Despite my love of Waterford bicycles, this whole chain is pure gold. Especially "Jim Beam"'s comment "yeah, and the brains of non-engineers need boiling in brine and vinegar sometimes" is peak excellence. I am a Waterford bicycle owner, I love the bike, but I love the story behind it almost as much..

Story time: when I was in college studying mechanical engineering, we were charged with building a human powered device that would pump air for a medical device that aerates medicine. That way, people in remote parts of the world without electricity to power a compressor can still treat asthma.

So, my idea was to take apart the spare tire fix-a-flat compressor in my car, attach a tiny little rubber wheel to the crankshaft, and hold it against a turning bike wheel to create air pressure. To make that work, our group needed a bike; everyone was using theirs for commuting and I didn't have one, so one of the guys in the group said I could fix up an old bike they had lying around in the garage and use that for the project. Since I didn't have a bike of my own, I asked if I could keep it after the project was over since I'd have to sink a bunch of time into it and he said sure.

I went to their garage to pick up the bike, and it was in complete disrepair; covered in dust and grime, tires off rims, torn up seat, and fraying handlebar grips. But when I picked it up, it was incredibly light. I walked it home, went about fixing it, cleaned it thoroughly, and set it up to run our machine.

Once that was working, I did some research on this "Waterford" bike; once I learned that it was so expensive, I decided to invest a few bucks in a nicer seat and new handlebar tape. After the project was over, 3 years later, I've raced it a few times, ridden it about 400 miles, and fallen in love with everything about it.

More relevant to the "tech" part of this subject, I learned to fix almost every part of a bicycle on this machine. Even if Waterford frames objectively are overpriced, it warms my heart to have gotten such an overpriced machine for free and to have learned invaluable skills from it.

Thanks for the laughs reading the thread, all the best.