I hereby nominate Aldo as the Poet Laureate of the Classic Rendezvous list. Anybody second the nomination?
Charlie - headed out for a ride on a not suitable for framing but otherwise delightful 1973 Raleigh Competition - thanks to listmember Linwood Hines
Charles T. Young
Honeybrook. PA
> To ride, or not to ride: that is the question.
> Whether 'tis nobler on the road to suffer
> The slings and arrows of mechanical misfortune,
> Or to mount bikes against a sea of pegboard,
> And by displaying, end them. To display: to sleep;
> No more; and, by a sleep to say we end
> The heartache and the thousand natural shocks
> That bikes are heir to, 'tis a consummation
> Devoutly to be wish'd. To display; to sleep;
> To sleep? perchance to corrode! Ay, there's the rub;
> For in that sleep of display what dreams may come,
> When we have shuffl'd off this mortal tubular,
> Must give us pause. There's the respect
> That makes calamity of so long life.
> For who would bear the dents and dings of time,
> The restorer's wrong, the proud man's contumely
> The pangs of dispriz'd resprays, the mailorder's delay,
> The insolence of bike shop mechanics, and the spurns
> That patient merit of STI shifters takes,
> When he himself might his quietus make
> With a bare friction shifter? Who would potholes bear,
> To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
> But that the dread of something after display,
> The undiscovered museum from whose bourn
> No traveller returns, puzzles the will
> And make us rather bear those wobbly wheels we have
> Than fly to components that we know not of?
> Thus retrogouchiness does make cowards of us all;
> And thus the native hue of resolution
> Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
> And bike collections of great pith and moment
> With this regard their currents turn awry,
> And lose the name of action.
> --Campylet, III:1
>
> (Aldo Ross)
> Moron, Ohio