I turned 60 this year and have been riding a bike for most of those years and fixing up old bikes since I was in junior high. Until very recently, my only complete bike purchase was in Dec. 1982, when I used my first post-college paycheck to buy a Trek 412 from Palo Alto bikes (it cost $350, a heck of a lot of money for me at the time). Not long after that bike got stolen, I bought a '79 Raleigh Super Course from the owner of the bike shop where I worked, and that set me on the C&V path. My road bikes were usually set up with bar-end friction shifting (as the Super Course came from the dealer), toe clips, skinny tires, high gearing. I rode a lot. The technology I was using seemed just fine.

My most recent bike is a Chinese-made custom Ti frame set up for 700 x 38mm tires (which I'm running tubeless), thru-axles, hydraulic disc brakes, 1 1/8" threadless stem, carbon fiber fork, Campy Potenza 11-speed drivetrain and hydro brakes, an Ergon plastic saddle. Oh, and SPD pedals, which I realized about 15 years ago were the solution to the constant hot spots I had been experiencing all of those years with toe clips. Tomorrow, I plan on taking it on an 85-mile solo ride. The only C&V component will be me.

Ymmv.