I crashed hard on my bike and was knocked unconscious for a few days last summer.
The conscious mind was not there to filter out revelations from the vast human collective subconscious.
During this brief window when the doors of perception were opened I discovered an ancient secret.

The Secret Origin of Carbon Lust

The Annunaki were an ancient race of technologically advanced aliens.
Their technology depended heavily on carbon for the nano technology that was essential to all of their mind blowing inventions.

They were so ancient and had been advanced for so long that they exhausted their worlds supply of carbon resources.
They had long known carbon had amazing properties for transportation technology. They had used it to master time and space.
Their nano probes were sent across the galaxy looking for a new exploitable world rich in carbon.

They found the Earth when the planet was home to only a few tens of thousand of competing primates in the African grasslands.
The short stature and small brains of these primates made them poor candidates for the slave force the Annunaki knew they would need to extract our planet's vast stores of carbon.

The Annunaki began using their nano technology to genetically engineer the small primates they found. They made them bigger and smarter and much, much stronger for hard work. The first prototype was an enhanced primate but it turned out to be to reclusive in nature and painfully shy. This genetically enhanced species was too hard to socialize to make good slaves. They were turned loose to fend for themselves and are known to us as Sasquatch or Bigfoot.

The next attempt at nano genetic manipulation by the Annunaki used members of the genus hominid which eventually produced the modern human species.

We worked in the Annunaki carbon mines for a thousand years before the dawn of history. This produced a profound imprint on us as a species. We remember our interstellar overlords and look to them in the various religions that look to a sky god or gods.

The other legacy of the Annunaki genetic nano design of our DNA is an embedded desire for carbon. We were bred to look for it, find it and desire it so we would look keep looking for it.

This is why diamonds, made of carbon, and of course carbon fiber bicycles are thousands of times more expensive than their real intrinsic worth. We are hard wired to crave them, admire them and acquire them.

Northern California has long been known as a hot bed of revolutionary thought,free speech, individuality and nonconformity. Now a few brave iconoclasts here rise as a strong fringe contingent of cyclists that buck the ancient genetic paradigm. They fight back against the programing in us to lust for carbon. They escape the bondage of carbon.
Support your local fringe element and their subversive insistence on steel.

I'd love to get a nice steel bike. When I bought my Sirrus for commuting, I didn't understand bikes well enough to venture into the used bike world - and there are no steel bikes to be bought in an LBS for ~$500. Next one perhaps!

Nicely written.

I very much like my nee steel bike. The frame is very stiff with excellent power transfer and handling, yet still soaks up the rough pavement. It's everything that CF is, but it's steel. How cool is that? The Annunaki would have removed me from the population for my blasphemy.

My subversive pro-steel activities have now been spread across the world for all to see. I can now look forward to capture and torture by carbon fiber-boarding. Good-bye, cruel world. I'll try not to rat out any other devotees like bigbossman or MarkoPolo.

Oops.

But even we Steelies carry within our frames the inherent contradiction that is the seed of our own destruction. After all, steel is made with iron and - wait for it - carbon. What? Our frames are made with carbon? Soylent Green is people? Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker's father? My God, where does it end? Where does it end?

Do you mean my carbon frame will some day become a steel beauty? Or worse a rusty steel anchor?

Carbon steel bikes are like 0.5% carbon.
Scandium bikes are also about 0.5% scandium.
Not sure what the mass ratio of carbon is in a CFRP bike.

Steel bikes are only 0.5% steel??? What's all the fuss about?

Steel is dangerous. I wouldn't ride a steel POS. I value my life to much. I saw a steel frame fail catastrophically recently, and it was NOT a pretty sight.

Do I detect irony, waiting for results...

Good thing I put the meter on it.

Did it simply fold up, like one of those wire basket shopping carts, or did it assplode, like one of those bicycle bombs ?

It asploded. As steel is prone to do.

Lanceoldstrong, write a SciFi paperback and then start a religion, (you might want to add in something about a volcano, up to you). Until then, stand on a street corner and offer IQ tests. I hear there is real money in this...

"Once giants lived in the earth, Conan. And in the darkness of chaos, they fooled Crom, and they took from him the enigma of steel. Crom was angered, and the earth shook. Fire and Wind struck down these giants ... but in their rage, the gods forgot the secret of steel and left it on the battlefield. And we who found it are just men - not gods, not giants, just men. The secret of steel has always carried with it a mystery. You must learn its riddle, Conan. You must learn its discipline. For no one, no one in the world can you trust - not men, not women, not beasts ... this you can trust." - Conan's Father from the film "Conan the Barbarian."

It burned up, fell over, and sank into the swamp.

Hey, I've already made up my mind and was on a roll. How dare you try to confuse me with facts.

"huge tracts of land"

"You got my note!"

"Well, I got a note . . . "

Boy, that sure is purrdy... If this wuz the '70s, them tangs would be filed to a point... I sure miss the '70s.

I like steel, but I just happen to work for the other aliens.

I embrace any bike-shaped substance. If it's a bike, it's all right.