The guy was at once interested but ignorant, and wanted to appear informed in a conversation, that's all. Just talk. Somebody wanting to connect, but doing it sorta clumsily. Yesterday at the train station a person that I'm 95% certain was born a man but living as a woman, wandered over and engaged me in a conversation about why she can't ride a bike anymore (heart trouble) and how she misses it, and that, since my bike has disk brakes, it's clearly very expensive.

I've had a 2 year old Walmart/Mongoose aluminum frame fail catastrophically under what I would term as 'light mountain biking'. The downtube snapped completely through a couple inches above the BB.

I just retired a Gary Fisher aluminum frame that has seen a lot of 'heavy mountain biking' for 5 years, including drops to flat of 3-4 feet, without a peep out of it.