskill could ride it, but I can't). It doesn't take long carrying a bike over saddles to reach a rideable wash, lifting them over fences or locked gates, across the Rio Grande, through choked up vegetation, or whatever to appreciate the lightest bike possible.

However, if I couldn't afford to get something light, I'd ride whatever I could get. The most important thing to do is to ride (under your own power of course!).

Howard
 

DaveInDenver

Middle Income Semi-Redneck
In all fairness,I think this thread actually went off the rails right around the guy in the skinsuit on the disc-wheeled Olympic Time-Trial race bike...
"The guy" is Andy Hampsten in the 1988 Giro, when he ended up in the pink jersey.

The Gavia climbing stage that year is considered a real epic in bike racing.

https://pezcyclingnews.com/latestnews/gavia-1988-andy-hampstens-epic-stage/

Love those crazy TT bikes, though!

Otto-Lauritzen Huffy.jpg

That year his road bike was a real tank, weighed 19.69 lbs without pedals.

https://www.cyclingnews.com/feature...y-hampstens-1988-7-eleven-huffy-giro-ditalia/

And it is tangentially relevant. In the article Hampsten says "The year after '88 we had Eddy Merckx as our bike supplier," he continued. "He is the master at fitting bikes to riders and taught us not to get hung up on light bikes. Why save seconds on a climb and lose minutes on a descent? Slawta certainly has an old world style of making bikes that go up and downhill properly."

Note: In this case Slawta means John Slawta of Landshark Bicycles (up in your neck of the woods @MTVR!) who actually built Hampsten's Giro bike in 1988.
 
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