RiceAWay

There is another thing: A friend of mine had his Colnago C40 simply fall apart. At the time this happened he was going about 5 mph riding up onto a bicycle path. 20 minutes later he would have crossed the Golden Gate Bridge and been descending into Sausalito at 40 mph.

Now he will not touch carbon fiber anything and had custom Italian steel bikes made for himself and his wife. Every time carbon fiber is mentioned now he says that all of these carbon fiber parts will break like glass. And since the simple little crash broke his finger in such a manner that it is paralyzed you can understand him.

I also have three carbon fiber forks break on me. But I'm an engineer and understand the learning curve of using new materials. To my mind we have matured the carbon fiber construction techniques and design.

But having an intellectual conviction and not having it come up in your mind as you're descending at 40 mph are two different things. Especially when you have car traffic speeding by. So even though I know that there are any number of things that could fail and dump you into the path of a speeding car I end up slowing up all the time as the "breaking like glass" comment passes through my mind on steep descents. And this despite the fact that I am only VERY seldom passed on descents.

I also know that of all the steel bikes I've owned not a one of them has failed. And I have a serious concussion, 2 years walking and talking and not being there until I was on the verge of dying from not even remembering to eat until my NCIS friend took me to Stanford University medical center and they suggested a neurologist who treated it properly. I have to take $100 of pills a month that destroy my sense of balance for the rest of my life. So it is a good thing that bicycles balance themselves. So having an early carbon fiber fork actually explode like a gunshot goes through my mind whenever I'm riding non-steel frames and forks.

Modern bicycles are made for lightness. Aluminum wheelsets wear out RAPIDLY. Steel and aluminum frames and forks cannot be repaired. While CF frames can be repaired (NOT FORKS) and CF wheels with rim brakes have about the same lifespan as lightweight aluminum wheelsets, everyone is going to have their own tastes. I am a 75 year old sports riding and my worrying about 5lbs difference in overall weight of a frame would be silly. I have two steel bikes, two aluminum bikes and two carbon fiber bikes. My average speed over known courses with climbing on them is within fractional mph and it doesn't seem to have anything to do with the 5 lb difference in weight from the lightest to the heaviest. It is far more dependent upon how I feel that way.

So buy the bike that you want to buy and not what someone tells you that you should. I can tell you absolutely I would NOT buy disk brake, electric shifting, titanium bikes or super light CF bikes. Paying $10,000 for one of these strikes me as the height of ignorance. A Cat 1 racer couldn't tell the difference between that an old DeRosa with worn Campagnolo 9 speed shifting. There is FAR more difference between cheap and expensive tires.

So high quality is not the material but the workmanship and that has been around for decades.