The carbon cycle

I don't maintain rigorous accounting of my finances, but I do keep a few simple notes that are enough for me to make a few useful observations about my spending habits. One such observation I made for the previous year was that about a fourth of my expenses went towards the purchases of the two new bicycles that make up my new fleet.

The purchases were needed in the sense that any material thing outside of food, water, clothing, shelter, etc. is ever needed; the bicycles of my former fleet were showing signs of age and owner neglect as well as a lack of specialization important for my increasingly bicycle-oriented lifestyle. Neither bicycle was optimal for fulfilling the role of practical transportation, and neither was optimal for fulfilling the role of racing, so I replaced them both with (1) a touring bicycle, optimal for practical transportation, and (2) a carbon-fiber bicycle, optimal for going fast in dorky clothes.

Directing one-fourth of one's expenses towards motor transportation seems a lot, directing it towards bicycles seems even more so, and so one may assume that the two bicycles I bought constitute special and high-tech equipment and that I'm happy with the results. I didn't, and I'm not. At least, I'm not entirely happy with the results.

More specifically I've decided after several months of riding it that I'm not entirely happy with the racing bicycle. (The touring bicycle is great and fulfills its role superbly.) Even more specifically I've decided that I'm unsatisfied with carbon fiber as a bicycle frame material. It's not that I have a specific complaint about the riding quality of carbon. I'm not even sure if I have a complaint about the riding quality of any suitable frame material; I suspect that (excluding weight and fit) tires, wheels, and the saddle account for the vast majority of a bicycle's feel. So my beef against carbon isn't a snob appeal about some made-up (and subjective) disadvantage of the material, and it isn't a snob appeal to the soft flex of steel or any made-up (and subjective) awesomeness of another material; rather, my beef is that it doesn't make economic sense for us amateurs to be riding carbon.

Carbon fiber is a useful technology in bicycles that should be continued to be explored; however, I think its application makes obvious sense only for pros. Carbon fiber makes for the fastest possible bicycle today, but it does so only through trade-offs; mainly it (1) increases cost; (2) decreases durability; and (3) increases the chance of catastrophic, unsafe failure. For pros, these trade-offs don't matter much: (1) the bicycle is purchased on a sponsor's dollar so cost is irrelevant, (2) team cars follow behind the riders so durability isn't as critical, (3) pros are paid money to assume a tremendous amount of risk as it is so the slightly increased chance of catastrophic failure is negligible for them. Meanwhile, for pros, performance matters. A lot.

For the rest of us, performance shouldn't matter, but it ends up mattering. The only reason why I considered a carbon-fiber bicycle is that so many amateurs ride them, and I thought that if I want to be competitive, whether in a fast-paced Saturday-morning ride or a hill-climb race, then I need the additional lightness and stiffness that carbon provides. So basically I selected carbon for my frame material out of peer pressure. Why did my peers select carbon? Probably because of pressure as well.

I suppose it all started with one club rider somewhere in the world for whom the additional cost and decreased reliability of carbon were no objections. He then proceeded to buy a carbon-fiber bicycle and become faster relative to the other riders in his club. Maybe he made it to the top of the hill first a few times when before, on his old steel-frame bicycle, he never had a chance. The other riders saw these gains as easy and undignified and thus felt compelled to do the same, to upgrade their bicycles to bring the group back to equilibrium. Eventually everyone in the group fitted themselves with better bicycles, and the group overall became faster while each individual rider remained the same relative to the other riders. And so it is that we cyclists now find ourselves trapped in a hideous carbon gap, each of us racing to the top of the hill while racing to the bottom in terms of buying the most expensive, flimsiest thing on two wheels, with most of us merely trying to maintain our position as a mid-pack cyclist.

That's my complaint with carbon: buying it makes me feel like a sucker; I should have the guts to be slow. But this isn't the worst complaint possible; after all I shaved 4½ pounds off a piece of equipment in a sport where weight is measured in ounces and grams. My new bicycle is faster, as anyone aware of gravity would predict, so I suppose I'll just have to enjoy my awesome new bicycle. While it lasts. Hey, it's paid for.

Meanwhile, I wonder what frame material I should choose for my new TT/triathlon bicycle...