I have steel bikes (4 vintage, 1 modern), I have carbon bikes (2). I have wooden boats (2), I have fiberglass boats (2). I have 100 year old shot guns (6), I have brand new shotguns (2). I like them all, for different reasons.

Me, on my vintage steel bike, can maintain a similar pace to my modern CF bike. The difference, the modern bike has no soul. It's an appliance. My wooden boats speak to me, though both are current vintage, wood has soul-fiberglass, well it could just as well be a bathtub, though both of the FG boats are quite attractive. The antique shotguns, if only they could talk......and they kill a bird just as dead as a modern one.

There is more to it than steel vs. CF or aluminum. It's the intangible, at least to those that do not know. The difference between a Porsche or a Ferrari and a...well nothing made in the US or Japan. Maybe a Lexus and Mercedes or BMW. The European car has soul, a tradition, a feeling, the Asian car is very, very good at what it does, maybe better and almost certainly less costly to maintain, but without the feeling of intimacy that the European car has.

To me that is the difference between a steel bike and a CF bike. And yes, bring the steel back to TdF!