Confessions of a Former Bike Snob
I used to be a bike snob. I thought I knew bikes. I read all the books and mags. I’d been to a lot of places with a lot of bike vibe.
I resisted mountain bikes when they first came out-that’s what cross bikes were for (until I felt true dirt vibe). I resisted aero bars and tri-ideas (until I felt their comfort and speed). I resisted suspension (until I felt the washboard melt away). I resisted aluminum, carbon and ti (because I was broke and my existing bikes worked fine). I thought I knew just about all I had to know about bikes. This is the story of how that all changed.
My mind first started opening when I moved into a city and ran into new bike pals who used a new breed of bikes: city bikes. Sure, I’d used three-speeds before, but I under-appreciated them.
Meeting my city bike pals, who really used, loved and recycled their cycles, started my bikey sea-change. I got to learn about all the different three-speeds that you can often find in dumpsters or tossed out after students leave. Raleigh, Rudge, Robin Hood, Humber and Carlton! -And I learned how you can creatively mix interesting parts of all of them together to make your own personal and highly useful city bike, often for free. Sure, you can buy a new city bike, but I learned more from seeing the creative recycling culture in action.
These bikes had amazing features like Dynohub lighting, locking forks, passenger carriers and footpegs-clear evidence of the bikey ingenuity I’d come to love, which I thought could only be reached via Campy or Dura-Ace. The many cool paint jobs also prodded me along.
Then I read ‘Richard’s New Bicycle Book’, 2nd edition (out of print). In it, Richard Ballantine tells great stories about all types of cranky bikes and bikers and accompanies them with beautiful bike art sketches of all eras in cycling. I’d never appreciated the heritage of olden days cycling before. There are no photos in RNBB2, just stories and sketches. …Of tandems, trikes, folders, bike boats, recumbents, fairings, unusual racing rigs, and distinguished touring rigs. The innovative next to the classic. The values of cycling as one huge continuum. And so my mind grew.
Then I started my zine, Out Your Backdoor, which is muchly a bike zine. I traded with bike zines from around the world. My head about popped. Have you ever seen Mudflap? Recumbent Cyclist News? Bike Culture Quarterly? The Rivendell Reader? Moonlight Chronicles? The comic ‘Cat 3’?
Then I went to a big bike swap. The Saline Bike Fair, held every April in Saline, Michigan. The biggest and oldest. Supposedly for collectors of Schwinns and Whizzers, but also with an enormous contingent of antique bikes, exotic specialty bikes and vintage stuff like you won’t believe, all being paraded, bartered and sold. It was like one big family-the corn dogs and elephant ears were swell, too. At first I rushed around looking for new old racing stuff. Then I just wandered in a daze admiring the handiwork from all ages of the industrial era. I glossed over the antiques pavilion at first, but then I finally hung there and saw the real McCoys. I saw the differential gears of an early trike, the drive shaft racers. Saw how bike innovation had contributed so much to car development. What a day.
Then I went to my first HPV race, the Great Lakes Invitational (biggest and oldest). I’d never seen such a thing. All the different rigs and people, with fast and slow racers on the curvy course, everyone friendly and respectful of each other as far as I could tell. A lighthearted atmosphere. It seemed like bike racing *before*. People let my pal and I try their recumbents, homebuilt faired trikes and low-racers. The weld marks, zip-ties, cardboard, plastic and home-molded fiberglass shapes opened my eyes-in combination with the ease of use of some of the rigs. I was impressed by the clean, elegant lines of some of the production models. These weren’t geek bikes! …And I saw the speeds of the fastest rigs, which weren’t always the fanciest. I saw again how homemade alternatives had as much bikey vibe as anything Italian.
Then I went to my first bike alternatives shop, Shel’s ‘Recumbent Sea’ in Moline, Mich., and I bought my own recumbent! But that’s not all. You don’t just *buy* a recumbent. I rode a dozen different makes of all the best brands–for hours! All very different from each other. No splitting hairs in bent-land. I hadn’t experienced such difference in bikes before! It was like being at a circus. My pal and I couldn’t stop grinning and swapping rides. Here we were racers, going slow on some of these casual rigs, but having as good a time as we ever had racing. We felt guilty! I tell you, the first time you try underseat steering, you’ll laugh for blocks! It’s a true pleasure in cycling. You feel naked: no bike in front of you, just the view! No pressure points, just pure comfort. For the first time, kids and teens waved, yelled and said nice things to us as we rode. In the end the exact right ‘bent for me leaped out clearly. I’m happy with the one I bought and have modified it happily and affordably ever since. It’s so versatile! Now I have a full fairing of my own for it, for wonderful speed, weatherability, safety and shopping ease.
Now I have a problem. When I go to bike shops I see just two bikes, dressed up in different clothes. Nothing like the rainbow that I now know cycling to be. And I wish to see more–for the sake of cycling, and for my own further growth. Because I now see that there isn’t a limit to it. I guess I’ll have to get my own welder! I already have the catalog for homebuilt airplane chromoly…
If a grouch like me can open his eyes, I am optimistic for the future. The innovations in all areas are piling up too fast to shut it down. The idea of what’s a bike is changing. There’s growing dissatisfaction with expensive nth-degree ultra-refinements geared toward the tiny fraction that races professionally. People are throwing back and they’re throwing forward, heck they’re even wandering laterally.
Unobtanium bikes are cool, but they also inspire people to re-appreciate their old Typhoon, to maybe see that a folder meets their needs better, or to jump into a recumbent, or to push their favorite manufacturer to make a discrete, tasteful dual-sus ride for the real world of potholes, sans testosterone (great idea they are, but so embarrassing to see pushed to such a narrow tiny-brain market segment).
The whole family of cycling innovators, who’ve spanned its width and depth, during all eras and for all reasons, is waiting in the wings. Ready for the great leap forward.
