When Did It Get So Complicated?
I love to ride my bikes, any one of them, each for different reasons.
I love the mountain bike for the feeling of invincibility and the ability to bounce and roll over anything (at least the memory of that. I don't have the rhythm and flow I used to cause I haven't had an mtb for a while.)
I love the Pake. My dear brother-in-law hooked me up with his old box of parts (he switched to Record, and I got the old DA and Ultegra), and the Lemond never quite fit, so I came up with a project. The Pake is heavy, but it rides light. So responsive, so comfortable. I look forward to getting up the next day so I can ride it to work. When I get on it, it's like the first time, each time. I would buy a second one of these just to put clips and straps on it and singlespeed it up.
I love the Diamondback conversion. I bought this used from this cat Saul (who's now a rabbi in the Bronx) at Turin my freshman year at Northwestern. The conversion is fun to ride, because there's nothing to think about. It's my GAT, so I don't care if I leave it locked in the rain in front of the Farragut West station, or ride it home very slowly and deliberately after last call at Solly's.
I want to replace the Diamondback. It's an obsession almost. I won't, I don't think, because I can't justify replacing the beater. It's a beater, fer crying out loud. Sure it's totally too small, but I don't put miles on it.
It comes down to two things: clips and straps vs clipless and leaving the bike out.
Clipless, for those that don't know, is a pedal and shoe combination, like ski bindings and boots. In theory more efficient (and I think safer) than the alternative, but it requires wearing the shoes. Without the shoes, you're not attaches, and you're pushing on smaller, rounded metal objects. Less control and contact, in my opinion, so you risk slipping off, or not being able to pull the bike over an obstacle.
Leaving the bike out is just making it available to thieving and adding to the wear and tear...rust and scratches.
I fully acknowledge I'm whining. I don't need more than one of the bikes. But at some point, one bike stopped being enough. It stopped being about riding and became about the options... road ride, off-road ride or errands and joyriding.
Replies: 1 comments
I love to bike and I never do it.
I grew up on a small coastal island (about 4 x .5 miles) so there was nowhere you couldn't get to on your BMX including the elementary school. You would rarely been seen without your bike and your bike was part of your identity. When I was 14, I rode from Portland, OR to San Francisco with an AYH group of other teenagers, so i had to upgrade to the 21-speed with the xtra small climbing gear. This was also the summer before high school, so the bike culture was dying out a bit, but being a couple years shy of car access, bikes were still the primary mode of transport, and I was now the only one riding a bike w/gears. (note: this was 1984 and me and my fellow bikers were drooling over these brand new and crazy expensive "Mountain Bikes" but none of us had ever seen one in person).
After that, my biking became more occasional, and once I got my drivers license, it ended altogether. My bike got stolen when I was 16 or 17 and I didn't bother to replace it.
FFW ten years, and I'd just moved to DC... got me a nice Trek hybrid and hit the road -- occasionally -- as I'd go through alternating phases of working out and not. For a while when I was living in Adams Morgan, I was riding up to the hill to the Rock Creek Park entrance near Woodly Park metro, down to the park and out to Arlington Cemetary and back before work three or four times a week. Then I'd stop for a year or so. Ditto when I lived in VA near the GW Parkway.
So, here I am living in the land of the 1-month winter, where I could ride almost all the time and the bike is sitting in the garage waiting for a ride. It's been waiting for 3 years. To be fair, the roads here suck and there are scant few bike paths and the roads frequently have no median, but still, I suck. It's past time to get back on.
...and I prefer straps, 'cause I like to be flexible in my footwear and prefer to wear my Sambas on the bike.
Posted by B2 @ 04/17/08 8:50 p.m. ET