A decade ago, my buddy Justin, an ex-pro and wheel-builder, had a mid-2000s white TIME RX frame sitting in his shop, waiting to be rehomed. Opportunity struck. It fit my wife. We spec’d it out and he built it up for her with a mixed Shimano groupset, cheap alloy wheels and other bits and bobs he had lying around. Despite a calculated poker face upon reception, she loved it then and loves it now. Stylish, understated, fast. Always the de facto object of desire at the café stop.
There is a clarity that comes with building a bicycle for one we love. In selecting our own machine, decisions may become entangled in aspiration, identity, insecurity, brand and marketing—or so couched in masculine asceticism that any opportunity for excitement gets quashed in self-imposed abstention. We either become moldable putty in the grips of the brand gods and feed demons or sentence ourselves to a utilitarian joylessness at odds with the magical potential of this very special machine.
In directing our energy outward, we interrupt both feedback loops. The act itself is an enabler of extraordinary editorial and artistic expression: fit, reliability, beauty, performance, whimsy. All assessed through a near-perfect balance of objectivity and emotion. The result is more creative, thoughtful, collectively sensual and inevitably closer to what we, the gift-givers, actually believe makes a great bike than the bikes we ride ourselves.
There is a phenomenon of guys on rocket ships riding abreast of partners on much more reasonable vehicles. I could lambast these men, but I fall among them, at least on my steel-free days. I instead turn my focus toward the beauty of the gesture: the bicycle as gift, as courtship display and act of fidelity if not uxoriousness. Much as repressed man may more freely emote onto his canine self, the bicycle offers another sanctioned vessel for his feelings. Go a layer deeper and invert the direction of gaze and the gifted bicycle becomes a bellwether for the relationship itself. How much of his partner is in the bicycle’s manifestation, and how much of himself? Affection, projection, compatibility, incompatibility—the intimate becomes visible.
My college friend Lee-Anna, beautiful, eccentric, athletic and brilliant, was dating the mechanic at the local bike shop. Her love of riding was fervent, but comfort over longer distances had proven historically elusive, persisting through myriad fit adjustments and saddle changes. He was infatuated with her and planned an offering: a bicycle designed explicitly around her and her alone so she could ride (with him) as long and comfortably as she wanted. By no means an expert frame builder, he bought the tubes, measured and cut them to fit her body as well as aesthetic direction, and began welding and assembling the bike in his basement. But, amid mutual heartbreak, the relationship flamed out before the bike was complete and, similarly, lay in pieces for an extended period in the dark.
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