[DISCLAIMER – this blog is my personal view]
I used the opportunity over the long weekend to indulge in my passion for cycling in two ways. Firstly, by taking several rides on my vintage Bianchi road bike. Secondly, by watching the Paris-Roubaix bicycle race (which is know as “The Hell of the North” in cycling circles because it involves 54.8km of cobblestones during the course of its 257.2km).
My passion for bicycles has always been there but really took off in 1998 with my first Cape Town Cycle Tour. The Cycle Tour is a c109km circular route around the Cape Peninsula and serves as an entrée into road racing for many participants. That passion has seen me spend many happy hours in the saddle, and has more recently evolved into collecting and riding vintage bicycles.
Now, vintage bicycles are a sub-culture within cycling with the highlight of the year being the various Eroica (www.eroica.cc) events around the world. The Eroica is all about riding vintage bicycles on gravel roads billing itself as “the beauty of fatigue and the thrill of conquest”. The event is centred on vintage bicycles and naturally involves strict rules which detail that entrant’s bicycles must have steel frames, a specific number of spokes per wheel, toe clips, external brake cables and gear shifters on the down tube. The bicycles are accordingly tough, strong and comfortable but heavy, clunky, and slow (in a word – vintage). As a result, they are no match for modern technology which has evolved exponentially since the Eighties and Nineties.
You are by now wondering what this has to do with Bond Markets and Synch (www.synch.pro). Well, Synch is the equivalent of the modern, carbon-framed bike that hangs alongside my vintage bikes in the garage. It does not necessarily replace them (or that special place they hold for me) but it is faster, simpler and more efficient.
Synch. Bonds unlimited.
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