Meet the Specialized Allez Elite ‘08.
It comes stock with a Specialized A1 Aluminum frame with FACT carbon forks, steerer, inserts and seat stem.
It is loaded with Shimano 105 shifters, mechs, cassette and a Gossamer MegaExo crankset.
I love it more than my family.
I never thought I’d spend more than a few hundred on a bicycle until I started riding semi-seriously on my hybrid. I purchased the bike because my employee program pays for half of any major exercise equipment purchase. I originally purchased a hybrid because I wanted a nice bike that could be used for both exercise and a bit of off-roading.
So I started riding: 5 miles. 10 miles. 15 miles. Then I got up at 3:30 AM to bike downtown to participate in Bike the Drive ‘08. That day I rode 36 miles by 6:00 AM. My hindquarters were hurting something fierce.
After spending what can be considered an unhealthy amount of time on my hybrd, I realized that I should have just bitten the bullet in the first place and purchased a full-on road bike. Everything about a road bike is tailor-made for efficiency: the aerodynamic position of the cyclist, the thin tires, the ultralight frame. All of these elements combined with a human driver create the most elegant combination of man and machine the world has ever known.
If this sounds like borderline-obsession then you’d probably be right. I think about cycling almost all of the time. Since I’m only home on the weekends, I plan all of my activities around cycling (“It’s supposed to rain on Saturday but not until 1, so i can get some solid miles in before noon”).
Do you know what killed the seminal German electronic band Kraftwerk? Not drugs, not ego, but cycling. Don’t believe me? Check it out
Hütter saw cycling as more than a mere leisure pursuit, something closer to a political statement: “No, it’s not for holiday. It is the man machine. It’s me, the man machine on the bicycle. Holidays are an alienation, a consumption concept. To relax ourselves, we ride the bicycle, it’s enough. We are liberated from holidays.”
Hütter and his large collection of bikes, either shimmering chrome or jet-black, were featured in a French cycling magazine, with not a single reference to the fact that he was a member of a seminal electronic pop group. It is obvious that the high technology associated with bike frames, components and training regimes held a fascination for musicians who had started out designing and building their own synthesisers and other sonic gadgetry. Just like a recording studio, a bike is made up of parts that must be designed and tuned to work in harmony. It is always possible to upgrade a component in order to reach ever greater heights of performance. Hütter points to many parallels between the Kraftwerk vision of cycling and their music: “Speed, balance, a certain freedom of spirit, keeping in shape, technological and technical perfection, aerodynamics.”
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The original plan was to record a whole album inspired by the Tour De France but Bartos and Flur we’re not keen on the idea. Moreover, tragedy had come close when Hütter was involved in a bike crash, in which head injuries left him in a coma for two days. Perhaps confirming Bartos’s view that the cycling obsession had gone too far, Hütter’s first words on waking are reported to have been “where’s my bike?”. The injuries took time to heal and the Tour De France LP project was shelved.
I’ll make a promise that it won’t get that bad on my end.
