What is more seductive than a ribbon of road vanishing into the fall foliage?And what is more repulsive than the sight of a late-90s freak bike?But heres the thing about bikes: if you really love riding them, they all win you over eventually. (Okay, not all, but most. Or many. Or a lot of them.) For years, I ridiculed the Y-Foil, a wildly dork-tacular bike that was the very antithesis of the classic materials and silhouettes I hold sacred. But you know what? I really like riding it! There, I said it. See, heres the thing about the Y-Foil: you know that phrase, the most clichd five words in all of cycledom?Laterally Stiff Vertically CompliantSince the dawn of time, bike reviewers have told us that this material or that material possesses magical qualities that can render a bike laterally stiff yet vertically compliant. Crabon filters out high-frequency vibrations. Titanium has a springy ride quality. Theres nothing like the magic carpet ride of classic steel. And so forthnone of which really stand up to scrutiny, since whatever the bikes made of youre basically just sitting on top of a rigid diamond. Yes, some bikes are undeniably smoother than others, but youre never sure if its the material, or the geometry, or the seatpost, or the saddle, or the tires, or just how you happen to be feeling that day. (Ive absolutely found a bike to be sublimely comfortable one day and borderline painful the nextyour fitness such as it is on any given day informs quite a bit about how your bike feels.)But the Y-Foil is different: its not a diamond. (Well, mostly. I guess theres kind of a diamond in there.) Instead, youre sitting on a beamand the beam flexes. And unlike, say, the rolling diving board that is a Softride, the flex is quite subtlesubtle enough that it feels like a normal diamond road frame, until you hit some rough pavement or something, at which point you realize you are in fact undeniably suspended. It climbs like a normal road bike, it sprints like a normal road bike, it does everything else like a normal road bike, but at the same time youre isolated from the most jarring shocks and vibrations. Is the frame design more effective than, say, a 32mm tire or a leather saddle? Not necessarily. Are those a better way to improve ride feel? Almost certainly. Still, the fact remains: the Y-Foil is indeed laterally stiff yet vertically compliant, a quality that few if any traditionally designed frames can unequivocally claim to possess regardless of the parts that are bolted to them.Again, the problem of harsh-riding road bikes has since been addressed thanks to wider tires and all the rest of it, but at a time when anything wider than 25mm on a race bike was considered unthinkable, the Y-Foil did indeed improve upon the traditional racing frame by being simultaneously more aerodynamic and more comfortable, qualities that were long considered mutually exclusive. Does that make the Y-Foil a noteworthy success in the context of the era in which it was designed? Or is it the rolling embodiment of how ridiculous it was that everyone insisted on using narrow tires at all times?I say its both, and that we should laugh at it and appreciate it.But yes, before the UCI cracked down on non-traditional frame designs at the end of the 1990s, its hard to appreciate just how intent frame designers were to eliminate the seat tube once carbon fiber made it possible to do so. Heres another example, which a reader reminded me of recently:The Y-Foil can confound the eye when youre expecting to see a diamond frame, but at the same time its a design with its own internal logic, and once you realize its not a traditional frame your brain quickly come to terms with it. That doesnt mean you like it necessarily, only that it is what it is, which is a bicycle unto itself. The Kestrel however is basically a traditional frame only without a seat tube, so no matter how long you look at it your brain wants to put that seat tube back:Speaking of the Kestrel, my time with a 4000 was one of the most significant bicycle relationships in my cycling life, and recently I happened upon yet another contemporary review:These words were both chilling and prescient:Granted, the timeline was a bit offTreks top-of-the-line bikes were full carbon five years after the 4000, but most others werent:But here we are in 2024, and if you head out onto the popular roadie routes in your area youll see that the mantle of progress (Im not even sure what that means) has certainly won out:Though I would argue that the prognostication regarding steel being relegated to the nostalgia market was not borne out. Sure, nostalgia may be part of the reason steels still around, but its mostly because you still cant beat the combination of durability, price, and performance:The wide tires give it Y-Foil smoothness, you can put fenders and stuff on it, you can carry more than one water bottle, and as a bonus the seat tube helps protect you from road spray. (You dont want to be out on a bike without fenders when its really wet outside, but you dont want to be out on the Y-Foil when its even slightly wet at all.)Some opt for progress while others lament it:Meanwhile, its not all abandoned Citi Bikes around these parts:I mean there are a lot of them, but the city has also added a lot of bike lanes, which means we can now take a family ride to Little Itly almost entirely via bike lanes and greenways:Of course I took the Platypus, as its my dedicated leftovers hauler:Thats also bread from the bakery of the guy who wrote an op-ed against the very bike lanes we used to get there:I cant tell if the jokes on him or us.Actually, the jokes on all the people sitting in trafficexcept for the ices guy, who like us was making the most of the Indian summer warm fall weather:I guess progress is what you make of it.