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Bicycle Humor!!
Sometimes, you just gotta be a cyclist to appreciate the humor in our lifestyle and our sport. Here are a few things that might make you smile, but which will probably baffle your family and friends.
"You Know You're a Real Bicyclist When...."
You Know You're a Real Bicyclist When....
Admit it: there is a mindset, a group of assumptions, and a whole set of experiences that set a "cyclist" apart from the vast majority of the populace that just rides a bike. There are the serious things, like an understanding of vehicular cycling, and the mundane things, like knowing where the good places to lock a bike are. Here are the amusing things that make us laugh at ourselves, and give those tell-tale hints that maybe, just maybe, you are a Bike Geek!!
1. You think that working on your bike is almost as much fun as riding it
2. At some point you caught yourself wondering if your bike might look good if you added fenders
3. You discover that you have forgotten to remove your reflective ankle straps hours after you have arrived somewhere by bicycle
4. You would recognize that threaded washer from a Presta valve stem anywhere
5. You KNOW what a Presta valve is
6. You make decisions about car purchases based on which one more easily accepts a rooftop bicycle rack
7. You skip that last beer because there is a group ride the next morning
8. You own any kind of purple annodized bicycle accessory
9. Colorado Cyclist sent you a Christmas card last year
10. Your bicycle(s) are worth more than your automobile
11. You know what the difference is between Ultrasensor, Core-Tech, and Microfiber jersey materials
12. "Once you try bibs, baby, you'll never go back!"
13. You can tell your significant other with a straight face that its too hot to mow the lawn then take off and ride a century.
14. Your bike rack and attachments are worth more than your car.
15. You pull up hard on the steering wheel trying to jump your car over a pot-hole
16, The first thing you ask when you regain consciousness is "How's my bike?"
17. You actually move farther from work so your bike commute will be longer.
18. You take a perverse pride in your mid-thigh and mid-bicep tan lines, and even more in that funny little circle on the back of your hand
19. Your learn you have some money left over after paying bills and the first thing you do is reach for the nearest bicycling catalog
20. Most of the tools you own are made by Park or Blackburn
21. Someone in a car asks for directions and you give them a route that bypasses freeways and busy surface streets
Got your own insights into the mind of a cycist? Email us, and we may add yours to the list.
A Bicycle Zen Proverb
A Zen teacher saw five of his students returning from the market, riding their bicycles. When they arrived at the monastery and had dismounted, the teacher asked the students, "Why are you riding your bicycles?"
The first student replied, "The bicycle is carrying the sack of potatoes. I am glad that I do not have to carry them on my back!" The teacher praised the first student, "You are a smart boy! When you grow old, you will not walk hunched over like I do."
The second student replied, "I love to watch the trees and fields pass by as I roll down the path!" The teacher commended the second student, "Your eyes are open, and you see the world."
The third student replied, "When I ride my bicycle, I am content to chant nam myoho renge kyo." The teacher gave praise to the third student, "Your mind will roll with the ease of a newly trued wheel."
The fourth student replied, "Riding my bicycle, I live in harmony with all sentient beings." The teacher was pleased, and said to the fourth student, "You are riding on the golden path of non-harming."
The fifth student replied, "I ride my bicycle to ride my bicycle." The teacher sat at the feet of the fifth student and said, "Ahh.... I am your student!"
P.J. O'Rourke's Problem with Bikes
O'Rourke's sometimes amusing, sometimes mean-spirited campaign against the bicycle is well-documented. Here is a summary of his problems with bikes; odd how many of them are the very reasons each of us ride....
The Principle Arguments That May be Marshaled Against Bicycles:
1. Bicycles are childish.
2. Bicycles are undignified.
3. Bicycles are unsafe.
4. Bicycles are un-American.
5. I don't like the kind of people who ride bicycles.
6. Bicycles are unfair.
7. Bicycles are good exercise.
Our Favorite Quotes About Bicycles
"The bicycle is just as good as most husbands and, when it gets old and shabby, a woman can dispose of it and get a new one without shocking the entire community."
- Ann Strong "Borrowed" from the website of Intown Bicycles. Thanks Mike.
(Our thanks to Bill Strickland for compiling most of these in his book The Quotable Cyclist )
"When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race."
- H.G. Wells
"Cycling satisfies so many needs. If you're in a gregarious mood, you can go out with a group. OR you can go alone- solo. If you're in an aggressive mood, you can go fast, or if you're tired and want to unwind you can go slow. A bicycle doesn't discriminate in age, either."
- Georgena Terry
"Just as the ideal of classic Greek culture was the most perfect harmony of mind and body, so a human and a bicycle are the perfect synthesis of body and machine."
- Richard Ballantine
"Bicycles are social catalysts that attract a superior category of people."
- Chip Brown, "A Bike and a Prayer"
"Whoever invented the bicycle deserves the thanks of humanity."
- Lord Charles Beresford Miscellaneous
"The bicycle is a curious vehicle. It's passenger is its engine."
- John Howard, U.S. Olympic cyclist
"Let me tell you what I think of bicycling. I think it has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world. It gives women a feeling of freedom and self-reliance. I stand and rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a wheel... the picture of free, untrammeled womanhood."
- Susan B. Anthony
"Those who wish to control their own lives and move beyond existence as mere clients and consumers- those people ride a bike."
- Wolfgang Sachs, For the Love of the Automobile
"The bicycle should always be the vehicle of novelists and poets."
- Christopher Morley, novelist, and writer
"Bicycle riding as little as three miles a day will improve your sex life."
- Dr. Franco Antonini
"Cyclists are open-minded. Cyclists are egalitarian. Cyclists share a fellowhip of the wheel that can overcome all political, social, racial and economic barriers. Except for recumbents."
- Ted Costantino, cycling journalist
"Let our people travel light and free on their bicycles."
- Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire
"Don't buy upgrades; ride up grades."
- Eddy Merckx
"Government must help to eliminate cars so that bicycles can help to eliminate government."
- Advocacy slogan in Holland
"Bicycling is a big part of the future. It has to be. There is something wrong with a society that drives a car to work out in a gym."
- Bill Nye, scientist and producer of public TV science programs
"The bicycle enables us to escape many other machines: We use it for transportation, sport, recreation, and make it a way of life."
- Jobst Brandt, famous wheel builder, and author of The Bicycle Wheel
"Bicycling is human scale- a living, breathing alternative to the city's domination by motor vehicles. There is magic in blending with traffic, feeling the wind in one's face, the sheer fact of traversing the city under one's own power."
- Charles Komanoff, cycling advocate
"For city bicycling to catch on we need a revolution in our society's infrastructure. Right now a city rider needs to be a road warrior, and the bike needs to be cheap and ugly so it won't get stolen. That's not a bike friendly culture."
- Gary Fisher, founder and CEO of Fisher Bicycles Riding
"City riding is a continual lesson in feminine principles, in particular the art of being vulnerable. A confrontational, macho aesthetic spells calamity. You must learn to yield, to dodge, to seek harmony. You are obliged to mind the web of interrelations, that complicated mesh of interestes, conflicts, and intentions."
- Chip Brown, essayist, and author of "A Bike and a Prayer"
"A road rider who is unpracticed is merely an athlete on a bike, half-educated, a pedaler- not a complete cyclist."
- Maynard Hershon, cycling journalist (visit our Effective Cycling web pages!)
"Nobody ever died from not knowing how to play flag football. Yet we spend tax money teaching kids its nuances in gym classes, while bicycle safety is still foreign to most school curriculums. That isn't right."
- Don Cuerdon, cycling journalist who uses the pen name "Captain Dondo"
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