Jun 15, 2007
Bike2Work
Well - after years of agonizing, I finally rode my bike to work.
While I'm super excited about the personal and environmental benefits of this choice, it brought to light some interesting societal divisions among bicyclists. On the one hand you have your gear heads (we'll just call them hedz, shamelessly borrowing from RPM culture). The hedz are your hardcore bike nuts - they will often own several bikes (where several can span double digits), will pretty much *only* ride in spandex, and have several miscellaneous bike parts just floating around their garage to fuel what is now an obsession that easily costs them a few thousand dollars a year. Oh - and they're predominantly male. To these people I say, more power to you. Why, some of my best friends are ... ok - forget it. I will almost certainly never be one of them. There are things I get obsessive about - bike gear is just not one of them.
Which places me in the other camp. Utilitarian commuters that understand the ecological and economic benefits of riding, along with the loads of sexy indie cred it carries. Not sure if I've mentioned this before, but I've always found hipsters on bicycles terribly attractive. So yes - I'm riding to boost my cred. This is actually not dissimilar to vegetarianism - it just felt like a good idea on a number of different levels, even if there was a girl involved in the initiation.
While I'm super excited about the personal and environmental benefits of this choice, it brought to light some interesting societal divisions among bicyclists. On the one hand you have your gear heads (we'll just call them hedz, shamelessly borrowing from RPM culture). The hedz are your hardcore bike nuts - they will often own several bikes (where several can span double digits), will pretty much *only* ride in spandex, and have several miscellaneous bike parts just floating around their garage to fuel what is now an obsession that easily costs them a few thousand dollars a year. Oh - and they're predominantly male. To these people I say, more power to you. Why, some of my best friends are ... ok - forget it. I will almost certainly never be one of them. There are things I get obsessive about - bike gear is just not one of them.
Which places me in the other camp. Utilitarian commuters that understand the ecological and economic benefits of riding, along with the loads of sexy indie cred it carries. Not sure if I've mentioned this before, but I've always found hipsters on bicycles terribly attractive. So yes - I'm riding to boost my cred. This is actually not dissimilar to vegetarianism - it just felt like a good idea on a number of different levels, even if there was a girl involved in the initiation.
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