I say it every time I get a new bike, but the bike I currently own is the best bike I’ve ever had. This is the way it should be. You wouldn’t want a new bike to be inferior to an older bike, that would be sad (or you would be buying a gravel bike—boom! There’s the first dig at gravel riding. Will I poop on gravel riding more for no really good reason? Probably. I can be very capricious.)

My current bike is a 2019 Specialized Venge. I acquired the full aero version—before they merged the Venge and the Tarmac to make a more aero Tarmac (A Vermac? A Tange? Bike names are hard), and goodness is this bike fast. My previous bike was a Felt F1, which was the best bike I had ever owned before I purchased my Venge; and the difference in speed between the aero Venge and the non-aero F1 was evident immediately. With my deep section Roval wheels and the Venge’s speedy shape I was about 1 mile per hour faster in almost all situations. It was like buying free speed (physiologically free of course, the bike cost what felt like eleventy billions bike dollars). I became a convert to the aero bike concept immediately, because I like to go faster. Feel free to disagree (and go slower than I do—I’m a bike racer, remember?)

I acquired my bike three years ago knowing that I would not be getting another bike for about 6 years because my daughters would be going to college and that’s where every bit of spare money would be going. (Readers who have followed my typing for years—you poor souls—will now feel old when I mention that my oldest daughter is now a college freshman. Other people’s pets and children seem to age in an accelerated time warp that is nearly impossible to wrap your mind around.) So my plan was to buy the most advanced bike I could fine. I got electronic shifting with Ultra DI2, hydraulic disc brakes and carbon fiber rims. I wanted a spaceship that would bridge the gap until I wore out this bike and needed another (which, at the cost of college these days looks like it will be around 2030 or so).

The bike rides and performs splendidly. Besides being fast, it is also comfortable and stable. The designers at Specialized have created a great bike. I love it, but I am a persnickety bike person, so I have a few notes. First (and this is a critique I have of modern bike design in general), the color scheme is crap. Specialized, like many other firms went all in on the all black “murdered out” look, and as a person who came of age during the era of candy-colored Colnagos, a matte black finish on a carbon frame is like opening a candy bar wrapper and finding a cold turd. It’s disappointing. And they carry that theme of disappointment through to the decals which are a color gradation from the purples and greens you see when the sun shines on a horsefly’s ass. The saddle and bar tape also have this fly-ass (not “fly” in the complimentary sense in this case) green. I replaced the bar tape with black Cinelli cork tape because all these fancy new tapes are pale comparisons, why do you guys keep trying? And the green on my saddle has worn away (as I predicted when I saw it) to show the underlying black base color in high use areas. It looks awful, but I’ve come to terms with this situation.

The other note I would give Specialized is that the bottom bracket has a creak. And not just any creak, it has a creak that is a permanent companion that reappears no matter how many times you take the cranks off and lube, torque, grease and Loctite every thread and wearing part in the bottom bracket area. Alas, the creak is my bike’s herpes, sometimes dormant, but always on the verge of a return. I’m not nuts about this situation, but this is also something I’ve come to terms with. Bike ownership is sometimes about accepting limitations and moving on with your life, and strict adherence to a pre-defined color theme of course.

I’ve also moved on to tubeless tires because my life didn’t have enough toil and cursing in it. I will devote a separate typing entry to the installation and joy of tubeless tires (what a cliffhanger! Tune in next week folks!), as that’s a whole story unto itself. In the meantime, I will continue to enjoy my fast, fly-ass colored bike as I creak my way across Northern New Jersey.