9/7/02 3:00 PMclassicrendezvous-request@bikelist.org
> 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
A Classic Cyclist's Lament - Sonnet CXV1
Let me not to the marriage of man and olde cycle Admit impediments. Love is not love Which alters when it corrosion finds, Or begs with a restorer to restore: O' no! it is an ever fixed mark That looks on Ebay and is never shaken; It is the best of show at every Le Cirque, Whose worth's unknown, although jpeg's of decals be taken. Love's not time's fool, though Ergo and cassette's tempt as inclines once barely noticed now painfully soar; Love alters not with its 10 speeds and tubs, But rides it out even with cracked spider: surely doom.
If this be error and upon me be proved, I never rode, nor no man ever loved.
William ShiamnoFear
ben kamen,
even bigger Moron
NYC