You hear guys claim they remember “better 
days” in road cycling. There were no better 
days. Today is the best day. 

We never had the choices we have, several 
fine alternatives for every consumer decision, 
whether products or services. We’ve never had 
the convenience we have now. 

Examples? Back in the ’70s you could buy a 
titanium frame. You still can. But the worst Ti 
frame you can buy today is worlds better than 
anything you could have bought then. No 
comparison. 

And although the ’70s were the so-called 
heyday of lugged steel frames, you can buy a 
better lugged steel frame now than you could’ve 
then. Frames from many of today’s builders are 
finer, more fussed-over and better finished than 
anything Cinelli, Hetchins, Singer or Confente 
ever produced. 

Today you can also buy aluminum or carbon 
fiber frames. You can buy aluminum frames with 
carbon stays. You can buy composite aluminum 
frames that won’t behave the way aluminum 
frames are reputed to behave. 

No doors are closed. If you still believe steel is 
real, buy steel. Buy whatever you want, go for a 
ride, then explain to me why the “old days” were 
superior. 

You say you miss the oneness you used to 
feel with your bike when friction held your bike in 
gear? Buy an old parts group, new in the box. 
Buy used parts. Or buy a 9- or 10-speed group 
or Mavic’s electronic Mektronic shifting. You’ve 
never had so many options. 

In the ’70s, you leaned over a sink and hand- 
washed your wool cycling clothing. That stuff 
took hours to dry, hanging on a line. It shrank 
anyway. Shorts rode up, arm and leg warmers 
fell down. There was no woman-specific 
clothing. 

No bike clothing had style. Style was inauthen- 
tic; no one wanted it. Did Fausto Coppi’s 
clothing have style? Hell no. 

Today, all bicycle clothing is easy to wash. 
Almost all of it can be machine dried without 
shortening the life of the garment. You can buy 
jerseys and shorts made to fit women. You can 
buy comfortable, stylish, long-wearing clothing 
at a wide range of price levels. 

If you still want to wear what you wore in the 
’70s, embroidered wool jerseys with front 
(chicken-leg) pockets, you can do so. Niche 
clothing marketers will cater to your every wooly 
whim. 

Seventies shoes were pointy-toed Italian 
things that fit only this one guy in Venice who’d 
already quit riding. Unless you had cheap, 
crummy Detto Pietros or expensive Sidis, you 
paid an impatient shoe repairman to nail cleats 
to your shoe soles, then re-nail them and RE-re- 
nail them, glaring at you all the while. 

There was as much to know about shoes then 
as there is to know about Windows today — but 
no one would pay you to learn it. Knowing it 
didn’t guarantee you foot comfort, either. You 
suffered anyway. 

Crummy, inaccurate cyclometers clicked every 
time the front wheel revolved. You couldn’t 
mount some tires onto some rims without brute 
force. Or the tires went on easily, then blew off 
the rims when you parked your bike in direct 
sunlight. 

Don’t get me started about saddles. If you 
want a ’70s seat for some perverse reason, you 
can still buy one. Or you can choose from 100s 
of current designs. 

In the old days, we were encouraged to 
dismantle our bikes frequently for maintenance, 
sometimes at ludicrous, compulsive-obsessive 
intervals. 

We used to have to remove inner brake 
cables once a year and smear grease on them 
to keep them from rusting inside the housings. 
Now we have nylon-lined housing and rust-proof 
cables. No fuss. 

Back then, you had to maintain top-level parts 
nearly as often as cheap ones. Cheap parts 
were dramatically inferior to today’s cheap 
pieces, some of which work as well and last 
nearly as long as today’s best stuff. 

You can still fuss if you want, dismantling, 
grease-packing and hand-washing, but you 
don’t have to. We’re free at last. 

Today you can take organized, professional 
cycling tours all over the world. You can pick 
and choose your tour company; there are 
dozens. You can choose from dozens of cycling 
training camps all over the world: Florida, 
Majorca, Tuscany, Colorado, California... 

You can read hundreds of books about 
cycling. You can watch hundreds of videos. You 
can learn about cycling on-line. You can read 
dozens of cycling periodicals, many of them 
free. 

You can learn more in an hour than you 
could’ve reading 12 issues of Bicycling Maga- 
zine or Bike World in 1978. 

Cycling is no longer a cult of true believers 
and freaks. There’s no initiation, no hazing. You 
don’t have to be a mechanic or wear geeky 
clothes. You don’t have to speak French or be 
an expert in the care and preservation of wool 
and leather. 

Cycling today does not demand a life 
commitment. It’s fun for nearly everyone. 
I’m not saying everything about road cycling is 
fun. Sharing the road with cars is not fun; not 
often anyway, but it never was. 

Dealing with self-absorbed bike shop 
employees is not fun, but you can choose 
among shops or buy mail-order or on-line from 
some pretty cool outfits. You have alternatives. 
In the ’70s, if you were lucky you had one 
good local shop. If they liked you, meaning if 
you passed their mysterious coolness tests, you 
were in. If, for whatever reason, you did not 
pass - you were out in the cold. Not fun. 

It surely wouldn’t have been fun if you were a 
woman, and not a racer. There was no Olympic 
road race for women until 1984, remember. 
Many old school cyclists and coaches failed to 
appreciate females who rode. 

Shops today are used to women customers. 
The employees aren’t all adept at helping them 
but at least they aren’t blown away when a 
woman walks into the store...or a guy whose 
legs aren’t shaved or who asks uninformed 
questions. 

The retail environment isn’t perfect, but it’s not 
the old boys’ club it was. 

Bike clubs are better. The racer/tourist splits in 
many clubs have healed. As the average age of 
club cyclists rises, perhaps fewer are as hard- 
core as they were. Clubs have graded rides and 
clubs-within-clubs. 

The ’70s are gone, but you can act as if they 
aren’t. You can wear wool shorts or a leather 
hairnet-style “helmet.” You can hang out with 
guys who know part numbers for Campag pump 
hangers. 

You can learn French and read L’Equipe. You 
can choose clips ‘n straps and spoked, handbuilt 
wheels. You can shift clicklessly and let your 
brake cables wave in the wind. 

Unlike the ’70s, you don’t have to if you don’t 
want to. 

Most significantly, you can’t go for a ride in the 
’70s. You CAN go for a ride today. Today’s the 
best day.