Originally Posted by
joe_5700
You have completely hit it out of the park Dan. The more I ride, the more I realize that the bike has less and less to do with it.
Okay. Go for a ride without the bike and get back to me on how that goes.
Does it make it more clear what I'm getting at when we get absurdly reductionist like that? Cycling is ALWAYS about the bike. It is not 100%, but the bicycle is what enables the activity. It's stupid to say that it doesn't matter, because it's pretty clear that you need a bicycle if you're going to cycle at all. And if you concede that it matters up to a point, but no further, how does that make sense, either? If the experience is a product of using your body to operate a machine, changes to that machine, however marginal, will always have some effect, even if it is the sensation of or belief in speed, or comfort, or whatever rather than a measurable change. Cycling is the marriage of industry and athlete. For lots of us, that's part of what's so fascinating about it. There is some desire from some to abstract the bicycle away, and I find that very strange.
Originally Posted by
wphamilton
I should agree with Dan considering what I ride: Nashbar frame w/Sora and the most inexpensive wheels. I only improve the bike to the extent that it can improve me. My personal perspective is more in line with Dan's.
And yet, if I thought that $600 wheels and Ultegra groupset would boost my speed or by itself improve my pleasure in the ride I'd buy them in a heartbeat. So you're right. Speed is important for its own sake (sorry Dan) regardless of whether or how you compete. Also, a more enjoyable experience is of course worth something. I just don't think that those upgrades would improve my speed any, or make much difference on my commutes and long solo rides. Which leads to my only point here. It's legitimate and rational to speak of subjective enjoyment, beneficial placebo effects and so on, but we also need to be brutally objective about this question: how much of that subjective evaluation is based on the real qualities of the equipment, and how much is based on image (self image and status)? If the answer is more heavily weighted in the latter, then it is more responsible and in my opinion, more effective, to adjust our own attitude than the image.
No time to really react fully to this, but I think you're getting into some very interesting territory here. We know that what we think about things affects our experience of them - wine is a great example. If a bottle of wine is more expensive, we perceive it as tasting better than the same wine in a bottle marked with the label of a "lesser" vintage. There are questions about to what extent this is a good thing that we can use to hone our enjoyment of our experiences and where it becomes snake oil and fraud, but I don't think the answers are simple. It's a pretty fascinating element of human psychology, and it definitely plays into how we feel about our bikes, too.