Originally Posted by
Jarrett2
So I took a little vacation this weekend and stayed in South Austin for a couple of days. It's a cool town. There are cyclists and bike friendly infrastructure everywhere in that town. But the thing I found funny, was in this part of Austin virtually EVERYONE was riding an older bike
What appeared to be lots of older steel bikes of different makes and models. Lots of fixies as well. Very few newer race/carbon bikes on the road.
Yesterday, I went a little farther South to the Austin Veloway and it was almost all carbon race bikes in that area. I went down to New Braunsfel and went to a popular ride area and all carbon race bikes there as well.
But after reading this thread, I have a better idea of why people ride older bikes instead of the latest tech:
Nostalgia - like owning a 68 Camaro / had one when they were a kid
Practical - some rides/locales are not good for expensive bikes
Financial - they appear to be very inexpensive comparatively
Prefer the Ride - grew up riding steel, likes steel, not interested in change
Familiar Tech - grew up working on old bikes, not interested in learning to work on new tech
For me, I live and ride in a low crime area. My bikes stay in my garage. I don't commute to work and don't have to leave my bikes in an insecure area. I didn't spend the last decades riding older tech bikes, so it currently holds no appeal to me. My LBS that I like carries and rides newer tech. The group rides I do consist mostly of riders on carbon race inspired bikes.
Every time I ask local riders about steel, they tell me it is too noodly for a rider of my size/strength. And that a stiffer material like carbon or maybe even titanium would be better for me.
I'm pretty light and week, so I've only found two bikes so far that are too noodly for me. '88 Trek 400T and 1990 Raleigh Technium Pro (which had aluminum main tubes).
Steel roadbikes were few and far between in the 1990s, actually road bikes on the whole were being outsold by MTBs in that decade that there aren't a whole lot of used ones to choose from. When the Lance era came about road sales shot up but steel was pretty much only available in custom bikes and some reasonably priced steel started up from Surly and Soma, etc. The Surly stuff isn't exactly sporty, so a sporty steel lover would probably rather get '80s action.
Even then you were talking $400 frameset when you could get some SWEET Italian steel complete offa craigslist for that.
I like steel road bikes. Horizontal top tubes and preferably no tubes greater than 1-1/8", is what looks good to me.
I do have a (barely) 21[sup]st[/sup] century roadie, TIG'd 853 Lemond with a plastic fork.
Gonna eventually put some Ultegra 9-sp shifters on my late-80s Scapin some day. Have the shifters and the wheel, just need cassette.