When I got back into cycling after a long layoff, what I wanted most was the bike I wanted most when I was a teenager - a PX-10E. I had a couple, worked with David Goerndt to gather data on them ... and found that after having ridden them for a while, I was done with the Gallic velos, and my heart had gone elsewhere.
Sure, the bike that got me started again was my '62 Dawes with the Sturmey FW hub - classic English club bike. What surprised me was that after a couple of years of riding with the local club, I'd find myself borrowing more and more from a tradition that was apparently waning before my birth. Just as interesting was realizing that I enjoy studying original, vintage bikes that others own - and lifting the ideas that interest me and having a modern "keeper of the flame" interpret them into a bike built to fit me, specifically.
The last year or so, my biggest interest has been in British cycling books. The majority of the ones I've purchased were printed before I was born. Some of them were first written when my parents were pre-schoolers. These books, written by folks like Reginald Shaw and Harold Moore and H.H. England, help me to return to first principles when I ride my bikes.
Sorry to ramble so - but our CR cousins across the pond have helped me a great deal in my search for a cycling tradition that isn't necessarily about racing or going fast.
Russ Fitzgerald
Greenwood, South Carolina