Bike Snob - Anonymous [43]
But as any Buddhist monk or person who’s dated an obsessive-compulsive can tell you, there’s danger in attachment. Because the bicycle is so enticing, sometimes the love for the bike can overwhelm the love for the ride. This can happen in a lot of different ways, and it can be dangerous for a number of reasons. But by knowing a few simple truths about how the bicycle works its way into your heart, you can stop it before it gets all Glenn Close and starts boiling a bunny in your kitchen.
1. Bicycles Do Not Have Souls
People attribute “soul” to all kinds of inanimate objects, including bicycles. As far as I know, nobody has proved conclusively that people have souls, much less bicycles, so the notion that your Colnago has one is completely ridiculous. And of course, not all bicycles have souls; just certain ones. They’re usually hand-built frames, and they’re often older steel Italian bicycles, generally owned by the sorts of people who are really into wine. The whole “soul” thing is meant to distinguish these craftsman-built bikes from the mass-produced ones, or the ones that are simply more common. It is, however, completely ridiculous.
Bicycles do not have souls. I don’t care if it was hand-crafted beneath the wooden boards of a velodrome by a master craftsman who was standing knee-deep in a pool of chianti while Fausto Coppi himself was doing laps overhead. That bicycle does not have a soul. Riders have souls; bicycles have wheels, and pedals, and occasionally cool paint jobs.
But what’s wrong with thinking your bike has a soul? What’s wrong with old-world craftsmanship and beauty? Well, nothing—at first. But after a while, once you start thinking your bike has a soul, you start treating it like a person. You baby it, you lavish attention on it, and eventually you’re afraid to ride it. Instead, you purchase another bicycle to ride so that you can reserve the bike with the soul for special occasions. But this makes no sense for a machine like a bicycle. Barring catastrophic accidents, any well-made bicycle will easily outlive its rider. Yes, you’ll wear out the tires, and the bar tape, and the brake pads, and the chain, and maybe even the saddle and the rims, but most of the bike will survive you even if you ride it a hundred miles per week for the rest of your life.
Still, you tell yourself your “soul” bike is too nice to ride. You clean it obsessively, you post pictures of it on forums so people can drool over it, and you occasionally list it for sale but then retract the ads so that you can reassure yourself that other people want your “soul” bike yet you don’t have to part with it. And once you attribute a soul to a bicycle and start treating it like a living thing, you often start paying less attention to actual living things. You become one of those people who doesn’t listen to their spouse because they’re too busy polishing their bike, and who yells at people who attempt to touch it or move it. Consequently, people start treating you like a freak. You have people over and they tell their dates, “Oh yeah, don’t touch Frank’s bike,” as they roll their eyes. You might as well just collect Barbie dolls.
This may sound extreme, but any experienced cyclist has seen too many people reduced to the status of handmaidens by their “dream” bikes. This is why I refuse to accept the concept of the dream bike. There are no dream bikes, only nightmare bikes. Babying a bike is like getting a washing machine and liking it so much you never use it and instead just build a second laundry room. Really, you should treat your bicycle like a washing machine—you should constantly subject it to sweat and filth.
2. There’s No Such Thing as an Upgrade
If you purchase a bicycle, you will be tempted to upgrade it. I promise. This is true regardless of whether it cost $100 or $10,000, and it’s true no matter whether it