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I know its subjective, but I saw this bike and my mouth dropped. Its a Moots Mooto X Y-BB, link here.

Moots Mooto X Y-BB

For me, what makes this bike so beautiful, is first and foremost the lines. In my opinion, hardtails have better lines than full suspension bikes. The rocker, pivots and all that extra stuff take away from the clean, simple straight lines of two triangles forming a bike. I am a fan of curved tubing like the beach cruiser type mountain bike frames, but my first love is still the straight tubing. The soft tail, 1 1/8″ suspension travel, found on the seat stay of this bike does not detract from the overall clean lines. No new lines are created and at first glance, I didn’t even notice the suspension.

The second reason why this bike is beautiful is the color scheme. The gray of titanium is a classy, clean, refined look. It’s also plain so it needs accents. The white accents of the “Moots” decals on the down and seat tube, the Rock Shox Reba fork, stans rims, white brake and derailleur cables are the “big accents” (I’m not a designer here). The small red accents compliment the white and gray. They come in the form of the red headset, downtube decal, seatpost collar, seatpost, nipples, hubs and crankset logo. Even the red stripes on the fork are tasteful and help to bring things together. These little bits of red are just enough to satisfy my taste for color.

I’m not a fan of a lot of anodized parts. Small bits of anodizing works best for me. Keep the purple stems and cranks out of it. I’ll take those parts black, silver or gray with a hint of color to tie it together with the rest of the bike.

Of course it helps that this bike is also clean (I’m not sure why people are so preoccupied with dirty bikes. I like seeing them clean) and that the parts spec is definitely very HIGH END. All together, a very nice clean bike with great lines, excellent color accent choices and super high end parts. In my opinion, it doesn’t get much better than this.

What makes a beautiful bike to you?

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Would I add to or bling out the fleet?

Discretionary money is such a beautiful thing for those who have it. I don’t and because of that I don’t run across this question very often, if ever. With a homemaker wife, two kids under 4 and absolutely no mechanical skills whatsoever I’m thankful I am able to keep my 2 bikes in working order. Also, with a small two car garage and semi-pack rat tendencies, finding room for the bikes gets to be a problem. But I’m sure there are a few of you out there that have debated this question and have developed passionate feelings towards your decision.

Some people actually have this many bikes in their garage

Some people have a more utilitarian view towards mountain bikes. The bike should work and as long as it works the parts on the bike will stay. If a part breaks, then replace with comparable part, not better. No need to upgrade whatever is working fine. The flip side to having bikes that just plain work is that you can spend your discretionary money on having more bikes. Choosing to stick with stock means that cash can be accumulated for bigger purchases like different types of bikes: hardtail, SS, XC FS, DJ, DH, AM… None of these bikes will make you stop and stare as they pass by, but the sheer quantity of the bikes will make your head spin.

Chris King Hubs

If, on the other hand, the rider prefers to spend money on their bike rather than on new bikes, you get the rider who has bling bikes instead. The original bike probably started off as a perfectly functioning bike with a solid parts spec, think Deore or X.7. But watch out! Shortly after the owner gets their hands on the bike you start seeing the carbon handlebars, XTR and Chris King hubs. These bikes make you stop in your tracks and take another look if for no other reason than to guess how much money went into the bike. What this means though, is that instead of having a lot of bikes, the rider may only have a couple really nice ones.

Then there are those who are uber rich, or still don’t understand credit, and have lots of blinged out bikes. We won’t be discussing them.

Moots Ti HT, Blinged out via Aspire Velo Tech

Maybe I’m generalizing a bit much but in my experience this is sort of what I’ve seen. There are moderates, of which I fall into (OF COURSE), but they’re not as much fun to discuss. And although none of these methods are wrong both camps have riders that fiercely defend their purchasing habits as the “right” way. They get all prickly when asked why their methods are questioned or compared to the other method, which of course makes this debate interesting.

If I had a choice would I add to or bling out the fleet? Both, always both.

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