Well it certainly looks like the Perry Ruby was not wanting for excitement:Its also strangely comforting to see that for all the so-called advancements in bicycle wheel and tire technology, inopportune punctures remain an integral part of bicycle racing. For as Ben Franklin sagely observed, the only certainties in life are death and taxes, but since that time we can add flatting to the list, and possibly also the steadfast refusal to JBARA:Yes, weve seen this bicycle before, but its still available and waiting for the perfect buyer, such as a Sponeed model with a lot of cash to throw around:As for me, I didnt watch the bike race on Sunday, because I had more important bicycle-related business to attend to over the weekend:Specifically the riding of them:As well as the comparing and contrasting of the relative performance of two fine lugged steel bicycles on a variety of surfaces:Including various types of gravelor, if you prefer, Very Small Rocks:As you can see, I sampled all the major strains, too:Since divesting myself of the ISGA, I am certainly wanting for nothing in the Riding On Very Small Rocks department, despite not having an actual gravel bike. I could bore you with stuff like geometry, and trail figures, and tubing diameters, and all that other stuff, but I wont, mostly because I dont understand any of it. Instead, Ill say that having these two bicycles is like owning both a 5th Avenue penthouse and a Southampton beach houseand not only because like many people who own 5th Avenue penthouses and Southampton beach houses I dont actually deserve either of them, having inherited the Karl Farbman, and having obtained the Roadini only after blackmailing Grant Petersen with the threat of revealing that he actually rides a Cervlo S5: Just kidding:And I do have to make that clear, because when I joked that he drove a Ferrari people believed me.But yes, the Farbman is the 5th Avenue penthouse in this scenario, in that the address confers status, and its quite luxurious, but its also a racing bike, so youre inclined to ride it at a more spirited pace, just as your schedules a lot busier when youre in town what with business meetings and going to the opera and attending fundraisers for your childrens prep school and all that other stuff:Meanwhile, life at the beach house is still pretty lively, but its also more spacious, and generally speaking youre a little more inclined to slow down when youre there, so its a place you could see spending more and more time as you get older:As for ISGAs, those are like split level homes in Wantagh, in that theyre perfectly fine, but we riders of fine lugged steel bicycles dont even notice them as we drive by them on the LIE.The truth is, its hard not to feel like Ive arrived when I get to spend the weekend on bicycles like these, even though Ive accomplished absolutely nothing in my life, apart from being in one YouTube video that has a decent number of viewsthough the algorithm served it to me the other day and to my horror I discovered Ive been replaced by an AI stand-in with a comically large u-lock:Presumably the AI determined the video would get more clicks if I were trimmer about the midsection and looked a little more like Fidel Castro:Maybe if I crack a million views I can finally land that Sponeed modeling contract.