On Yer Bike Son!

All I wanted to do was buy a bicycle. 

Do you remember the last time you did that?  If you're a British bloke, you were probably a flop-haired 14 year old - and that two wheeler probably served you through school (sideways skid to impress the girls),  University (attempted wheelies and 'endo's while as drunk as a Lord) and is now locked in your parents shed, ready to play at the first squirt of WD40.

There was only one thing that mattered when you - with your parents money -  bought that bike.  Not the brand, not the colour, not even the number of gears (although 24 was a bare minimum for the half mile freewheel to school).  No, the only thing that really mattered was that it wasn't 'unisex'.  The end of the 80's brought recession and poverty to many. But one kid at our school had it worse than most.  One day he started cycling to school on his mum's brown Raleigh Shopper, complete with basket and panniers.  We felt sorry for the kid. But not sorry enough not to take the piss - and so Mark became 'Mumsy' for the next four years. The stupid, mumsy, gay, povvy, basket weaving git.

Anyway, I digress.

San Francisco is surrounded by the best cycling country in the world - Marin, the home of the mountain bike and Lance Armstrong's training ground.

So welcome to Cycling-Nazi-Central.

See, the mountain bikers don't like the road-bikers who don't like the recumbents.  And everyone hates the hybrid which is the bicycle equivalent of bisexuality - not ideal on slicks or knobblies, suited to neither speed nor pain.

I just wanted to buy a bike. A blue one.  But then I got rocket-pedalled into a world of complicated technological decisions.  Aluminium or steel?  Drops or uprights?  Disk brakes, sir?  Suspension fork and thumb shifters?  Bouncy stem and inbred derailleur?  And when, today, I found myself co-erced into 'test-riding' a thousand dollar razor-blade-on-wheels, I decided not to bother at all.  They don't seem safe to me and I feel like a helmet while in the saddle.

I'm now on the look out for a mule.

 

Comments

[shhexycorin]

I had a really old bike that folded in half. It was the shhexiest bike in the school!

I might be buying rollerblades today. I think this might be a terrible mistake.

[jonnyeye]

I'm hoping you mean rollerSKATES, shhexy.

And that you're going to get involved in Roller Derby...google it....skantily-clad, dykey girls punching the shit out of each other while rollerskating. Almost too good to be true.

You might be good. Can you scrap?