As you know, I recently received George Plimpton’s Y-Foil, and yesterday morning I took it out for its first proper ride:
[You can read more about the bike at the Classic Cycle site…if you can handle more Y-Foil, that is.]
I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t self-conscious about being seen on this thing, but I figured in the wee hours the only people out are fitness freaks who think flogging yourself on an aero bike first thing in the morning is normal behavior. (Even my wife laughed at the Y-Foil, and she’s become so inured to all the bikes that come and go around here that she hardly notices them anymore.) Despite its outlandish appearance, from the cockpit you’d almost think you were on a normal road bike, save for the zeppelin-like girth of the Y-Foil’s “top tube”–which, I might add, is nicely complemented by the portly Frog stem:
For a brief yet exuberant time around the turn of the last century, cyclists could choose from a number of “theme stems.” The Frog was by far the most family-friendly option, and there was also the bawdy Alter:
As well as the unapologetically schlong-like Mutant:
But these days if you want to express yourself via cockpit curation you’re mostly limited to irreverent top caps:
Rider 1: “Hey, wanna go for a road ride today?”
Rider 2: “DID YOU NOT READ MY TOP CAP?!?!?”
I started out tentatively, but once I was sure the jaws of the Frog had a decent grip on those vintage non-oversized crabon bars I brought the Y-Foil up to speed, and before long I was going fast enough to flatten my leg hairs:
You must have leg hair in order to ride a Y-Foil, it’s in the manual. Balding is optional, but recommended. And a beer gut is just assumed. Yes, life is full of firsts: your first kiss, your first child, your first colonoscopy… But there are milestones, and then there are seismic events that change you forever, and my first Y-Foil ride was very much the latter. From this day forward, I shall divide my life into two distinct chapters: Before Y-Foil, and After Y-Foil. I am forever changed.
While we’re at it, I should also dispel certain myths. For example, despite what you may have read on the Internet, Y-Foils do not occur naturally:
Also, this is not Grant Petersen’s Y-Foil:
His is red and has Spinergys.
What is true is that Trek only offered the Y-Foil in 1998 and 1999, and the sun set on it just as the Armstrong era was dawning:
[PDF]
For some reason, in the 1990s Trek were deeply obsessed with making bikes in the shape of a Y:
It’s almost like there was something motivating them subconsciously:
What’s also true is that the Trek Y-Foil has a devoted following and has become something of a cult bike. On bike forums you’ll find numerous instances of people writing reverently of their sublime ride quality, and asking prices on the used market are correspondingly high:
Trek’s line on the Y-Foil was that it was simultaneously more aerodynamic than a regular road bike while offering more comfort and compliance:
And there is absolutely a subtle yet discernible suspension effect to the suspended seat tube:
It’s not dissimilar to the effect of a Brooks saddle, though of course by 1998 the idea of mitigating rough road surfaces by using a more compliant saddle or wider tires was considered patently insane, and the far more logical solution was to keep using plastic saddles and narrow tires and instead build an entirely new type of composite frame to address the problem.
As for the “34% more aerodynamic” thing, I have no way of quantifying that one, though It certainly felt like it was true. It could have been the Tri Spokes, it could have been the frame, or it could have been my imagination coupled with the psychological effect of the helicopter-like sound the wheels make, but once I got the thing going it felt like it wanted to keep going.
But yes, between the built-in compliance and the speed (or at least the illusion thereof), it really does ride quite nicely, and I can understand why people speak highly of it–especially the kinds of people who get excited by non-traditional frame design. As far as that goes, it does come with certain compromises (the chief one being the bike holds only one small water bottle, unless of course you go for butt rockets or something like that), but setting those aside I find it noteworthy that despite being totally out there the Y-Foil is totally compatible with all the standard components of the time. It also rides and handles like a normal road bike, and if anything it probably does offer a smoother ride than many of its contemporaries–though I might have felt differently if there had been any hint of wind during my ride, as I imagine you’d get pretty blown around on this thing. So while I don’t think there’s any danger of my becoming a Y-Foil convert, as a bike dork I do appreciate the bike as a relic of a time when designers were exploring the potential of carbon fiber, and this indeers me to it:
Sorry, for both the pun and the bike.
