Liz Randall's Cycling Blog - a life behind bars

"With ordinary talents and extraordinary perseverance, all things are attainable"



Sunday 15 April 2007

Bling, eye candy or bike porn

While riding around the 'burbs yesterday, the imminent birth of my companion's Llewellyn bike came up as a topic followed by a deep philosophical moment or 60. Would it best be described as bling, eye candy or bike porn and on a scale of compliments how do the 3 descriptors rate. Is porn higher than eye candy?? where does bling sit? can a bike be all three?

Personally I think bling is flashy (polished lugs or head stem perhaps), eye candy is good to look at (great paint job, nice geometry) and bike porn is what you drool over and would like to buy but just can't quite justify it to sig other...or indeed yourself(!). My friend says BT's are bling, (he's got one so is allowed to say that!) but that his new bike was going to be A++ bike porn. However his description of the colour and polished lugs make me wonder if "bling" ain't more accurate.
Naturally, none of MY
bikes are bling! Although come to think of it, the Blueboy is VERY...well...blue.

Bluey behaved very well in his first public outing and, riding a 49/14, I cruised around the track for a planned 30 laps at close to one hour pace. Noice. 3 more Sundays doing that sort of testing, upping the laps by 10 each time and then no track for a while.

The horizontal dropouts have given up the unequal fight, shedding excess paint and so no work needed there; the wheel aligns left/right much better than the Colnago where gear changing and consequent wheel replacing was a major chore and a royal pain. Might give the Ghibli's an outing next Sunday. Hmmm.

Somebody drooled over Bluey's aero seat post so maybe he's partly bike porn. Hey, LM, is a Teschner bike porn or bling?!!

2 comments:

Lawrence said...

Comments made by the viewing audience seem to indicate that the Tbike is bling. No suggestions of porn have been made yet - perhaps it's more a page 3 model, rather than hard core porn? Definately not eye candy (not to me) although I am working on it! With all the white stripes over it, it still looks more like a zebra (heehaw)than a striped cat!

Interestingly, I think the Dolan ARC makes porn status, although it's cheaper. I am sure it has something to do with the duco...

Liz said...

Beauty in the eye of the beholder... and the empty pocket of the owner. Interestingly my Teschner road TT bike still gets admiring comments and its now 4 years old is black and silver and has not one molecule of carbon except on the aero bars.

I rather like the Issaac (sp?)
Liz