Bike Geek

At some point this week I realized I may be become a cycling geek.  Not just someone who enjoys cycling, but actually a bit of a cycling geek!  Upon reflection, I think this process has been working insidiously in the background for some time but my full emergence from the cycling closet has been accelerated with two notable events in the last few days. 

The transformation must have started about eight years ago because before that, at least as an adult, I went on the occasional bike ride on my pretty heavy mountain bike but was not the instigator of these activities.  For a while, it was a way to get some exercise without having to be confined to the sometimes claustrophobic atmosphere of the gym.  Eventually I was persuaded that real bike riders go clipless and had these egg beater contraptions installed instead of platform pedals.  After a couple of painful “leg plants” I finally got the hang of disengaging my cleat from the pedal before I fell on my right knee…again.  I tackled a lot of obstacles I was not ready for on my mountain bike and in the process inflicted some pretty nice cuts, bruises, scrapes, and one small but well-earned scar.  That is when I took pause and jumped at the opportunity to ride my mountain bike on the road with a couple of friends riding road bikes.

I immediately loved it.  It felt natural and the hard work was gratifying but now the dilemma became whether or not I should invest in a road bike.  I started to shop and test rode some bikes but I still was not ready to donate several, and I mean several, paychecks to this worthy cause.  I carried on riding and little by little got stronger and enjoyed myself more and more.  I never expected in my mid-30s to happen upon an activity that made me feel so true to myself.  The fight was over and I handed over the money in exchange for my new, lightweight, shiny road bike.  It did not have the top of the line components, nor was it the kind of bike that makes people cycle up next to you and say “Wow, nice bike” but it was 10 lbs lighter than my mountain bike and felt about a hundred times faster. 

Fast forward through several years and witness me cycling several times a week when preparing for a ride, tackling my first century and then several more, and riding RAGBRAI last year.  For my last birthday, my amazing husband built and presented me with a lightweight mountain bike so that we could load up both road and mountain bikes for our weekends away exploring.  Yet it really was just this week that I realized that I often think in terms of bikes and frequently experience the cycling high, hence my impending geekdom.  My first awakening was when we took the fellas to Denver last Sunday to see the final portion of the last stage of the USA Pro Cycling Challenge which had kicked off in Colorado Springs just six days earlier.  I choked up with excitement when those incredibly fast Tour de France winners flew past us five times on the final loop.  I could barely breathe, I had a lump in my throat and I definitely could not operate the camera; thankfully our youngest took over and got some incredibly good shots instead.  I was shaking with the sheer joy of being close to something so momentous.  See, I sound like a geek!

My second moment of awareness came when, barely recovered from the Pro Cycling Challenge excitement, but now back in the work setting a few days later, a small group of us worked on putting the finishing touches to a client’s proposed campaign.  The client was requesting more quantity for the same already cut-to-the-bone cost and of course high caliber results.  Without realizing it I parroted a passionate cyclist friend, who if he reads this will know who he is (thank you for letting me steal this), and lectured to the following point.  “This situation is like buying a bike.  There are three things that must be balanced and considered when selecting a bike; weight, strength, and cost.  You can have any two of the three but you cannot have all three.  For example, you can have a bike that is light and strong and it’s going to cost you, or you can have a bike that is light and cheap but it won’t be as durable, or you can have a bike that can take a beating and is cheap and it will weigh a little more.  In each scenario, an element has to be sacrificed to some degree so which one is it and who’s going to tell the client?”  I beamed victoriously around the room and they gave me that look of bemused disbelief they often give me.  I realized they were giving me the “what a geek” look and I was irrationally happy that my destiny as a bike geek in the workplace was forever sealed in cycling analogies.  Bike geeks of the world unite!