Arguing that baggy cycling clothes are more fashionable than tight, Lycra gear is a bit like arguing that Chinese water torture is way better than being drawn and quartered....
Am I a traitor? Hell yes. I've stopped wearing a hydration pack, I've traded my mini pump for a CO2 cartridge and I wear the same exact get-up on dirt as I've learned to wear on the road. I am that guy that I always hated in high school, the XC melvin who would pay attention to average speed on the trail and ride around every downed log or mudhole.
I keep having this reoccurring dream. It's a simple dream, no fireworks or hootin' and hollerin' to speak of, but it is great. And no, it is not one of those teenager-fantasy-dreams where I am surrounded by hundreds of beautiful woman from all over the globe. Though that is a good one, too.
Arguing that baggy cycling gear is so much cooler or more fashionable than tight-fitting Lycra gear is a bit like arguing that Chinese water torture is way better than being drawn and quartered.
Nowhere is the howling whoosh of bullshit heard with such crystalline turbine ferocity as it is in Wikipedia.
In my short tenure on earth, I have learned a handful of things. I cannot trust the government; Keanu Reeves is mentally retarded; fast food is neither real fast nor real food. But most importantly, I have learned that mountain bikers are a fickle bunch.
By the time March rolls around, I’ve got webbing between my toes, gills on my neck and a fungal infection circling my scrotum that just won’t quit. This is not exactly bliss.
The day I decided to call mountain biking my profession was the day it all started to become a bit more than just a hobby.
As the sponsor for one euro team said “The Italians want to know where to go find girls, and the Spaniards want to be sure the stages are over in time to get to the outlet malls. They’re not really making the race a priority...” Given that it was still February, dammit, and this was a way to get some miles in the legs without having to get shelled out the back of Het Volk or Kuurne-Bruxelles-Kuurne, covered in cowshit, beaten by cobblestones and half-hypothermic, I can’t say I’d blame anyone
Bikes, often times like women, come and go. We ride them for a few seasons, swap out particular parts that don’t do it for us, break others, and then get rid of it by trading it in towards a new, shiny, better model.
The web is a voracious consumers of edit. Our Dear Editorial Leader commiserates with the sad sacks he manages. Feel his empathy, dammit!
Anyone who’s spent any time wrenching in a shop can attest to the ham-fisted weekend warriors whose checking accounts swallow high-end bike parts like Star Jones swallows anything.
Well, I’m a Taurus—my earth-healer psychiatrist tells me this is why I throw beer bottles at people I don’t like.
Yankee enters a redneck amateur boxing contest. Fights a toothless gas-station attendant. Hilarity does not ensue.
Mates supplying their bicycling-obsessed mates with bicycle accoutrement is nothing new, but it can be damned difficult for people who don’t understand the distinctions between Horst Links and I-Drives.