Back To Cycling (?)

A little over 2 weeks ago, I took possession of a new bicycle. It was the first bicycle in over 30 years that lives where I live but wasn't built by me. Standing in the bike shop (Bicycle Revolution in the heart of Philadelphia) and waiting while they wrapped the handlebars was a strange experience ("I can do that!"). Even stranger was listening to people coming in for bike maintainance. I listened to their stories and realized that most people have the same relationship with a bike shop that I have always had with car repair places: they drop it of with a complaint like "I think it might need new tires" or "Something is wrong with the brakes". Like me when taking a car in for service, they really don't have any idea, nor do they really care; they just want whatever needs to be fixed to be fixed.

I've never had that relationship with bike stores. When I go visit them on maintainance related matters, its normally not because I want them to do something for me, but because I either need to tap their mechanics' brains about some tricky problem, or because I need a specialized part or tool to complete some work that I am doing myself.

Owning the Sprinter van for a few years has moved me along just a little bit on the car front. It's certainly true that for the interior of the van, which includes all the electrical, heating and plumbing systems, I wouldn't ever dream of seeking out a mechanic to deal with any issues - I built the thing myself. I even change the oil on the van myself - something I've never done before - and I went as far as replacing all the shock absorbers/struts too (which I wasn't as scared about as I apparently should have been). But that's really where it ends. I don't work on car engines, brakes, exhaust or electrical systems. "It's broken, fix it" is my cry there too.

Anyway, the new bike is a glossy black Surly Straggler. I loved it as soon as I got on it. Turns out the geometry is extremely similar to the custom titanium Spectrum frame I splurged on 20 something years ago: nice a stretched out so that my long torso can breath and relax.

The purpose of the new bike, and the accompanying one we got for Julie, was to provide a more all-purpose bike for when we are living or even just travelling in the van. If we take our (triathlon) race bikes, they are super light and very fast, but I can't go shopping with them, and if the road surface gets bad, they are very uncomfortable. If we take our hybrid/cruiser bikes, they are practical for shopping and can deal with inclement terrain a lot better, but if we ever want to ride fast and/or far, they don't really work so well for us.

So the new bikes, my Straggler and Julie's All City "Space Horse", are a part of the new wave that has taken over the cycling industry over the last decade or so: gravel aka "road plus" aka "adventure" bikes. These basically look a lot like road bikes, but with notably larger (and often more treaded) tires, somewhat lower gears (even just a 1x chainwheel up front), and typically slightly flared handlebars. Oh, and disk brakes. I had heard a little bit about gravel bikes, but I really had no idea that they had become such a huge part of the industry. Everywhere I looked for more information about buying such a bike, there were more models, more variations, more thoughts.

Theoretically, my old cruiser bike could have served roughly the same purpose. A 33 year super-lightweight custom steel mountain bike from Overbury's in Bristol (UK; now defunct), it has been reborn in several configurations over the years, most recently with Moustache bars, bar end shifters and new Tektro cantilevers. It has retained the 30 year old Shimano Deore XT derailleurs that Beth gave me as my first ever Christmas present from her, along with quite a few other classic components. But I had felt that it was time to move on from that bike ... hence the Straggler, a decision I've come to have some regrets about. The Overburys Pioner is capable of more or less anything the Straggler could (with the right build), and is lighter too. At this point, I will probably ship it off for a professional paint job (the last two were by me), and at sometime in the future rebuild it into a variant on the "road plus"/"gravel" bike theme.

For now, however, I am trying to live out my committment to myself to use the new bike as much as possible. I'm now in the 3rd week of that, as so far it has not been particularly challenging. The weather has been pleasant enough for riding, and I haven't had any tasks that fell right on the line between bike and car capabilities (picking up a 10ft long piece of gutter was clearly for the car). I go to the store (Whole Foods in Wynnewood, PA) more or less every day, and it's about a 3.5 mile ride each way. I've managed to stick to this for the whole of the last two weeks. I needed to go downtown to get some tickets for a concert (to save the outrageous $17 online additional booking fee per ticket), and that was a revelation and a reminder of how much I love riding in cities, something I owe entirely to my step-father Derek. He taught me to ride a bike in the city (London), to commute to work by bike, and how to do a lot of basic bike maintainance. It has been years since I really rode in a busy urban area, and it was really lovely to be a part of the energy that is there on the streets and roads. Philadelphia is a lot easier to ride in than London, and even though there's a growing bike culture here, there are still way less cyclists than you'd see anywhere in London. It felt great to do something useful (the tickets) that cost me nothing, got me out in the (relatively) fresh air and was exciting and connecting and energizing, all at once.

Even just the daily trips to the store, or a couple of trips to the big-box hardware store that is just a couple of miles away, seem to be revelatory in how they have reminded me of just how nice it is to ride a bicycle. Most of my friends, and even quite a lot of my family, probably think of me as a big cyclist, but the truth is that since I decided to stop racing triathlons several years ago, I hardly ride at all. I could have said a lot of nice words about the joys of cycling, but I wasn't doing it. Now that I've spent a couple of weeks with a bike as my basic daily vehicle, it has been nice to remember that it's an even simpler joy than I had kept in my head.

Will there be a bad day to ride? In another few weeks, it will likely be cold enough most days that riding will need some special clothing considerations. But I've ridden in very cold weather before (and very hot), and it's not really that bad if you dress right. The main thing I want to do between now, while it is still relatively mild, and then, is to build up some basic behaviour patterns. Override as many of the cheap, flimsy excuses I used to use to explain to myself why I drove instead of cycled. Get used to the daily routine (which, yes, does imply some boredom) of lugging myself and a bike over to Whole Foods. Hopefully by the time it does become an actual challenge, I'll be "patterned" enough to just keep going.

There are other influences too. My wonderful next door neighbor Michael Matza recently took up cycling himself, and most days has been riding 20-30 miles up the Schuylkill River Trail to get himself a breakfast sandwich that he loves. He's not religious about it, but it has been very inspiring to see him heading out on a daily ride, when just a couple of months ago, he basically never cycled anywhere. Mike and I went out on a 40 miler to Valley Forge, which was less pleasant and impressive when introducing someone new to it than I had remembered, but it was fun to see him tackle new terrain (hills!) with confidence and gusto. It was also nice to be reminded of just how nice it can be to ride on a bike path after dealing with even relatively light traffic on the road. When I ride the same loop with my friend Christian, we are typically too caught up in our performance to notice how nice it is to just ride and not have to care about traffic.

And of course, I think a lot about my brother Nick, who despite currently being also domesticated in a Glasgow house, has made his bicycle his life for a lot of the last decade, and has really sold me even more than his father (my step-father) on just how versatile and wonderful a bicycle can be. Nick's bike (a custom built Thorn that is likely indestructible under almost any circumstances) is far more capable of many things than my new Straggler, but I admit to a certain kind of bike-level kinship when I'm cruising around on it, something that goes beyond mere sibling-hood.

So that's that ... just a couple of weeks into a new bike, and a whole new way of looking at the world. I worry that reading this again in a few months will provoke guilt and remorse that I let it all slip away. But that's OK too, if it happens for some vaguely defensible reasons. For now ... on my bike, and loving it again.