Nigel Tufnel Day is fast approaching, and that means spending quality time with the family, singing along to “War Pigs,” and trying to explain a Maiden show to the kids.
I’m not sure what it says about me that I let my six-year-olds watch GWAR on Jimmy Fallon (don’t worry, I DVR’d it–I’m a stickler for bed times), but I’m pretty sure that when you tell them you once almost managed to rip the giant rubber hammer Oderus was using to bash members of the audience on the head right out of his claws, you’re not supposed to beam with crazy pride when one of the kids looks up at you and says, “I want my life to be just like yours.” (If there hadn’t been so much fake blood, I’d’ve had that hammer, too.)
Balsac is the intellectual one.
At any rate, the ultimate “going to 11” day is nearly upon us, and it has me all philosophical and pondering the current place of the not-so-heaviest of metals in the world of bicycles: aluminum. (“Aluminium” for those of you who feel the need to add still more vowels to perfectly good words.) As a guy thinking more and more about designing a bicycle, what I’m wondering is, will there be any high-end aluminum bike frames ten years from now? Five?
Don’t get me wrong: steel isn’t going anywhere, and if Moots were a publicly traded stock, I’d be in that, but one has to wonder whether carbon fiber is slowly becoming the only game in town for fancy-pants, high-tech frames. When it comes for ultimate frame materials–particularly for full-suspension frame–there’s just none more black than carbon fiber.
So what would you do?
This isn’t a bridge I have to cross right away, and I don’t think I’ve ever known anyone crazy enough to use carbon fiber for prototypes (well, OK, there was at least one), but, if you wanted to try to impress the world with what you suspect might just be a decently badass suspension design, would you produce the frames from aluminum, or is the bar so high these days that you have to go straight to carbon to even be competitive?
That’s what I’m wondering tonight.
That, and, “Why don’t more vocalists use analog profanity editing techniques during live performances like Maynard?”
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