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Hee haw. I’m with m’boy Big Jonny on the Bike Snob. Loved this bit about Ultegra and its new glitzy big-hair lip-synch’n cousin, Ultegra SL:
Nextly, the thing I always liked about Ultegra is that it’s the blue-collar group. It’s always been the cheapest legitimate racing gruppo. Good enough to take the start at a Pro/1/2 race, yet inexpensive enough to slap on that project bike or on your first ‘cross frame. Ultegra says, “I don’t care about shiny, I don’t care about grams, I just care about riding.”
That’s why pimping up Ultegra is stupid. It’s like when people take a perfectly good economy car and then put on wheels that cost three times as much as the vehicle. You go from looking like a sensible, economical person to looking like an idiot.
I’ve got Ultegra on just about everything, except a couple of bikes that have its ugly second cousin with the limp and the googly eye, Shimano 600. Some of them have bar-end shifters and aero’ brake levers instead of STI. Oh, the humanity. I quit buying Dura-Ace when (a) it started costing more than a top-shelf bottle of single malt, an 8-ball of Peruvian marching powder and a two-girl massage on Colfax, and; (b) I realized it didn’t make me any faster. Not even the marching powder will help there.
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Yay, 8-BALL!!!!
How about SRAM Rival? Similar price to Ultegra–but much lighter than even Ultegra SL. It is too bad the crank is so damn ugly.
Shimano 600 indeed. I need something on my bike uglier than me, to take other’s eyes off this old turd.