Hey guys, check out my new Colnago watch!
Sure, it wasn’t cheap:
But you can’t put a price on hanging around train stations and airports and places like that just so you can wait for someone to ask you the time and then conspicuously extending your arm in order to check, thereby exposing your extraordinary timepiece for their admiration…though depressingly 99% of people will just think it’s a Swatch, plus now everyone has a phone and already knows what time it is, so these are dark days indeed for the Horology Fred.
Of course, the same philistines who think that’s a Swatch will also note that for a mere fraction of the price of that Colnago wrist clock you can obtain a space-aged watch that not only tells the time with total accuracy but also has a million other features:
Granted, it’s not quite as elegant:
And in my own case I use exactly three (3) of those features, those being:
- The time thing
- Paying the subway or bus fare without having to fish around in my pocket
- Reading text messages while riding, because otherwise I miss them and my wife thinks I’m dead
Meanwhile, the Colnago time bracelet costs roughly 4,000 times more and does only one of those three things.
At this point you may be wondering, “How can you advocate so fiercely for mechanical shifting yet wear a smart watch?” Well, to me, the difference is that the smart watch actually does more things than the regular watch (which still has to be wound, or else needs a battery just like the smart watch) while being relatively inexpensive, whereas not only is the digital shifter typically more expensive than its mechanical counterpart, but it performs exactly the same function, only it needs to be charged first. (And not only is the mechanical shifter battery-free, but you don’t even have to wind it.) So to me the mechanical shifter is the clear winner.
But I do recognize that for some people the digital shifter actually does do more. Who are these people? Racer- and racer-adjacent types who are hooked up to power meters and all that stuff. For them, a digital drivetrain actually does make (I hesitate to use the word I’m about to in this context, but I’ll use it anyway) “sense,” since they’ve got a whole Bluetooth or ANT+ or whatever the protocol is thing going on and they need to know their wattage and their cadence and how much time they’re spending in each gear, plus they need wireless auxiliary shifters so they can’t afford the extra wind resistance that results when you move your hands slightly. So sure, for them, like a smart watch an electronic shifting system “does more,” and is therefore worth it.
So yes, I get why some people “need” electronic shifting, and I also get why some people will gladly pay lots more money for a mechanical watch that does way less than a smart watch does–I mean sure, a million is crazy, but I can understand why you might want to own a really nice watch that you can pass down from generation to generation:
There’s only one thing I still don’t get, which is why no bicycle drivetrain component maker has figured out how to make the mechanical shifter equivalent of a really fancy watch and sell it for lots and lots of money. Like, why had Campagnolo not come up with a $10,000 pair of luxury mechanical Ergo levers with little crystal windows in them that let you see their internal movements?
Here’s the AI’s take on that:
I had something a little more sleek and modern in mind, while this looks sort of like a steampunk-meets-retrogrouch nightmare. However, I can’t bear to give the AI more instructions in order to fine-tune it, because quite frankly interacting with it makes me feel sort of uncomfortable and weird. It’s like like having a co-worker who you know is a registered sex offender.
Speaking of Ergo shifters, it’s now been a little over two months since I bought this bike I don’t need mostly because it had 10-speed Ergo shifters on it:
Because I didn’t need it I also pledged to spend absolutely no money on it, and I’m proud to report I’ve continued to live up to that pledge…
…apart from these things, which I absolutely had to buy for the wheels or else the hubs would have exploded while I was riding with disastrous results:
It was either that or toss the wheels, and you simply don’t toss a perfectly good pair of wheels (paucity of spokes notwithstanding) if you can inexpensively repair them. So all in this bike has still only cost about what you’d pay for an entry level smartwatch from *pple.
By the way, to refresh your memory, Ben’s Cycle are now the word’s greatest repository of Campagnolo components and spare parts, so if you’re looking for that sort of thing your search should probably begin and end with them.
Anyway, I hadn’t ridden this bike in a few weeks, and it was a pleasure to get back on it yesterday. There may be little to no reason to ride tires this skinny in 2026, but on a smooth road on a sunny day it’s as about as close as you’ll get to flying:
Just watch out for the gravel, or else you might really go flying:
And when I say “gravel” I don’t mean like an unpaved road, which you can still ride even on an road bike with skinny tires. I mean this kind of gravel, which you might find strewn across a road surface and encounter unexpectedly:
Every so often I like to see what Old Man Brunelle is up to, and most recently it seems he undertook a death-defying ride to his cousin’s wedding:
My goodness, he’s a middle-aged man! What’s next, a video entitled “Balls-0ut Shred Sesh To My Colonoscopy?” Why not put on a suit, get on a Rivendell, and ride to the wedding with some dignity? Just imagine it’s your wedding day and Uncle Lucas shows up in his full Fred suit and hands you a moist envelope straight from his jersey pocket:
Though if the envelope were fat enough I suppose you might overlook it.