Bike Snob - Anonymous [59]
As you probably realize, a good ramp looks kind of like this:
It does not look like this:
which is what the card table looked like. Nonetheless, we all looked at each other, waiting for someone to try it first. Thinking that riding off this card table at full speed would land me in the annals of local BMX history, a Hutch sponsorship, and eventually on the cover of BMX Action magazine, I volunteered. Instead, it landed me on my head. I played it off like I was fine, rode home in a daze, and passed out. I’d like to say I recovered, but it wasn’t long after that my grades dropped and I started poking holes in my earlobes and smoking. I can’t say for sure if this behavior was simply the result of adolescence or of the untreated head injury—though I can’t help thinking that if I’d let Lance Bernstein try the jump instead, maybe I’d be writing a book about quantum physics instead of about riding your bike. I guess I’ll never know.
It’s also worth noting that over twenty years later I broke a rib on my mountain bike after I rode off a drop for no other reason than Paul DeBartolo told me to do it. Mind you, Paulie didn’t ride the drop himself. I was following him, he stopped before the drop, looked down at it, and then told me to do it. It’s the same kind of stupidity you display when someone tastes something, spits it out, tells you to taste it, and you do. Anyway, I landed the drop—unfortunately, though, I landed it on my face and underneath the bike. I can’t blame adolescence for that one, so maybe the card table thing did determine the course of my life after all. In any case, take it from me: don’t ride off card tables, and don’t listen to Paulie D.
Sometimes the worst thing about crashing is that it can keep you off your bike for a while. This can be very difficult. What happens when you can’t do your favorite thing? Certainly, this is when it pays off to be a well-rounded person with other interests and lots of stimulating relationships, but we can’t all be this way—I know I’m not. If you’re a narrow-minded person who focuses on cycling to the exclusion of all else and you’re forced off the bike by an injury, just try to treat it like I treat climbs: it’s something you wish wasn’t happening, but if you’re forced to deal with it you might as well use it to your advantage. At the very least, it’s an opportunity to focus on cycling-related projects like bike maintenance. In fact, not riding can be just as important a part of cycling as riding. After all, music could not exist without the notes’ relationships to one another and the silence between them; pleasure could not exist without pain; time on the bike could not exist without time off the bike. Your incapacitation could in fact prove to be the key to your true cycling enlightenment.
Or find other fun stuff to do that doesn’t involve riding. That works too.
Bike Pain
If you’ve ever worked in a bike shop, you’ve experienced the customer who’s got vague complaints about comfort. Usually, it involves the saddle, which they “don’t like.” But other stuff can be uncomfortable for them, too. Sometimes it’s the shoes, or the handlebars. Sometimes it’s the pedals. Sometimes they think the bike is too harsh, or their back gets sore, or there’s just something wrong that they can’t really articulate.
These complaints can be legitimate, and sometimes an adjustment or a part swap is all that’s needed. At the same time, though, bicycles are not sofas, or beds, or easy chairs. They are machines, and they are minimalist vehicles. They are not designed for comfort without compromise. They are designed to be ridden without actually hurting you as long as you use them correctly. It’s not surprising many people don’t understand this. We’ve come to expect that life can be