Arriving home from another excellent Saturday Sig Ride, I started to ponder. It was cold and wet. Windy and gray. I could have stayed home in the warm house watching the rotten weather descend but instead, found myself riding West of Hillsboro eating road dirt from the rider in front, dodging rain, wind gusts and sausage-crazed Verboortians.
According to our official PV survey, most of ya’ll are presently chowing down on Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups while madly spinning at the gym hamster-like, waiting for the next sunny (or even dry) day to sneak in a ride.
22% of you are going toe-to-toe with the Pacific NW by continuing to ride hard in the rain while dining on a steady diet of lean protein and vegetables, not to be humbled by anything as puny as the weather or dreaded holiday weight gain.
Being half-indoor trainer hamster and half outside hard-core, I started pondering. WHY?
Why didn’t I stay home today?
Why do I spend so much time, money and energy on cycling? Why do others spend so much time, energy and money on cycling? Obviously, there is much passion for cycling and at the epi-center-for-cycling-Nirvana-Mecca PDX, obsession is especially towering. But, WHAT are we actually talking about here? Why the insanity?
After much rumination, I came up with a list of all the things over the years that cycling has meant to me/done to me either directly or indirectly and in greater or lesser proportions that have caused it to become a PASSION. Perhaps you recognize some, or have others of your own that by themselves or in combination with others affect you the same way. They are in no particular order except how they popped into my (empty) head:
Freedom
Nothing equals the feeling of freedom you can get from heading out on the road, down a gnarly slope or tearing up on a long, flat piece of highway. Just you and the bike whirring along, surrounded by big open spaces and big sky… Epic climbs to scenic vistas to make you feel on top of the world…
Screaming wide-eyed descents on curvy roads unfettered by cars following behind you, grinning ear to ear! Very motorcycle-like, but that is another story.
Even if the open road isn’t so open because you are bike commuting, you are still more free than the car-encased folks grid-locked in traffic, no?
Aliveness
Being alive comes in varying degrees - from lazily sipping hot cocoa in front of the fireplace to having your hair on fire and then jumping into a frozen lake. Cycling usually lands us on the far side of aliveness.
Riding headfirst into a Westside sleet storm, receiving a face-full of mud on an MTB ride, crashing into the bushes, baking in the scorching heat ascending a long climb, pegging your max. heart rate during a sprint, conquering the local hill. Any cycling experience, really, is guaranteed to make you feel alive and get all those synapses firing, which is exactly what we crave.
Fitness and Health
We ride to feel fit. We ride to lose weight. We ride to relieve stress. We ride to become more efficient oxygen-powered machines. We ride to see our muscles get toned and taut. We ride to blow out the cobwebs and think more clearly.
We are “low riders”. We ride to lower our: heart rate, waist size, body weight, body fat, stress, wallet thickness, route times and rate at which we age. We ride to see what our bodies and minds working together can actually produce in a performance.
The benefits of exercise are well documented and we are just doing our part.
Supporting your local ER
Not that this has been a great source of passion for me, but I have done my part to stimulate the economy as far as keeping ER physicians, EMT’s, ER nurses, ER staff, ER equipment manufacturers and even Joe, The ER Plumber employed via my various cycling mishaps, mountain bike wrecks, getting hit by cars and a sorry ass flotilla of other reasons I have been cut, bunged-up, dislocated, avulsed or otherwise been rendered out of commission while cycling.
Adventure and Exploration
Exploring a new area on a bike is just the best way to do it. No question. You can see more new things faster on a bike than via walking, running or by car.
Being new to PDX, bicycling has let me discover and explore hundreds of roads, towns, areas, parks and crannies I otherwise would have never seen. Every ride is a new ride, full of promise for some sort of new outing. Armed with a good map, all you have to do is pick a destination and go. Getting lost is not necessarily a bad thing as you end up places you never thought you would.
In one misguided circumnavigation adventure, I discovered the joys of climbing Rocky Point Road, Logie Trail and Laurelwood in the same day, getting lost a few times in between the two. Had I opted for a known route, I never would have had that “growth” experience. Forest Park has been a continual discovery process and I keep finding little spurts of hidden single track along side my growing repertoire of Fire lanes.
Self-Discovery and Potential
Our cycling lives are full of instances where we did something we did not think we could do or we tried something new and fell in love with it. We like pushing our limits, trying new things and seeing our progress (See Number Love).
Every day, all over the world, some cyclist somewhere rides further than they ever thought they would, rides faster than they ever thought they might, participates in a race or event they never thought they would enter, loses that stubborn weight they never thought would come off, or takes up a new cycling discipline only to add another dimension to their life. The possibilities for discovery and growth are always available and endless.
Inspiration
There are so many cyclists that defy the impossible; it is hard not be inspired. Not just Lance, but everyday folks doing extraordinary things and making cycling work for them.
Hardcore senior citizens mixing it up at races, long-distance events and Ironman Triathlons. Single Moms with full-time jobs putting in hundreds of miles per week. Folks with missing legs biking trails that regular mountain bikers find difficult. Newcomers to cycling taking the sport and going with it, reaching top levels in a few short years.
Look around our club. You will find lots of inspiration.
Transportation and Being Green
Bike commuting is cool.
Whether it is your personal manifesto against the car-choked, Hummer-invaded world or simple transport, how else can you combine fitness, environmentalism, gas savings, getting to work, calorie burning, workaday stress relief and quality time with your bike all into one? Plus, surmounting the challenges of getting around in rotten weather and not getting creamed by an SUV or a maniac street racer gives you an extra psychological boost and sense of daily accomplishment you might not get from your job.
Travel
Yes, you can actually travel on your bike!
I’m not talking about commuting here. I’m talking about travel. From A to long distance B to long distance C on your bike, carrying your house with you and being self-sufficient as possible. I never thought I would ride my bike across the Canadian Rockies, set up a tent in the rain, wake up in the rain, cook meals over a fire or live on PB & J for weeks on end, but the satisfaction of doing so could not have been replaced by a bus tour.
As a bike discipline, hard-core solo bicycle touring is just is not as popular as the others, but remains the coolest of them all. Given, it is not the easiest, fastest, most convenient, but probably the most satisfying.
Compromises between going hard-core solo and sitting on a tour bus give rise to great things like Cycle Oregon, which is on my to-do list. Maybe even mountain bike touring!
Good ol’ Working with your hands
Lubricants, cleaners, solvents, grease, tools, wrenches, truing stands, glue, nuts, bolts, components, parts, cables, repairs, hot lights, late nights all in service of creating and installing your next upgrade, replacement part or cool new toy. What is not to love about getting close and personal with your bicycle to maintain, clean and modify it? What is not to love about the sense of satisfaction obtained from doing your own wrenching, tweaking and repairs and not having to drag it to a shop? What is not to love about doing some actual physical work with your hands, caveman style to sharpen up your steed?
I have known many cyclists who have never washed their bike, never carried a spare tube nor pump. Blessedly ignorant, they are under some sort of Cosmic Dispensation, allowing them to ride their bikes for years it seems without ever giving a thought to the idea that airmight be needed in the tires, it might need a bath or that those crumbs of rubber near the rim were once actually brake pads that helped stop the bike. Sigh. But for those of us who like to spend QT in the garage, bike maintenance is a relaxing, enjoyable, hands-on task we relish.
Mad Variety and Compulsive Collecting
What other sport gives you such Baskin-Robbins variety? You got your road biking, mountain biking, commuting, cyclocrossing, bike touring, Single-speeding, track racing, BMX, time trialing, down hilling….
With such multiplicity it naturally follows that you come down with MBS (Multiple Bike Syndrome).
The road bike, the rain bike, the commuting bike, the mountain bike, the cyclocross bike, the TT bike, the old road bike, the old mountain bike, the fixie. That is just for starters. And those are just YOUR bikes. If your significant other rides, double that. Naturally with so many bikes, you will need to get a larger garage. To get a larger garage, you will need to buy a larger house. To buy a larger house, you need larger $$$. To get larger $$$, you need a larger job. Basically, your life is hijacked by cycling and all your money goes into it.
Camaraderie
Suffering, like fun, is a funny thing. You can suffer, hurt, be in pain, be miserable, tired and frozen out there by yourself and think “This S##KS!” “This is S#IT!”. But, take the same ingredients, stir in some fellow cyclists who are also experiencing the same wretchedness and Viola! You are now having FUN! Quite the interesting transformation, I always thought. Suffering and peak experiences are the perfect incubator for “War Stories” being told around the campfire (or PV forum) and is a tradition as old as humankind.
Sure, camaraderie happens on sunny, warm and pain-free rides, but what fun is that?
Lust
Is lust involved in cycling? Is that rider in the tight-butt Lycra ahead of you the future love of your life? Hmmm…
Sure, lust is involved, but not that type of lusty lust. I mean bike lust.
There I was at Lakeside Cycles, completely drooling over $7,000 bicycles, fancy wheels, shiny paint, whammo-dyne cyclocomputers, top-end Showers Pass Jackets and in total bicycle lust. I know it affects all cyclists as surely as a candy store affects a 5-yr old. I’ve never been able to walk past a bike shop without stopping in to “See what they have” just as I have never been able to bypass a bakery to “See what they have”.
Fresh baked cookies and fresh baked components never looked so good.
Number Love
Cycling is about numbers. If you heart numbers, you gotta love cycling. Wattage. Frame weight. Gear ratios. Heart rates. Distance. Speed. Gradient. Body Fat. Time. Calories Burned. Feet of Climbing. RPM, MHR, RMR, BP to name a few. If Excel spreadsheets, Excel macros, online tracking logs, training software, and downloadable GPS cyclocomputers torque your endorphins, you gotta love cycling. If you love to track, graph, chart, compute, trend and analyze data, you can be a statistician.
Or you can be a cyclist.
Insanity and other maladies
I have a confession to make.
As a transplant, I had never seen a cyclocross race until September. I had never seen a cyclocross bike. While riding along the California shoreline for decades, I knew somewhere in the back of my mind that this thing cyclocross was a BIG DEAL in Portland, it being rainy and sloppy and cold and all.
I had no idea of the psychosis involved.
After reading race reports on PV forum, seeing armies of photos depicting mud encased cyclists freezing in the rain, hearing about the legendary intense pain, big heart rates, lunatic run-ups and finally seeing the bizarre Halloween race photos on pdxcross.com, I know that insanity IS cyclocross and I have to try it. I want to bunny-hop a coffin.
I have bad feet and cannot run, pretty much “X’ing me out” of the whole thing. But since ‘cross is, by definition insane, it won’t matter. My brain cells will shed out my ears like lemmings off a cliff and I will be ok with that.
Fun
It all comes down to fun.
Fun is funny stuff. Everyone knows what it is and everyone knows what it is not, but we cannot define it. We all instinctively and collectively know things that are not fun, things we don’t want to happen again. Like:
- Waiting in line at the DMV
- Having your car conk-out on a busy highway during a storm
- Having the toilet backup onto your new carpeting
- Ending up in the hospital
And we know things that are always fun, which keep us doing them time after time, and form our collective bicycle lives.
The ones that affect me are listed above. You?