It is becoming more apparent that I am searching for something else, and may not be able to find it here and now.
Section entitled Grimy Handshake by Mike Ferrentino.
"the why (again)"
after all these years, the answer is still the same.
www.bikemag.com
Once, way back when I had just started writing about bikes, I wrote something like: "Don't ask why you ride, Ask why you don't ride more..."
I say something like because it was written about 16 years ago in a long-gone regional publication remembered as "California Bicyclist" in a time before the internets were here to capture everything we ever spit out of a keyboard like some gigantic lint trap for our collective typed morass of wasted words, and I am notorious for my ability to not recall much of what I say as well as my inability to hang onto any physical evidence of my past. And, dammit, 16 years is a hell of a long time. Long enough ago that I somehow remember being impressed that my modem was running a whopping 2400 baud when I sent those words down the wire, its red LED indicating that shit was happening flickering fiercely the whole while. Yee Haw!
I was young, I was riding between 100 and 200 miles a week - mostly off road = and besides scribbling stuff down into notebooks, racing, and wrenching on bikes at the Bicycle Trip in Santa Cruz, I didnt have much else getting in the way with regard to time management. Riding was everything so when I wrote that I was having some sort of "god damn, there is nothing more real and fulfilling in life than riding bikes, and even the shitty rides are opening up my mind in kaleidoscopic new ways, and everyone in the world needs to feel this vibe" realization. I might have also been very transparently poaching the corpse of JFK and his whole "ask not what your country can do for you" oratory style. Andi, I was probably floating on a cloud of endorphins so thick it could have looked to an outsider like I was deep in the grips of a combined ecstasy and LSD binge. Ahhh youth.
Looking back, with eyes that crease around the corners now and have a furrow in between them most of the time on days when the world has my ass between its sharp teeth, I have these moments of "Oh yeah? I'll tell you why I don't ride more, you cocky little dipshit" bitterness:
Because I have to pay rent, and I have to pay taxes, and I have to pay child support, and there's a car payment, and all kinds of insurance, and once and a while I want to eat somewhere where they serve something other than burritos and drink something more refined than whatever canned beer is cheapest this week, and that means I have to suck it up and punch the clock. And sometimes that means riding gets kicked to the curb. But you wouldn't know that, because you're 27, have peter fucking pan for a role model, work four days in a heavy week, and aside from 300 bucks a month in rent you don't need money you little freeloader.
Because you ruined my body, you ingrate punk. "One speeds are more core". Way to go Einstein. A decade and change spent humping a 2:1 gear chasing the wheels of the big boys, and never once bothering to stretch, did wonders for the piriformis and the iliopsoas and the sacroiliac joint, didn't it? At least it wasn't the knees that went, But yeah, some days getting to the point where hips don't make popping and clunking sounds when standing up is work enough. Ride? How about nap? Oh, by the way osteopaths and and x-rays and MRI's and yoga class and pilates (dear God, I can hear your youthful mockery from here) cost money too. Back to work, slacker.
Because all that money I have to earn gets spent on things that take time. People who don't ride bikes to spend time with, places to visit where bikes aren't the first priority, motorcycles to ride, lawns to mow, meals to cook, cars to wash, hardwood floors to mop, dammit, do you even have any idea how long it takes to mop a hardwood floor? No, of course not. You still have a bookshelf made of out cinder blocks and 2 x 12's, your bed is a rolled up futon on a floor, and you can fit everything you own in the back of a borrowed 1980 Toyota Celica hatchback. And you always sucked at chores anyway.
Because sometimes there's more to life than just riding bikes.
Sometimes.
But then, as I churn through the litany of reasoned excuses as why it is perfectly acceptable to not ride so much, while absently playing with a roll of belly fat, I catch my self siding with the young zealot...
(begins to recall rides he had done)
(while riding)...A tiny voice, whispering inside my supposedly sage head, "Do you really need any of this shit? This job? This roof over your head? These bikes? Those restaurant meals? Paying taxes? Working in an office? You're getting soft, old man..."
And it dawns on me, again, that this young ghost, this arrogant, ignorant, obsessively self-absorbed shard of my past was right. Ask only why you don't ride more.
Or better still, don't ask anything at all. Just quit making excuses, stop stalling, shut the fuck up, and ride. It may not be very evolved, but it's enough of an ethos for me to dangle like a carrot before my aging psychic horse.
Thank you Mike Ferrentino, well said.
oh, I also rode one of these yesterday with a couple of friends, awesome. it will be mine. one day.
