[CR]To Ride Or Not To Ride, That Is The Question

(Example: Framebuilders:Jack Taylor)

From: "swampmtn" <swampmtn@siscom.net>
To: <classicrendezvous@bikelist.org>
References: <Springmail.0994.1031393589.0.06228600@webmail.atl.earthlink.net>
Subject: [CR]To Ride Or Not To Ride, That Is The Question
Date: Sat, 7 Sep 2002 13:03:36 -0400

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