Big Bikes

There's no earthly way of knowing
Which direction we are going

"Hello, Ace Wheelworks"
"Ya, I jus' bought a bike from you guys n' I'm down on the Esplanade n' I got a flat"
"Um, OK, how can I help you?"
"Pfff! I want you to come down here and fix it!"
"I'm sorry sir, but flats are just a thing that happens to bikes"
"How? It's a brand new bike"
"I don't know, perhaps you rode it through some glass"
"Ya, like I'm gonna but a THREE HUNDRED DOLLAR bike n' go ride it through some glass...
keep smokin'...keep smokin'!"

Do I really need to point out, not that it matters, that a three hundred dollar bike is the equivalent of a 10,000 car or $1.65 Sushi?

Positivity. My commute recently. I've discovered, much like Columbus "discovered" America, a new path. It's part of the bike path which runs along the Charles River in Waltham, it cuts out Nonantum, which is a great place to get doored by a senile little old Itlaian lady getting out of her Buick Skylark, then, before you cane even peel yourself off the pavement her three sons who work for a Landscaping company emerge from the nearest Dunkin Donuts wielding aluminum bats and beat you relentlessly and throw your bike under a passing dumptruck.

Wait, that doesn't sound too positive does it? The positive part is that this path is beautiful. Seeing hoppy hoppy bunny rabbits and Great Blue Herons on your commute is pretty alright. The tree are still budding, the smell of the flowers is lovely, and when the wheels of my road bike hit the dirt I feel reinvigorated. I watch the speed on my computer actually go up by a mile per hour. I just like dirt better.

Speaking of which, I road the Superfly into work today. I like riding my mountain bike better on the road. I can go anywhere, do tricks, speaking of tricks, I'm going to post the same video that three million bloggers are going to post over the next few days, the latest Danny MacAskill video.



I hope I'm not the guy you look to for the latest greatest cycling videos. I hope you don't look to me for anything current or groundbreaking of any sort. I'm not that guy. I like my bubble. I was discussing music today with a coworker, he was talking about all this stuff that had been written or said about a particular recording artist who he sort of likes but I am particularly fond of at the moment. This talk had colored his perception of this musician. I told him that the fact that I don't read anything or listen to anyone helps my uninhibited enjoyment of music. Like I said, I like my bubble.

So MacAskill, the guy is brilliant, Sheer beauty on the bike, there are a few people who read The Big Bikes who might not look at other Blogs or sources for cycling awesomeness (that's what we serve up here, Cycling Awesomeness) and this might be the only place they see this video. Hell, if I am the only source for that type of stuff for those few people (My Mom, my Grandmother, my six year old nephew) I will also link to the really amazing, even more sick video of MacAskill (it was filmed in Edinburgh, which is gorgeous even without the hoppy bike business).

Now for the "No Shit Batman!" moment of the day. Cycling is an interesting sport. MacAskill is as good as Lance Armstrong at riding a bike. Only in an entirely different way. I don't really know much about mainstream sports, but I know enough about say, Basketball to know that Kobe Bryant and Lebron James are two of the best dudes in the game today. But they both play exactly the same game in pretty much the exact same way. There aren't forms of Basketball that diverge so drastically from the form they practice. There is that guy Lucky at Celtics games who does back flip slam dunks but that isn't close to an equivalent to the juxtaposition of Armstrong and MacAskill. I wish I wasn't so sleepy, I could go on and on about this...and Nazi Zombies and Werewolves.

So ya, rode the Superfly to work, lead the Cutler ride, it was good, I'll be writing about that for the IBC blog later, on the way home I hit some more trails because I hadn't gotten my fill yet, as I was rolling down the Alewife Rail Trail I saw the glowing eyes of a Feral cat which I'd passed in the AM, I said "Hey, hey cat, what, don't you work? You been here all day long?".
And he said "Ya I work you dumb ass, I get off at five, I've been sitting here on my stoop drinking High Lifes (High Lives?) for hours like a normal guy while you've been out riding around in your leotard like some god damn fairy".