What's the world coming to?

  I called John Slatwa, of Landshark, today, and he said he'd stopped doing steel bikes.  He's switched completely to carbon fiber.  I guess it makes sense in his case because Landshark has a focus on racing bikes, and for racing these days, carbon fiber is where it's at.  Well, I'm sure he does it well, and I think it's cool to see a custom builder making carbon bikes, but I still can't quite get into it.
  After walking around Europe, and seeing all sorts of old steel bikes still being ridden around, I can't help but wonder what these carbon bikes will look like in 40, 50, or 60 years.  I wonder if you'll see them leaning up against fences, locked with old, rusty locks, but still being ridden to school or to the store.  Somehow I really doubt that you'll see that.  There are some that might make it: some of the old trek lugged carbon bikes with tubes that were thick enough to use as a baseball bat.  Well, maybe some of the mountain bikes will make it, but I doubt if we'll see many road bikes, and the mountain bikes that make it might have flat shocks and other things that will make them hard to ride.
  I'm also not saying that I think all of the steel bikes you see around these days are entirely safe, but they'll do, and they usually have some other built in mechanism to make sure you can't get to any unsafe speed on them, be it a rubbing brake, a nearly flat tire, or a stuck-down seatpost.  I do love to see these bikes that have made it through all those years and are still working well, and those are the bikes I would like to emulate in my work. I'm a jeans kind of guy at heart, I guess.

Black bike that a guy from Germany had found in a bikepile at a squat in Paris.

Minty old bike I rode in Paris.  SOX!