Quantification of Cycling Experience

People naturally try to quantify everything. Its a perfectly normal way of comparing data in numerical terms. In cycling, it can be way of proving yourself to others when it comes to certain topics. Here are a few examples:

1) How many years you've done A, B, or C.
2) How many charity rides you've participated in.
3) How many miles you rode last year.
4) How long you made a particular component/bike/part last.
5) How long you've worked at X,Y, or Z.

You get the idea.

Of the above scenarios, there are a few that bug the crap out of me, since they aren't really relevant to anything. This one comes up fairly frequently from speaking to customers at the bike shop, so I'll begin my rant here.

Contrary to popular belief, the number of charity rides a person has participated in, is not indicative that the person is a better cyclist, better bike mechanic, or even more knowledgeable about anything (besides charity rides).

Please don't get the wrong idea here- I don't mean to knock the plethora of charity rides out there, nor the people who participate in them (plenty of my friends do), since they are meant for a good cause, and help people set a goal and achieve it, which I support fully. I'm specifically talking about the chaps who aim to quantify their cycling experience by "number-dropping" how many of these events they've participated in.

Standing alone, the fact that someone signed up for 1, 2, 5, or even 100 charity rides thus far in their lifetime and completed them, only signifies one thing. . . that they did 1, 2, or 100 rides of varying length. Cool. Sure, the distance and duration of the rides vary and there can be training requisites ranging from a little bit to pretty fucking hardcore. And its noteworthy that all participants in these events must make a minimum monetary contribution, as well as raising a minimum monetary donation goal, through soliciting friends, family, and coworkers. After all, this is where the money that (allegedly) goes to charity comes from. (I can't find a source but I read once that only a disturbingly small percentage like 10% actually goes to the charities, since organizing, advertising, and running such big events is so costly, but this is a totally different topic.)

But as a whole, "number dropping" the number of events in which someone has participated does not lend to their credibility, nor knowledgeability of cycling or bicycle mechanics, since they are not really requisite to participating in these events. All you have to do is show up and ride the bike. Ride it. You aren't race tuning your bike, drafting and using race team tactics, building wheels, or even learning anything about bicycles, bike maintenance, or racing at all. Its not bike school, and its certainly not a race either. Sure you may learn a lot from your experiences, and that's great. But Its still not a legitimate quantification of cycling experience. Charity rides are nothing more than that- a bike ride, raising money to benefit a charity.

It also makes you sound like an idiot.

Wheel Interchangeability

Confusius: "Hi, I need to buy a tire and some gears."

Ken: "Ok. Road bike, Hybrid, or Mountain? How many speeds?"

Confusius: "Road bike. I'm not sure how many, my rear wheel was stolen."

Ken: "Ah, I see. Well the number of speeds on your shifter determines what cassette or freewheel you will need. (foreseeing trouble) Wait a sec. . . . do you already have rear wheel?"

Confusius: "No, but I have an extra front wheel."

Ken: "???"

Ken: "You know you can't put a front wheel on the rear, right? They aren't interchangeable."

Confusius: "Why not?"

Ken: "Uh. . . totally different. Different spacing, different hub shell, different axle."

Confusius: "They look the same."

Ken: "Actually they do not. The rear hub is wider and has either threading or a spline to allow you to mount the cassette or freewheel. Otherwise you'd have no way to bolt the gears on there(lamens terms)."

Confusius: "Oh. Ok, back to the drawing board." (he leaves)

advice for interns

Intern: "Yuck, this burrito has AVOCADO in it?!"

Ken: "The only acceptable reason not to eat avocado, is if you allergic to it."

David: "Yeah man, you need to get over that real quick."

Ken: "Eat it. Just take a bite, if you hate it, you can spit it out."

Intern: "O. . . K. . . (eats a bite). Ewwwwwwww. . . . ."

Ken: "Everyone loves avocados- meat eaters, vegans, vegitalians. .. . . "

brutal honesty

customer: "hi. i need a bike." (after being on cell phone in the shop for a few minutes. a big no no. fortunately, i turned on the cell phone jamming device.)

me: "ok." (looking at clock- its 12 minutes before closing time.)

customer: "i know you guys are about to close. what do you recommend?"

me: "i recommend not buying a bike in 12 minutes."

Skinheads

(On the street, SoMa district of SF)

Ken: "Whoa, look! a skinhead!" (You never see them around here- this guy was wearing red suspenders, 36-eye oxblood Docs laced up to his knees and Levi's rolled up all the way, sportin' chops, and a baseball cap!?)

Tara: "Nah man, thats prolly just a gay dude."

Ken: "Hmmm. . . (upon closer inspection) yeah, you're right. Its kinda sad when your subculture gets co-opted by the gays."

NO SLUGS.

Will and I woke up pre-dawn to head to Santa Cruz this morning for a surf. We went to a pretty localized spot north of town.

salty local: "NO SLUGS."
me: "?"
loc: "NO SLUGS!"
me: "Huh?"
loc: "That must have worked, you're not gonna say anything?"
me: "I have no idea what you're talking about."
loc: "UCSC students. You know, slugs." (UC Santa Cruz' mascot is the banana slug.)
me: "Ohhhh! I'm not a student. We just came down from San Francisco."
loc: (total 180) "Sweet man! Hows the surf up north?"
me: "Pretty big, but totally blown out."

Then, we were bros. The guy was fucking crazy, I'm glad everything was cool. In the water, he told me he hadn't been to SF in over 10 years.

"SO YOU LIVE DOWNTOWN? MAANNNN, I JUST LIKE TA WALK AROUND AND LOOK AT ALL DA BUILDINGSSSS. . . "










I broke my leash on my first wave. On my long swim in, Will saved my board from the rocky shoreline. After a couple unsuccessful attempts to re-tie the leash to the strap, the knot that worked best (albeit temporarily): a noose! I give full credit to my dad for teaching me how to tie a noose, back when I was a teenager in Texas. For fishing hooks! FISHING HOOKS! WTF were you thinking, you racists?!

Burning Man and Bikes

This time of year, ecclectics from all over the world come to San Francisco with hopes and dreams of acquiring a bicycle for $100 or less and decorating it lavishly for the Burning Man Festival.

If you don't know what Burning Man is, read here.

Once said bicycles are acquired, you can expect the frames and wheels to become decorated brightly with colorful tapes, fabrics, streamers, plaster, and even encrusted in shiny jewels and mirrors.

Think "scraper bikes," but for white people.

As a pure outsider to the event, (I've never attended, nor will i ever. But working at a bicycle shop, its inevitable I'm tangentially related to the procurement process of said festival for out-of-towners.) I've noticed a change in the demographic in the 3 years I've lived in The City. (I capitalized "The City" because it shows my acquired San Fran-centric perspective. . . that happens when you live here for a few years. Oh look, now its capitalized AND in quotations. Cool!) OK, Sorry for the digression.

Burning Man has become an even larger scale attraction in its worldwide grasp. Just yesterday, we had "to-be Burners" floating in from such distant lands as Australia, England, Canada, etc. They were all dressed very differently, spoke differently and had different visions of their ideal Burning Man bike-to-be, but all had one thing in common. . . CREDIT CARDS. They had money to spend and were willing to buy buy buy.

However, despite the cost of flying across the world, lodging, food, a $300 admission fee for said festival, and the cost of decorating a bike for the cause, nobody wants to spend a large amount of money on the bikes for a good reason: they get ruined in the desert. The salinity of the sand and dust in "the playa" (playa means beach is Spanish, so I have no fucking idea why people call the desert flats a "playa") causes bicycle parts to rust FAST. One would never want to bring their daily rider bicycle to Burning Man because it causes all the moving parts to gunk up and fast forwards their life span to an unservicable state within a month or so. While it is possible to take a nice bike there, return home, and overhaul every single moving part of the bicycle and return it to a functional state- this is rarely done.

Why? Decompression parties. That means at least a month of after-parties to get you off of "Burning-Man Time." Who has time to overhaul their bikes when all these sweet decompression parties are going on in SF, Bro?!

Anyways, it makes no sense to bring a nice bike out there, since it would get ruined. Ideally, one acquires a barely functional bike at a garage sale or on craigslist for dirt cheap, and as PT says "just make at least one gear and one brake work and its good to go."

The last minute procrastinators can peruse every bike shop in the city and find nothing. Bike shops sell bikes that work. It costs time and money to make a used bike functional, and bike prices are inflated here. Its pretty rare to find a $100 bike in San Francisco, ESPECIALLY at a bike shop. And if/when that exists, its scooped up immediately. There aren't enough deals like that to supply every eccentric person's Burning Man needs.

Here is an interesting, yet slightly peeving, snippet of a conversation I had with some neo-hippy Australian Burners yesterday.

Woman Burner: "I bet you can guess what we are here looking for." (That was cool, because she was real about why a group of 4 oddly dressed eccentrics floated into our shop)

Me: "Haha. I'm sorry, we did have some cheap bikes, but they are all gone."

Woman: "WHERE IS THE NEAREST WAL-MART?"

Me: "There isn't one in The City. Nearest one is at least 15 miles South of The City." (there i go again, ha!)

Woman: "Hmm, bummer. Actually, thats kind of awesome."

Me: "EXACTLY. SF is a pretty cool place."

She was right. The conversation itself wasn't peeving, since the woman was pretty cool. But the idea that such a free-spirited person would travel transcontinentally, buy a product which supports the most evil of evil corporate stores, to attend a festival created to foster free thinking and non-commercialism. . . is just a sham.