Lil Bit

• This year, for the first time in my adult life, I will be riding what is, for the most part, a wholly inappropriate bike. Fast, yes. But with these aging limbs urging it on -- I'm afraid to admit that my new carbon whatsit won't be headed for the head of the group rides, let alone podium glory. But this is the cost of modernization, the submission to the whims of and desires of the market. "Sell them what the want, not what they need."

  What most riders need is a perfectly fitting, comfortable, and just-stiff-enough bicycle. And for most of us, most of the time, that generally means a frame made from titanium or steel. But as titanium is still a luxury, or at least luxuriously priced, this leaves high end steel as the ideal frame material for club riders of every stripe. So who would have guessed that a little San Francisco company run out of a dingy warehouse in the shadow of SFO would offer stellar steel frames with these very desirable ride qualities at a fraction the price of even the more affordable boutique steel brands like Gunnar and Salsa?

  But they have and they do, and I hope to be selling and building a bundle of these, because, gosh darn it: Soma Fabrications makes damn fine bikes.