To put it crudely, it takes balls to be the Classic Cycle Old Crap Test Pilot:Good thing I have a pair of test-cycles, though admittedly one of them is pretty small:While I havent had the Pashley Moulton (which, going forward, I shall refer to as the PashMo) for long, Ive already started to accessorize:The rear wheel has a bolt-on axle, hence the wrench. Obviously adjustable wrenches are not the best for axle bolts, but when there are multiple bolts of multiple sizes on a bike its more convenient than carrying multiple wrenches, and certainly better than no wrench at all. This was the shortest wrench I could find, and it has a rather impressive span for its diminutive size:Whether such a short wrench even has enough leverage to remove a tight bolt remains to be seen, but I suppose I could always remove the seatpost and slip it over the handle, and with my pair of oddly-sized test-cycles and my stubby tool I feel ready to conquer the world.In fact, the sagacity of my purchase made itself almost immediately apparent, for the other day a commenter commented thusly:I had a TSR 30, it was wonderful until it tried to kill me when the bolt holding the swing arm to the bottom bracket failed.Now, a smart person would have immediately checked the bolt on his own PashMo. However, while I may have test-cycles of steel (well, technically one is aluminum), I am not smart. But at least when I noticed a little play in the bike after dismounting it this week I thought back to that comment and made an inspection:Indeed, the bolt was loose:Really looselike, this-nut-was-about-to-fall-off loose:Now I know to keep an eye on it, and with an Allen key and an adjustable wrench in my Bananasack I have everything I need to snug it up should I notice that its come loose during a ride. And yes, one could log this incident as yet more proof that Paul of Classic Cycle is trying to kill me, but the real lesson is that a test pilot should always perform a thorough pre-flight inspection of his craft before any mission, especially when his mission involves piloting Old Carp. Instead I checked absolutely nothing. Fortunately, this was a benign reminder to establish and follow a proper safety protocol.Speaking of commenters, another one shared this:It reminded me in an ironic way of Rob Halford, who of course used to ride a motorcycle onstage:Though he should have probably switched to a Moulton at some point, because as you get older those big bikes can get pretty hard to handle:In fact it appears he was falling off of them as early as 1991:And yes, you can ride a bicycle instead of a motorcycle onstage and maintain hard rock credibility. Just ask this guy: View this post on Instagram Axl Rose was an alt cyclist before such a thing ever existed, and that could very easily be a photo of Ultraromance.Moving on, Im no closer to declaring a winner in the Meh-Roica Bike Pageant:Brought to you by Dumonde Tech, the single malt Scotch of viscous fluids:But I do promise to milk it for as long as possibleand beyond!This is certainly a fine specimen:Web address on inside of non-drive chainstay, peak late nineties.DA 10s from my first road bike, a CAAD I wish I still had.Venerable ultegra to open pro wheels built myself, but kysriums would fit the assignment better (and came with the CAAD)1 with King gripnut, upside down so everyone knows Im cool.NOS Paramount unicrown fork with splatter paint.The carbon Arundel cages to me are what I remember being the hottest accessory at the timeAbsolutely, a URL on a bicycle frame is extremely Meh-roica, and worth at least 1,000 points. For all you young people, you might be wondering why companies used to do this. Well, the answer is that in the early days of the World Wide Webular Internets you needed to type in the whole URL and get it exactly right in order to visit a website. Sure, it wasnt very long at all before you could just type the companys name into a search engine such as Ask Jeeves or Dogpile instead, thus rendering the practice of expressing the entire URL in a decal completely pointless, but the practice persisted for longer than necessary. As a result, a URL on a bike went from making the company seem tech-forward (Look, we have a website!) to making them seem completely ass-backwards (Hey gramps, heres how you visit our website, we know using G**gle is hard) almost overnight. But fortunately today it is one of the easiest and best ways to identify a Meh-roica bicycle.Something that also disappeared during the Meh-roica era was the ability to walk into a bicycle shop and purchase a bicycle that came with Campagnolo components:What a time to be alive.But how do I find this Bianchi company on the Internet?!?, youd have asked the salesperson at the time.And finally, Im not sure what to do with two-bike submissions, such as this one. Heres the first:And heres the second:Theres certainly nothing meh about a Colnago C-40:I probably should have made a rule that if you submit two bikes your entry will be based on the lesser of the pair, but its too late for that now, and I guess Ill have to allow it.Also, Im not sure what Id do if someone took a new frame like this and put it together to be Meh-roica compliant:I wonder what Id do with a frame like that:I suppose I can only daydream