WEEK 5: Worship The Great Cycle God
Every serious athlete is superstitious. They believe in luck and fate and the power of ceremony, but more than that, they believe that they can bias the outcome of the competition in their favour by appeasing fate through an act of obeisance. And so, before each trial of physical stamina, skill and strength, the professional athlete performs their warm-up rituals. Call it a meditation, call it Zen, call it the conscious manipulation of biochemical processes. Whatever you call it, they do it, and if they get it wrong, they lose. Because they believe they will.
I believe in physics. I believe that if my unprotected cranium strikes a poured concrete kerb stone with just a few newtons of force, it will split my skull and damage my brain and change my life forever. So I take the obvious precaution and encase my brain bone in a layer of expanded polystyrene beneath a polycarbonate shell. However, this won’t protect my body from being crushed by 2 tonnes of steel, plastic, rubber and inattentive Homo sapien, so I wear a high visibility vest and mount lights on my bicycle frame and attach reflective strips to the panniers. This won’t save me in a collision, but it helps to mitigate the risk of one occurring. Even so, there may well be occasions on which I come off the bike and don’t strike my head and am not run over, but suffer minor injuries which could be debilitating, especially injuries to the hands. I can lose skin from my shin or my shoulder and still function day to day, but damage to a complex instrument like a hand can be very painful and hard to heal and make simple tasks difficult. So I wear leather gloves with impact foam built into the lining. Finally, I wear wrap around sunglasses with polarised lenses to keep insects and airborne detritus out of my eyes and prevent me from being blinded by the sun or reflections off surfaces.
And so it is that each time I take to my bike, I first spend 5 minutes packing the panniers and donning my equipment. I have a routine now. After I’ve arranged the baggage into a reasonably aerodynamic bulge on either side of the rear wheel, I start with the high visibility vest. Then the sunglasses are removed from their case and hung around my neck. They’re replaced with my glasses and stowed securely in a pannier where they won’t be crushed. Then the helmet goes on and the sunglasses are fitted with the arms over the chin straps. Finally, the gloves. These are actually fingerless rappelling gloves with a suede palm in addition to the impact foam over the knuckles. The only downside is that it takes a little longer to get a snug fit, but the few extra seconds are worth it. Now I wheel the bike to the roadside and prepare to mount. The gloves and sunglasses are my amulets of confidence; I do not fear low, whip-like branches, tiny bullet-like flying insects, crushing encounters with bollards in tight corners or reaching out in emergencies for purchase on abrasive surfaces. My helmet is inscribed with the holy word ‘Bell’ to ward off evil spirits and strike terror into the hearts of Light Jumpers. The high visibility vest is my most powerful talisman. Across it’s surface a secret sect of bicycle monks have etched the holy incantation ‘Scotchlite: Reflective Material’. And so, I have completed my ritual.
Praise be to the Cycle God.
Just then No Hoper happens by. He is riding a mountain bike hybrid, a cheap mountain bike derivative designed to look sexy to people who find studded tyres and derailleur sets with astronomical numbers of gears a turn on. He is wearing a dark coloured track suit, a base ball cap and a bling watch. He’s carrying a supermarket carrier bag in one hand, steering his bike in a wiggly course up the yellow lines of the gutter with the other and looking back over his shoulder at me and smirking. It takes me a moment to realise what he finds so amusing. It’s my equipment.
As I watch him meander uncontrollably along the margin between gutter and road surface, I don’t share his amusement. Even though his frame is about the right size for his height, his saddle is lowered so far that the crotch of his baggy tracksuit rests on the top tube, which means he is in danger of smacking himself in the sternum with his own knee caps. His tyres look semi-deflated, probably intentionally. The carrier bag waves in every direction, creating a hazard to pedestrians and himself and compromising his balance, which already exists on a knife-edge. He doesn’t seem to know exactly where he’s going from one minute to the next and wanders along in the gutter, then swerves onto the pavement, then makes a hasty turn and dives over a pedestrian crossing without even looking for traffic, then back down into the gutter, his tyres millimetres from the kerb. If he was a pedestrian, people would assume he was drunk.
As I watch him totter off into the distance, blackening the reputation of cyclists far and wide, I debate whether or not he is, instead, a Laughing Fool.
I believe in physics. I believe that if my unprotected cranium strikes a poured concrete kerb stone with just a few newtons of force, it will split my skull and damage my brain and change my life forever. So I take the obvious precaution and encase my brain bone in a layer of expanded polystyrene beneath a polycarbonate shell. However, this won’t protect my body from being crushed by 2 tonnes of steel, plastic, rubber and inattentive Homo sapien, so I wear a high visibility vest and mount lights on my bicycle frame and attach reflective strips to the panniers. This won’t save me in a collision, but it helps to mitigate the risk of one occurring. Even so, there may well be occasions on which I come off the bike and don’t strike my head and am not run over, but suffer minor injuries which could be debilitating, especially injuries to the hands. I can lose skin from my shin or my shoulder and still function day to day, but damage to a complex instrument like a hand can be very painful and hard to heal and make simple tasks difficult. So I wear leather gloves with impact foam built into the lining. Finally, I wear wrap around sunglasses with polarised lenses to keep insects and airborne detritus out of my eyes and prevent me from being blinded by the sun or reflections off surfaces.
And so it is that each time I take to my bike, I first spend 5 minutes packing the panniers and donning my equipment. I have a routine now. After I’ve arranged the baggage into a reasonably aerodynamic bulge on either side of the rear wheel, I start with the high visibility vest. Then the sunglasses are removed from their case and hung around my neck. They’re replaced with my glasses and stowed securely in a pannier where they won’t be crushed. Then the helmet goes on and the sunglasses are fitted with the arms over the chin straps. Finally, the gloves. These are actually fingerless rappelling gloves with a suede palm in addition to the impact foam over the knuckles. The only downside is that it takes a little longer to get a snug fit, but the few extra seconds are worth it. Now I wheel the bike to the roadside and prepare to mount. The gloves and sunglasses are my amulets of confidence; I do not fear low, whip-like branches, tiny bullet-like flying insects, crushing encounters with bollards in tight corners or reaching out in emergencies for purchase on abrasive surfaces. My helmet is inscribed with the holy word ‘Bell’ to ward off evil spirits and strike terror into the hearts of Light Jumpers. The high visibility vest is my most powerful talisman. Across it’s surface a secret sect of bicycle monks have etched the holy incantation ‘Scotchlite: Reflective Material’. And so, I have completed my ritual.
Praise be to the Cycle God.
Just then No Hoper happens by. He is riding a mountain bike hybrid, a cheap mountain bike derivative designed to look sexy to people who find studded tyres and derailleur sets with astronomical numbers of gears a turn on. He is wearing a dark coloured track suit, a base ball cap and a bling watch. He’s carrying a supermarket carrier bag in one hand, steering his bike in a wiggly course up the yellow lines of the gutter with the other and looking back over his shoulder at me and smirking. It takes me a moment to realise what he finds so amusing. It’s my equipment.
As I watch him meander uncontrollably along the margin between gutter and road surface, I don’t share his amusement. Even though his frame is about the right size for his height, his saddle is lowered so far that the crotch of his baggy tracksuit rests on the top tube, which means he is in danger of smacking himself in the sternum with his own knee caps. His tyres look semi-deflated, probably intentionally. The carrier bag waves in every direction, creating a hazard to pedestrians and himself and compromising his balance, which already exists on a knife-edge. He doesn’t seem to know exactly where he’s going from one minute to the next and wanders along in the gutter, then swerves onto the pavement, then makes a hasty turn and dives over a pedestrian crossing without even looking for traffic, then back down into the gutter, his tyres millimetres from the kerb. If he was a pedestrian, people would assume he was drunk.
As I watch him totter off into the distance, blackening the reputation of cyclists far and wide, I debate whether or not he is, instead, a Laughing Fool.
posted by Mike Ranson at 2:34 pm
2 Comments:
Funny stuff Rince. Week 10: My first pair of poncy cycling pants.
Nice Mike m8 keep it up
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