Bike Snob Read online

  Also, you need to pay attention to your “lock threading.” Have you ever tried to stitch up your pants while you’re wearing them and accidentally sewn them to your underpants? Unless you’re me, you probably haven’t. Similarly, it can be surprisingly easy to pass a chain through the wrong part of the bicycle if you’re not paying careful attention—like, through the wheel instead of through the frame (or through nothing instead of through the frame). That’s when you come back outside and find that your heavy lock indeed was very effective in keeping your front wheel secured to the bike rack. Unfortunately, the rest of the bike is gone. Furthermore, just because you don’t know how to remove a part of your bike, don’t think that a thief doesn’t either. You should always lock your frame to the rack, and in turn lock your wheels to either the frame or the rack as well. This may require two locks. I’ve never heard people complain about still having a bike because they used too many locks, but I have read many a Craigslist post written by a forlorn hipster pining for his beloved “lime green Velocity rim to Phil Wood hub” track wheel.

  Most importantly, though, as I say elsewhere, know your bike will get stolen. People seem to think thieves only steal nice bikes, so they do things like cover their decals and logos with stickers. But thieves don’t shop like you do. They’re not consumers; they’re thieves. They steal whatever they can. Regardless of what you ride, a thief will turn around and sell it for $75—the only difference is that the more money you put into the bike, the more you stand to lose. Just like you might realize the pointlessness of gram-shaving on your cyclocross bike when it’s covered with fifteen pounds of mud, you should also realize the futility of upgrading your seatpost when you walk outside and find the whole bike missing.

  TRIMMING THE FAT

  The streamlining influence of cycling

  Bikes have wheels.

  —Noam Chomsky

  Cycling can seem complicated, especially for the newcomer. What kind of bike do you buy? Where do you ride it? What are the rules? How do you get fit? What sort of equipment do you use? You can devote a tremendous amount of time and energy fretting over these things. You can also confuse yourself even further by turning to more experienced cyclists for advice. Really, asking cyclists anything is a bad idea. The problem isn’t that cyclists can’t agree; it’s that they’re hyper-obsessive and anal. A simple question like, “What kind of saddle should I get?” will somehow result in a twenty-minute discourse on brass versus alloy spoke nipples. And while this is an important subject, when it comes to where you should put your ass it simply isn’t information you can use.

  So much of ownership is complicated. Loans, leases, zero percent down, no interest for thirty days, warranties—buying a car or a major appliance is more complicated than life decisions that are actually important, like picking a college or a job. Thankfully, bicycles are simple—you buy them and that’s that. Furthermore, riding them is as simple as buying them. Once you’ve got a bike, you ride it. That’s it! The only reason cycling seems so complicated to the uninitiated is that we cyclists complicate it unnecessarily, since we need to feel like we’re special and we’re doing something regular people can’t do. But the real beauty of cycling is that it isn’t complicated at all. Yes, there is a lot to learn, but really the hardest part is actually learning how to ride the bike. And fortunately most people learned that very early on. The rest is just putting the thing between your legs and pedaling it. The machine and your body will then teach you everything you need to know.

  Listen to the Bike

  So much of what we do in life requires testing, and licensing, and training, and apprenticeship, and specific amounts of experience. Cycling is not one of these things. Simply turn the pedals and it will reveal itself to you. The scales will fall from your eyes. Granted, they might also develop in your crotch, but that’s just the bike teaching you to wear proper attire and use chamois cream if necessary. While you can pay a coach or a trainer to teach you how to train and to maximize your performance, you really don’t need to. Actually, unless you’re a professional athlete whose livelihood depends on coaxing every last watt from your body and shaving fractions of a second from your time trial, hiring a coach is pretty ridiculous. Riding your bike should be something you want to do. Do you need to pay someone to tell you how to enjoy yourself?

  If cycling seems at all complicated, that’s because companies want it to seem complicated so they can continue to grow and sell more and more things. Take “bike fitting,” for example. Bike fitting is simply making sure a rider is using the correct- sized frame, and then making sure the various components are also the proper size and in the proper place. It’s fairly straightforward. However, over the years increasingly complex methods of bike fitting have evolved, some of which involve things like lasers, and most of which cost hundreds of dollars for a session. Similarly, a notion has evolved that if you’re going to be doing any kind of “serious” cycling (whatever that means) that you need to have a bike fitting.

  Cycling should not involve lasers. Lasers are for eye surgery. There’s already enough white skintight clothing, strangely-shaped tubing, and bad hairstyles in cycling—adding lasers to the whole thing just makes the eighties nightmare complete. I’m surprised they don’t use smoke machines for these bike fittings too. When I go to a bike shop that’s got a big fitting area I half expect Turbo B from Snap! to burst out of the stockroom, remove his helmet to reveal his perfect high-top fade, and start singing “I Got the Power.” Really, if the typical road bike doesn’t turn you off, then the prospect of sitting on one while someone shoots lasers at you is sure to finish the job. But you do not have to pay somebody hundreds of dollars to fit your bike to you. If you buy a bike from a competent shop, they will make sure the bike fits you properly. It may not be perfect, and you may need to do a few adjustments down the line. But there is no better way to learn about your bike and about cycling than to do them yourself. Just take a little time to get to know your bike. Head out on a nice day for a leisurely ride and take a basic multi-tool with you. If the seat feels too high, raise it. If it feels too low, lower it. And so forth. Experiment. Dial it in. It might take an hour, or it might take two weeks, but it’s worth it.

  Think of it like dating. The best part of meeting somebody new is exploring each other physically and mentally and experiencing the thrill of discovery. You don’t immediately hire a sex therapist to sit next to the bed with a stopwatch and make you run through the Kama Sutra. The same goes for your bike. You’re building a relationship with it and with cycling. Take your time. Gaze into each other’s eyes. Spend lazy Sunday mornings together. But forget the lasers and heavy machinery—at least until you get to know each other.

  Once you’re comfortable both on and with your bike, that’s when the real change begins. The first thing that happens is that you get fit. Think of all the people out there who are unhappy with their bodies, and wish they could change them. Well, I’m no “doctorologist,” but in order to get your body into shape you need to exercise. Perhaps you’ve noticed that the people you see doing stuff like running, cycling, and even skateboarding are in better physical shape than the people sitting in KFC with bucketfuls of chicken, or in casinos with bucketfuls of quarters—and especially the people eating bucketfuls of quarters while they attempt to shove chicken into slot machines. Those people tend towards the slovenly. Yes, you can pay a surgeon to flay the fat off you, just like you can pay someone to make your bike fit you, or teach you how to have sex, but none of those will have a lasting effect.

  Once you fall in love with cycling, you will automatically get fit. You’ll no longer be one of those people for whom exercise is a chore. Better yet, you won’t need to pay for a gym membership, and you won’t need to drag yourself there and go through the motions, as if simply putting your body in a gym were tantamount to doing an actual workout. Sure, some people like going to the gym, but most people do it out of duty. Gyms are like fitness temples, and simply sitting in a temple does not ma
ke you a better person—living better does. You can’t cram all your repentance into a few hours over the weekend, and you can’t cram all your exercise into forty-five minutes after work. Why not make getting to and from work your exercise?

  Once you start riding you’re no longer one of the sedentary masses. Also, you won’t need to eat less. Actually, you’ll need to eat more. Food will no longer be an indulgence. It will become what it was always actually supposed to be, which is fuel. Your meals will be sources of energy, not guilt.

  At this point, you might begin to realize something. Your physical rhythms are now becoming more a part of your life. At the end of the day, you are tired—the good kind of tired, which is physically tired. This is the kind of tired that makes it easy to go to sleep, and that overwhelms the sorts of anxious thoughts that can sometimes keep you awake. You’re too tired to watch crappy TV. And like your hunger, your exhaustion is earned. There’s no more stressing about the appropriate way to satisfy it. Your body dictates the terms, and you obey them.

  Don’t worry, you’re not turning into a brain-dead, zombie-like sleeping-and-eating machine. If anything, you were probably a brain-dead, zombie-like sleeping-and-eating machine before you became a cyclist. Really, what cycling is doing is burning the fat off of your life as well as your body. It’s eliminating the restless energy that you’d otherwise find different uses for, such as smoking, or eating Cheetos, or watching Pauly Shore movies (and sometimes all three at once!). It’s also simplifying decisions that were once needlessly complex. There’s no more, “Oh, should I have more pasta? I really shouldn’t. But it’s so good! But eating’s sooo bad.” Now it’s simply, “Hungry. Must eat.” As it should be. Also, you’d be surprised how smart your body can be and how dumb your brain can be. If you think having a ravenous appetite due to cycling is going to make you eat crap, you’re wrong. Your body really won’t want crap. Crap makes very bad cycling fuel. There’s a reason you don’t see cyclists hanging out at White Castle, and it’s not because they’re health nuts. It’s because cycling and eating White Castle will make you want to throw up.

  Now that the brain doesn’t have to spend its time agonizing over whether or not it’s okay to open another bag of Barbecue Ruffles, it can actually start to do what it’s supposed to, which is help you order your life. Any cyclist will tell you that one of the things they value most about cycling is what it does for their heads. It cleans out the clutter. Cycling allows for reflection. It simultaneously offers time to mull over problems and to escape those problems. It’s both meditative and contemplative. Whether you’re weaving through traffic or climbing a long country road, the effect is the same. Your body’s working, and your mind is working. And when those two things start working in concert, other aspects of life can start falling into place too.

  The absolute truth about cycling—and the very best thing about it, better even than the speed and mobility—is the fact that it can be a key to fulfillment as powerful as any religion, psychoactive drug, or therapist. However, there are two reasons you never hear this:

  1. Anti-veloism

  As I said, “society” (aka “The Man”) is prejudiced against cycling. It’s kid’s stuff, or at best it’s a competitive sport in which the athletes wear skintight clothing. Certainly no spiritual truth can be divined from it, right? Wrong. Cycling can be just as physically and spiritually beneficial as yoga. Plus, swamis’ clothes are easily as ridiculous as those of the cyclist, yet nobody has trouble believing they can help you attain spiritual fulfillment. One day soon, the cyclist’s Technicolor Lycra skinsuits will be considered just as spiritual as a holy man’s robes—though hopefully the cyclist will have the decency to don a robe over the skinsuit when off the bike.

  2. It’s Fun

  Things that are fun aren’t supposed to be worthwhile. Moreover, people don’t want you to enjoy yourself, and that’s because they’re not enjoying themselves. They’re more important than you, remember? That’s why the traffic-addled driver honks at you. Because cycling’s fun, people don’t think it warrants the passion and enthusiasm cyclists have for it. Even people who love cycling get defensive about it. They say it’s just a hobby. But cycling is less a hobby than it is a discipline with the potential to transform you. It brings balance. It’s also a form of personal expression, like playing music, or writing or painting. It’s a way of seeing the world, and it’s as enriching as any of those things can be. It can even be an art form. A cycling victory can be inspiring. You can’t really say that about coin collecting.

  Also, it’s easy to forget how much mental energy you expend simply figuring out the world on a daily basis. The cultural landscape is complicated. It’s filled with products and references and technology. For example, it’s nice that you can now go to a supermarket and choose from any number of healthy options, but at the same time the cereal aisle alone, with all its movie, TV, and toy tie-ins, is probably brimming with more cultural references than the entire nineteenth century. It would be enough to knock even the most cerebral Victorian clean off his penny-farthing! We spend most of our lives immersed in marketing campaigns. Ads have become so sophisticated we don’t even know we’re seeing them anymore. We can also learn anything we want to know about anything in about nineteen seconds thanks to the Internet. And when we’re done shopping for cereal, we can wave the box under a laser (okay, I guess they’re good for something else besides eye surgery) and check ourselves out. It’s a time of great intellectual wealth as well as a time of unadulterated crap.

  It’s exhausting to wade through crap, and sometimes, the only way to cut through the crap is with physical activity. This will never change. You’ll always need to use your body productively, and to use it expressively. As you trudge through the cultural detritus it’s increasingly easy to lose touch with this truth. And if interpretive dance or stripping isn’t for you, then cycling is a great way to meet this need.

  Pain

  Nature’s Cruel Instructor

  Life involves pain—there’s really no way around it. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Without pain, how would we appreciate pleasure? How would we know when to take our feet out of the oven (I like to read with my feet in the oven on cold days) or to stop watching Two and a Half Men? While some of us live in fear of pain, the fact is that it’s just a part of the spectrum of physical sensation, and you simply can’t spend your entire life in the Jacuzzi part of that spectrum. Sometimes you need a cold shower to wake yourself up.

  Like life, cycling involves a wide range of sensations, from sublime pleasure to searing agony. While ideally you’ll only venture into the pain section occasionally, you have to accept the fact that it’s going to happen. But there’s pain you can control and pain you can’t, and cyclists sometimes have difficulty distinguishing between the two. Here are the various types of pain you’re likely to come across, what you can do about them, and when it’s appropriate to just say uncle:

  Pain from Exertion

  You’ve probably heard some variation of the expression “Nothing worth doing is easy.” Obviously, this is completely ridiculous. There are plenty of worthwhile things that are exceedingly easy, like eating and sex. Even the most conservative person has to admit that sex is worth doing since all of humankind depends on it. Sure, some people do manage to complicate sex, but then again people can complicate anything. In fact, a more accurate saying would be “There’s nothing easy that can’t be made difficult.”

  Cycling’s also pretty easy, though like sex and everything else in life you can make it as simple or as complicated as you choose. However, cycling does require physical effort—and yes, extreme effort can be painful. But a lot of this is optional. You can ride as easy or as hard as you choose, and you don’t have to ride fast if you don’t want to. When you’re driving you need to go as fast as everyone else or else you’ll bring traffic to a halt, but cycling’s more like walking in that respect. When you walk you can do that dorky power-walking thing, or you can just slow your rol
l and strut. If you want to ride around at 3 mph on a cruiser bike with ape-hangers while wearing a leather vest and no shirt and listening to Bachman-Turner Overdrive, by all means do so—though it might take you a long time to get to work, unless you’re a seventies Quaalude salesman, in which case your office is probably your banana seat.

  Conversely, you might even find you like the pain of exertion, in which case cycling offers a wide variety of pain-inducing disciplines to which you can subject yourself. Certainly, you can seek pain and exertion on your own, but for the true masochist nothing beats road racing. Road racers actually ritualize the pursuit of pain by donning strange formfitting clothing, strapping electronics onto their bikes and themselves in order to measure the pain, and then flogging themselves and each other on rides during which things like smiling are discouraged. Essentially, the only thing separating a sexual sadomasochist and a road racer is slightly different fetish gear.

  If you prefer to smile while you torture yourself you can also engage in other painful pursuits, such as cyclocross. In cyclocross, smiling and having fun are actually acceptable, though the suffering is no less acute. It still falls under the “fetish” category, but it’s more like those clown fetish people who dress as Bozo and throw pies at each other (I saw it on HBO’s Real Sex) than the ones who wear PVC bodysuits and administer nipple clamps.

  For the masochistic autoeroticist with anal-retentive tendencies, time trials or triathlons are the way to go. They provide all the perverse suffering of road racing but without close proximity to others, allowing you to focus entirely on your own twisted needs. Yet there are still people around and you’re being timed, so there’s a certain voyeuristic thrill. You also get to wear clothing that makes roadie kit look modest. Think Lieutenant Dangle from Reno 911! in an aero tuck.