Although she has stopped writing new articles, the most useful link is lovelybike.blogspot.com. You will discover that British frames (think Raleigh DL1) are different than Italian frames (of which the Bella Ciao, frame made in Italy, bike assembled in Berlin to German standard, is her favourite), with different performing frames from Sweden, Denmark, Germany, France, and more recently Asia. You will learn about front fork angle where one design is for sport and another angle gives comfort. You will learn about saddles where the 100-year old design of the Brooks leather saddle remains king. Discussion on tyres... thin, thick, fat, large diameter vs small, tread and even colour (she prefers cream). Then, if you read her site by date, you will discover how she began as a novice wanting to give up a car and use a bike to get around Boston... a city bike for all seasons. Then she begins to meet bike people and go on rides, competitions and you enter a subculture of biking where words like randonneur surface

To briefly summarise, the Randonneur is a lugged steel low-trail bicycle with 650Bx42mm tires, fenders, dynamo lighting, front and rear racks, and a handlebar bag - made in the style of the 20th century French constructeurs. "Low-trail" refers to the front-end geometry of a bicycle and it differs from the typical mid/high trail geometry of most roadbikes today. Among classic and vintage bicycle enthusiasts, there is definitely a mystique surrounding the low trail randonneur, and dramatic descriptions of its handling abound - made all the more dramatic, I suspect, by the fact that this type of bicycle is fairly rare and few have actually ridden it.

As you can see, you no longer are limited to the entry conversation about steel vs aluminium. Steel is presumed because it bends, whereas aluminium must be rigid or it breaks... which means shock absorbers instead of shock absorbing steel by how the front forks are bent.

After reading her articles, we flew to Berlin and bought two Bella Ciao bicycles that we rode all over Berlin, then Dresden and then back to the airport in Prague where we boxed them and shipped them home. Back in the land of hills, we promptly removed the cranks and bottom brackets and added Bafang BBS01 electric mid-mount motors with 36V lithium ion batteries, converting them to ebikes where they have become a primary form of transport for us.

But, we did find that if we load the bikes up, the Italian frame becomes too whippy; thus we had to acquire other bikes with stronger frames built for hauling. THe questions as to intended use become relevant. In cars, we own a 2-seater SLK for good weather coffee runs, a gas guzzling G-wagon when we need to pick up six people at the ferry or haul a ton of rocks, and a Toyota Ractis to go food shopping on the least amount of fuel when the weather is too foul to bike.