This week I read an interesting point of view.
It is on a website that is inclined to include experiences as often as hardware updates, and the writer espoused his realisation that maybe the bike industry and media are missing the point a little in the way they present the stuff we use to pursue our choice of leisure activity.
He is talking primarily about bikes, and bits for bikes. Awesome new things we should really buy, and specialised bikes for every task.
At the pointy end of the sport, incremental improvements to everything make winners. That includes bikes, and bits for bikes.
But in punter land, those improvements are abstract.
Don’t know about you, but I have accumulated a pile of bikes. I am guilty of having most categories covered, although my road bikes tend toward the vintage and my track bike has become a desk ornament. My most current bike, and also the one I use most often, is now a couple of years old. It is a marvelous thing. I can guarantee that updating it would not make me go any faster, or have more fun. If the geometry was tweaked and the shifting was electronic I would still be limited by own physiology and aptitude.
I have a different mountain bike that doesn’t get the nod as often as it deserves. It is a little hardtail I was tricked into buying by my own whatifishness. When I go out on that bike, the fun factor is multiplied by the number of years it has been since I thought I knew how to ride a trail on a machine with no rear suspension.
I even have one with no suspension at all, and brakes that are more conceptual than reliable. Fun on that thing is dialled up another notch, and can include type 2. My aging joints don’t allow for too much trail time on the black hell-beast, but they really enjoy the first hour.
After reading the article I pondered a bike life with only one bike. A simple, apocalypse-friendly contraption much like the ones we had when we discovered this sport. Happy we don’t have to do that, but also pretty sure we could, and still have a good time. Of course, whatever societal collapse that results in my culling the fleet to one would probably also curtail going out and burning calories for no real reason.
Grab a bike. Any bike. Go for a ride. Do some skids.
