Throughout high school and college, I had a bit of an obsession with high-end bicycles. I was starstruck by handcrafted titanium frames, precision-machined components, and fully tunable suspension. I dedicated the majority of class time to studying the intricacies of custom bike builds. Faced with the budget of a typical high school student, I worked hard to get a job at one of the best bicycle shops in town, almost exclusively for the significant employee discounts that would enable me to feed my expensive habit.
At no point could I even begin to justify the Olympic-caliber race setups I then proceeded to build. With a physique and athleticism that bore a stronger resemblance to Bobby Hill than to any notable athlete, the discrepancy between bicycle quality and actual physical capability was both stark and embarrassing. But I was fueled by enthusiasm, and my love for evaluating beautiful engineering more than made up for the humiliation that occurred on every hill climb.
