Quote Originally Posted by zoom-zoom View Post
You know, I miss the days when carbon was left mostly bare. There are some really beautiful carbon bikes with matte or glossy or even sort of glittery finishes over the carbon. DH's first Roubaix was a matte finish on carbon. Very sharp and understated. That frame developed a crack, so Specialized replaced it with the current model for that year, which was entirely painted over with white and blue...boring and kinda garish.

My bike is carbon, but painted white and orange and gray. I LOVE the white and orange, but wish instead of gray areas that they had left that clearcoat over carbon. I think that would be cool and add some unique pattern. I blame the backlash a few years back against carbon. When it started trickling down to mid-grade bikes it no longer had the same cache, so elitist types got their knickers in a twist that us plebeians were riding "their" material...and started badmouthing it. Not long after that it was no longer "cool." to have visible carbon on bikes. Shame, since it's such an attractive material to look at. I love the iridescence and it can come in different colors, too, or have tinted clearcoats applied over it.

So I'm jealous that your bike has those carbon patterns on display. I need to see one of those up-close! I'll bet it's really beautiful.
Interesting background! I have seen the orange and white SuperSix and I think it looks really nice. I have seen several unisex bikes with more of the exposed carbon but I think some of the Ruby's (at least 2012) had some pretty sleek looking exposed carbon bikes as well. I didn't know the Synapse color scheme included that...I just assumed "exposed carbon" was another fancy way to market black paint on a bike. :P In my defense, I am a complete newbie here!

I'll have to look at it under sunlight again when I go for a ride this weekend. I definitely see it in the fork but not so much on the other black parts of the bike.

Are there general threads where people post pictures of their bikes? I would love to see what everyone in TE is riding, any kind of bike!