The eyes are the groin of the head.
--Dwight, from The Office
I'm happy if I've got something to obsess about. That is, something to think about while all the beauty and grandeur and magnificence of life passes by. I can't bear that magnificence of life stuff-it's just too grand and beautiful, and I'd rather think about carbon fiber, bottom brackets and 31.7 mm seat clamps. I wonder if that's what Whitman was getting at, praising a leaf of grass. Maybe he wasn't elevating the leaf; he was saying it was just a leaf. No big whup.
Cranksets. That's what I'm thinking about. What crankset can I get for under $300?
The sexiest is the Stronglight, which runs about $500, is made of teflon and ceramic, and is only found on ebay in France:
Equally light and functional, but without that certain French flair, the Zipp 300:
Then there's the nominative heavyweight Full Speed Ahead K Force Light with Megaexo Bottom Bracket:
I could say a lot more, but there's just something about the word "crank" that embarrasses me. A lot of bike components are like that. Handlebars. Bottom bracket. Down tube. Seat tube. Nipples (they connect spokes to hubs).
The mechanics who named these things did so for a reason; maybe they saw something desirous in the parts they built. Maybe they grabbed the nearest, handiest, and most constant words hanging about their minds. But maybe they grabbed the words that fit, because the parts they describe are at once ecstatic and mundane, flesh and machine.
"God bless my wheel! it knows nor care nor strife,
For one day out the ever-coming seven
I run with it far from the hells of life
To find in nature's handiwork a heaven."
-from "A Quiet Revere," by Anonymous
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