Or not! To learn from Tom, he had the adventures but wasn't outspoken about them - the stories were told by others. With a bike, the point is to enjoy it! I have an 80s steel frame, not as unique, but it gets me around, fast, and I've had tons of fun with it over the past 15 years. Camping in the woods with it chained to a tree, riding through 6" of slush on slick tires, wiping out and learning multiple times... I've touched up scrapes and dings with not-quite-matching shades of nail polish, my handlebar tape is falling apart, my bottom bracket sticks out a bit because I did a shit job of replacing it 5 years ago. But I love it anyway. Or as the article said,

> “Bicycles are not built to be used as status symbols,” Eisentraut himself wrote in a chapter on framebuilding for a book called Bike Tripping, published in 1972. “The cyclist should ride his chosen bike, instead of bullshitting about its angles or its chain stay length.”