Bike Snob - Anonymous [66]
Don’t Ask Us If We’re Going to Ride in the Tour de France
Organized charity rides are a good thing. They raise money for a cause and they provide an opportunity for cyclists who might not ordinarily ride in a large group or go particularly far to do so with support and guidance. However, the negative aspect of the charity ride is that non-cyclists see them and assume that they’re races—even though actual bike races involve riders in tight formation traveling at very high speeds, and charity rides are composed of people in sweatpants and pinnies scattered all over the road and barely pushing 14 mph. A charity ride has about as much in common with a bicycle race as a game of kickball has with a major league baseball game. Still, when people see lots of people on bikes they think it’s a race, and no amount of arguing, insisting, or photographic evidence will convince them otherwise.
And since anybody can take part in a charity ride, and since people think charity rides are races, naturally people also think that any cyclist can take part in the most famous bike ride in the world, the Tour de France.
The Tour de France is the most elite road race in the world, and only the top professional teams are invited to attend. And even if you’re on a top professional team that’s been selected to ride the Tour, your director still has to select you for the Tour squad. Nonetheless, there’s not a cyclist alive who hasn’t been asked by a non-cyclist if they’re ever going to ride the Tour de France. I was once asked by a friend if I was going to ride the Tour de France, and when I laughed and replied “No,” she scolded me for my bad attitude and told to think positively or else I’d never make it.
Nobody asks their friend who plays pickup basketball if he’s going to be in the NBA All-Star game. But for some reason, people don’t understand that professional bike racing is like every other professional sport in that it’s highly competitive and the athletes are professionals. If the person you’re talking to is not highly paid to race his bike full-time he’s not going to be in the Tour de France. Instead, look for him at the local criterium peeling his face off the asphalt along with the rest of us.
Don’t Mention Impotence
At some point during the 1990s, the supposed issue of cycling-related impotence suddenly got a lot of attention from the media. Basically, it seemed as though large numbers of men were having trouble getting erections due to long hours spent in the saddle. Like any penis-related news, the public picked up on this quickly—so much so that, if you’re a male cyclist, friends and family members who would ordinarily respect the privacy of your genitals would ask you, “You sure ride a bike a lot—what about that whole impotence thing?”
Personally, I strongly believe the whole cycling-related impotence scare is a conspiracy. Not a myth, mind you, but a conspiracy. Yes, if your riding technique is bad or your saddle position is wrong, this can result in numbness. And, depending on how long you maintain the poor riding technique or incorrect saddle position, the numbness can take a varying amount of time to resolve itself. By the way, “riding technique” is not as complicated as it sounds. Basically, some new cyclists make the mistake of thinking that their bicycle saddle is an easy chair—in other words, they think they can put the full weight of their ass on this thing all day long. You can’t. It’s not a chair; it’s more of a ledge. When you put your weight on it, you should also be putting some of your weight on your bars and on your pedals. Also, even if you’re sitting on an easy chair eating Doritos and watching M*A*S*H reruns all day, you get up occasionally—like to go to the bathroom, or to get more Doritos. Similarly, you don’t stay on your saddle the whole time. You stand or at least slide backwards and forwards every so often. This