The Sonoita to Patagonia Time Trial. It was very cold.
Needless to say, I rode my bike to work this morning. I refuse to fill up the tank with gas when I can so easily avoid it by doing something I love to do anyway. I am always striving to be a full time bike commuter. I commute as often as I can motivate myself to, but I always fall short of riding the whole week. I have a cycling identity crisis.
There are two types of cyclists (according to me, because I like to categorize and pigeon hole things). There are commuters and racers. Commuters use their bikes to get from point A to point B. They tend to ride older bikes outfitted with racks, trailers, fenders, and extra supplies in case of mechanical failure. Racers use their bikes to ride in races and compete with other racers. They tend to ride new and flashy lightweight bikes. They cringe and squirm at the thought of attaching anything to their bikes and ride for the shear joy of going faster than anyone else.
I started riding by commuting to work on a dumpy mountain bike with a rack soldered to the rear of my bike. I gradually moved into racing and upgraded to one of the aforementioned race bikes. I always considered myself a commuter first and a racer second, until I rode downtown for Tucson's Bike to Work Day. Boy did I ever learn I am not nearly weird enough to be a commuter. Bike to Work Day is filled with some of the weirdest peak oil conspiracists and dirty hippies I have ever seen. I've never felt like a racer so much in my life.
After Bike to Work Day I attended the Patagonia Time Trial. Talk about feeling like a commuter. The cyclists there were decked out in funny time trial helmets, wrappers for their shoes to reduce wind resistance, bikes that cost more than my car and an intense racing drive. I just showed up because it's a good race close to my house. Where do I fit?
I guess I'll just have to keep riding and ignore my need to categorize for now...
3 comments:
Maybe it is time to look for a third category rather than being so binary. Perhaps it is 1)the racers, of which your description fits. 2) the in-betweeners - Those that aren't full-fledged enough for either category. Those that would show up to Critical Mass in spandex. 3)the commuters - Those that would use hemp tires if they could get some, but they can tell you the mileage of their bicycle in miles per gallon of oil and are angry that it takes as much as it does.
along with all the things you mention, i also find i'm much too fast to ride with the "commuter" crowd, and much to slow to ride with the "racer" crowd.
so i'm also stuck somewhere in the middle, both in terms of attitude (which i sort of solve by having two bikes, heh) and performance.
I also thought of a third category, the tourer. These are more serious cyclists than commuters, but rather than speed around like racers, they take long distance bike tours. I think I would fit into the touring category better than the racer or commuter, but it takes a lot of time to go on bike tours and I don't always have it. :)
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