On March 19th, 2008, I collected 21 famous quotes about cycling:
Some of the quotes were real, and some I simply made up–like this one:
Give me good books, good conversations, and my Trek Y-Foil, and I shall want for nothing else. –George Plimpton
My intent was not to mislead anyone as I figured it was obvious which ones were fake. However, I inadvertently fooled the then-editor of The Paris Review, who in 2012 mentioned that George Plimpton used to ride around the city on a Y-Foil as though it were common knowledge:
I was simultaneously amused and alarmed by the almost Orwellian manner in which I’d forever reshaped reality and our collective memory simply by pulling a completely fabricated quote out of my chamois for a silly bike blog post. And like a broken Winston Smith, now I too can no longer separate reality from the ever-changing fiction I myself helped to create. Perhaps Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia, and perhaps Plimpton had owned that Y-Foil after all:
This is the note that accompanied the latest test subject from Classic Cycle, of which I just took delivery yesterday. “It couldn’t be,” I muttered to myself. “I made it all up…didn’t I?”
And yet there it was, that eerie free-floating seat collar poking through the cardboard like the dorsal fin of a carbon fiber shark:
As I withdrew the bike from the box, I felt as though I’d slipped through an invisible membrane and into a world in which fiction was fact, two plus two equaled five, and full-length seat tubes had never even existed:
Yes, it was George Plimpton’s Y-Foil all right. It said so, right there on the…
…on the what? The seat stay? That’s not a seat stay. Y-Foils don’t have seat stays. There is no such thing as a “seat stay.” The diamond frame never existed. To say they ever did is doubleplus ungood thoughtcrime. You may think you once ran your fingers along the dusty tubes of a lugged steel frame at an antique shop once, but you never did:
I should add that until this moment I had never been this close to any Y-Foil, let alone George Plimpton’s, and I was oddly captivated by its sculpted frame and scintillating golden hue. What wheels could possibly do justice to this thing, I wondered to myself?
Then I opened the wheel bags and found out:
Never in my wildest dreams and/or night terrors would I ever have imagined that one day I’d find myself in possession of not only a pair of Spinergy Rev-Xes, but also a pair of (Specialized…? HED…?) Tri Spokes:
Like the Softride (and the Spinergy Rev-X for that matter), the Y-Foil (say “WIFE-oil”) disappeared from the marketplace because it was banned by the UCI, which is ironic because the vast majority of the people buying bikes like this will never, ever have to worry about whether their bike is UCI legal or not. But in 1998, the Y-Foil was a cutting-edge machine at the pointy end of Trek’s line-up, and Plimpton’s appears to be the “metalized yellow” bike from that year:
Though that description hardly does Plimpton’s bike justice, especially with the orange and red accents:
And if anything I’d call it “pumpkin spice latte:”
Or maybe “candy corn:”
As someone who’s currently riding a 1982 Nishiki Cervino and owns multiple Rivendae it probably won’t surprise you that at no point have I ever coveted a Trek Y-Foil. Something about them has always screamed “Hairy legs and aero helmets” to me, and I’ve always found the idea of anyone riding one to be amusing, let alone the late George Plimpton, which is why I made up the quote in the first place. And yet, also like the Softride, when you’re actually in its presence it’s hard not to be charmed by the audacity of this elaborate evolutionary detour. The water bottle sits atop a carbon fiber (I’m assuming) pedestal like a museum artifact:
The seat post coupled with the lack of a seat tube makes the bike seem like some sort of futuristic hole-boring device:
In fact legend has it that on group rides Plimpton would stop and prepare a fruit and cheese plate by placing cantaloupe and gouda in the seat tube void, loosening the seat collar, and punching delightful cylindrical morsels out of them with the seatpost and then wrapping them in prosciutto. Delicious.
If only Plimpton had had access to a dropper post he could have prepared his fruit and cheese plates in only a fraction of the time:
The bracket that holds the front derailleur is also oddly fascinating, and in a pinch can be used to pop the top off a bottle of cuvée:
Speaking of the front derailleur, the cable stops on the Y-Foil’s fuselage lack barrel adjusters, so Plimpton has made do by fitting one to his STI lever:
The drivetrain is Dura-Ace 9-speed, though Plimpton made some departures, such as the Zero Gravity brakes:
And of course those wheels, which cut through the air like a witty remark at a soirée:
He also used Campagnolo pedals for a touch of Euro flair (though like their Shimano equivalents of that era they’re basically just Looks):
And a Cinelli Frog stem for a dash of whimsy:
By the way, if you still doubt the bike’s authenticity, take a look at the head badge:
Now what do you have to say to that?
Yes, the bike cuts a striking figure from any angle:
And I only wish this baby had arrived before the Five Boro Bike Tour because I would have absolutely destroyed it on this thing:
So far, I’ve only ridden the bike around the neighborhood on a brief shakedown ride, but in that short amount of time someone called to me from his driveway: “A Trek Y-Foil! Haven’t seen one of those in awhile!” I stopped so he could check it out, and he noted the components with approbation, though he spotted the decals and remarked with amusement that there was no way the bike could have belonged to George Plimpton:
Really? I beg to differ. And I even have the letter of authenticity to prove it.
