I think a lot about why a man in his very early fifties should be so enamored of these simple elegant machines. My life is not empty... I have a two year old boy whom I love and a wife who is both interesting and beautiful, (and creative), whom I also dearly love. I have a good job and I am in pretty good health. I recently purchased a complete ultra modern european kitchen, a small flat screen LED TV, and I have a nice tubed stereo system that holds forth in my high styled 50's modern livingroom. This year we plan to purchase a 1959 Porsche Roadster replica, and I have several yoga classes each week, that I either attend or teach. So why would a modern, man who has access to any high tech computerized wizardry that his heart desires, still find the simple, humble, brazed-steel-lugged bicycle the most fascinating man made object on earth?
I believe that it is ultimately hard to know one's motivations, but it it usually beneficial, or even essential to undress our own soul-full yearnings. I live in a world which seems out of control in its possibilities, both very good and cataclysmicaly bad. Of all humanity's inventions, few stand alone as having no real down side. I can't think of any others that seem to fit so perfectly with the hope for an ecological future, and a healthy, physically tuned populace. Any bicycle fits this description, but only the lugged steel bike has the purifying aesthetic of human pride in craftsmanship. Gluing pieces of tubing together a la Technicum falls short, as do machine extruded, glorified soda cans in the shape of nearly traditional diamond frames. Also carbon fiber bikes that for all the world resemble multi-morphed boat hulls, lack the charm of torch and eye and heart, and molten metal as it fills the void of both lug and spiritual yearning in our world spinning out of control. Plastic molded wheels lack the visual miracle of rim suspended unbelievably by metal threads.
These bikes seem to be hand made monuments to whom we dream we could one day become. Who hasn't wished to be light and agile, slim and well proportioned, classic and refined, useful yet dreamily beautiful? What man or woman doesn't wish to know each and every corner of his own being? Our complex machines are never fully understood by those who use them, but a bicycle is so simple that it is often the first machine that a child ventures to have a hands-on understanding of. These special bicycles are, for me, the representation of my hopes and dreams, my inner adventures and my outer. They were there for me when I first strode out on my own, and they are there for me when they give me the time and space to explore my own mental interior. The masters who made them, in turn had hours of freed up time to know themselves, while they painstakingly followed the steps needed for a frame's completion. That meditation, whether it be Mr. Confente's or Joe Blow's is carried along with us as we pedal through our life, moving in space, and moving in cyclical meditation.
Garth Libre in Miami Shores Florida