How about that debate last night, huh? Let’s talk about it!
Just kidding.
No, as a cantankerous old fusspot I’ve been preoccupied with one thing and one thing only, and that’s the release of the new Rivendell singlespeed:
Though the cycling media is far more interested its exact opposite, the new Trek Madone, which is the most Madoniest Madone that Trek has ever Madoned:
How much more Madoney is it? EIGHTY FUCKING PERCENT, that’s how much!
So if you’re riding an old, obsolete Madone–or, heaven help you, a bike that’s not a Madone at all–you’re no doubt feeling extremely anxious right now:
But there’s good news! After thoroughly skimming the review, I’ve learned something mind-blowing, which is that the real reason the new Madone is faster is basically just the water bottles:
Yes, that’s right, just put the new bottles on the old bike and the old bike is faster:
And yes, the new bottle is UCI-legal:
This is because it passed the UCI’s notoriously stringent impact test:
Just imagine how much more accurately Cipollini could have thrown those bottles if only he’d had access to Trek’s cutting-edge technology.
Anyway, you might think Trek is going to be in trouble when Freds figure out that they don’t need the new Madone and can get the same effect with just a new set of water bottles. Hardly! In fact, this is a stroke of marketing genius on their part, because not only have the figured out how to charge $100 for a single water bottle and cage:
But they’ll probably sell so many of them that even if they don’t move a single new Madone they’ll still come out ahead. If you’ve ever spent any time in a bike shop, you know it takes hours, days, or even weeks of pandering to fickle roadies in order to get them to buy a bike. However, it takes about nine seconds to sell a water bottle. So it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if Trek has designed the new Madone entirely as a showcase for the new bottle and considers any sales of the actual bike to be merely a bonus.
This is great news for the consumer, too, because for just the price of a pair of Trek’s new water bottles you can also get an entire used Trek to put them on, and it’ll probably be just as fast as the new Madone:
I wonder how fast the Roaduno would be with the new Trek bottles.
I may have to book some time in the wind tunnel:
Who says you can’t get “sofa-like ride qualities” along with aerodynamics?