So there’s this guy who I always see on the train. A fellow multi-modal commuter. Fluoro yellow jacket. Pretty basic helmet. Very standard recreational MTB. The one thing that always confused me though was bike shoes and flat pedals. Nevermind. He has the look of a REAL commuter.
The one thing I always wondered was what this guy thought of me and my varied bikes with carbon fibre bits and shiny chrome wheels. The guy must think I’m nuts having so many bikes.
Or so I thought.
Pootling home the other day, I hear the distinct *ZZZZZZZZZZZZ* of a Campagnolo freewheel from behind me. I’m not really in the mood or on the right bike for a game, so I ignore it. Soon after there’s a flash of colour beside me and a bloke on a Pinarello whips past me in team kit.
Hey, that’s the guy on I see in the mornings.
Ah a fellow bike nut.
I’m not alone.
With a wide array of bikes to choose from, it can sometimes be hard in the mornings to decide what bike to ride to work. Sometimes the weather decides for me, but with the fine weather that we’ve been having lately, it doesn’t really matter what I ride.
I do however go through phases and invariably find myself on the same bike for weeks at a time. For example at the start of ’08 I was riding the MTB everywhere. Mid-’08 I was definitely on the Blade. More recently, I’ve been riding the fixie around my local neighbourhood a fair bit, doing errands and what not.
Back on the Blade this morning, it seems that all of this fixie-ing about has stupidified me. Here I am lugging around a rather heavy hub geared bike and as I approach a hill, instead of changing down and spinning, I find myself standing to mash my way up. This kind of stupidity, a loaded pannier, combined with the overnight low of 28ยบ meant that I was a sweaty, blubbery mess by halfway through my commute.
Maybe this is what attracts so many stupid people to fixies. You know, the stupid folks who use a cycling cap as head protection and run red lights on busy city streets. After years of mind numbing TV sitcoms and senseless computer games, the concepts of more than one gear, lots of little levers, deciding when to pedal and for the truly stupid, these weird things called brakes, is all just a bit too much to take in. I mean honestly, how can one be expected to pedal, maintain that fine balance which allows jeans to ride low but not fall off AND change gears at the same time.
Of course, none of this applies to me… no no… *shakes head*
Recently picked this one up at Kmart after a tip off.
Absolute steal at $7.50.
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