You have to hand it to Rapha. All in one stroke they lay claim to what i s pure and old school, promise to deliver an experience reminiscent of cycling's "drug-free" glory days and then offer products that are so shoc kingly expensive that they one up all competitors in contemporary cycling's sad race to make the sport ever-more exclusive. Rapha will do wha t's profitable, but I find the whole thing pretty nauseating. Cotton cyc ling caps are old school to the point of being useless, since we all wear h elmets now, but $45 cotton cycling caps just insult our collective intellig ence. These hats are, however, just the right thing to sport down at the coffee shop if you want to out cool all the fat guys in $319 Assos bibs by kicking it old school in order to reject all the evil they represent. Rapha stuff is especially helpful for building classic cred when you weren \u2019t actually riding three years ago, let alone in those glory days that Ra pha is now exploiting, but who knows, maybe you can buy authenticity.
Tom Dalton
Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, USA