Dissonance...

Funny thing the brain. On the one hand I know rationally that my Ragley Ti frame is simply a very expensive collection of carefully-selected metal pipes welded together in a very specific pattern, that it has no feelings, soul or other human qualities.

And on the other, cracking it made me miserable. Like proper down. Not a financial thing. Not a cataclysmic emotional disaster. No blood or broken bone. No suffering. Just a small stress-induced fracture of the downtube which could have ended badly with a detached front end and a trail-surfing session on my face.

Which it didn't, so I should be glad. And so should the trail.

But despite all that - and despite knowing that with a lifetime Lynskey warranty it should be fixed over in Chattanooga - I was proper down for a couple of days for no other reason than a small crack in a metal tube.

Which is rationally just silly. Nobody died. No-one suffered harm. Even the trail wasn't hurt.

But that's being human for you.

I guess ultimately it's about that frame riding extraordinarily well and having been an integral part of some extraordinarily good days - in the Atlas mountains, in the Pyrenees, in the Peak, the Lakes and more - and about the emotion you project onto and into it. And that oddly, it was shining beacon of metallic hope on days when my belief in humanity was somewhere below rock bottom.

Some of it as well, was a sort of irrational disbelief that it had happened to me coupled with a sort of vague, generalised resentment at the internet bores who endlessly trot out the 'bike for life' cliché with a liberal garnish of Schadenfreude and self-contratulatory glee that they've never been taken in by a promise which only actually exists in their own heads. No-one, surely, believes that a regularly ridden bike will last forever, do they?

But mostly I'm amused that despite knowing that riding is about riding, not about what you ride, I still can't quite get past that quiet indignation. And the funny thing is that despite Lynskey coming through - as they have a reputation for doing - and promising to fix the frame so it's as good as new, the quiet indignation is still lurking just out of shot.

Smile. Acknowledge. Move on. Because in a few months time, Rags'll be back. And after all, nobody (human) died.