Putting a digital dial caliper on your personal riding happiness (kind of a downer). NOW UPDATED WITH SHEEP & GOAT PIX at the bottom.
Approx. number of words and reading time: 890 / 4:25.
Qualifier: I understand that in the bigger picture there are more important things than riding a bike, and even mobiity. I am not saying (and don’t mean to suggest) that mobility-challenged people can’t easily live happy and satisfying lives; but this is specifically a bike-riding scale, with a couple of non-riding options thrown in to make those with mere chronic pain or illness see an even bigger picture.—G
You know how billionaires get bummed when they lose $5 million in the stock market? I guess they do. Pro athletes who make $15 million a year run out their contracts and get bummed because now they’re only the fifth-highest paid player on the team, so they try to negotiate a $10 million per year increase as “a matter of respect”—and then if they don’t get it, they’ll upend their families and move to the other coast or way up north or the deep south, screw the kids or the family’s wishes? I guess they do. Kanye West recently asked Mark Zuckerberg for $53 million, to aid his mission to beautify the world with his music and clothing line. Oh, all those people up there.
Sometime in the last two years I used the word “Hobo” in a post or on the site, something, and got scolded for it. The scolder went into the history and etymology of “hobo” and scholastically shamed me out of using one of my favorite all-time words. A financially super-strapped person, hobo or not, might be thrilled to find a dollar in a park or be rid of the toothache, or get new used shoes without holes and that fit.
This all relates to riding bikes and ability and pain. Moving along a made-up pity/happiness scale (worst to best) it goes something like this:
1. You’re alive and suffering intolerable pain with no way to communicate to those caring for you, so you can’t beg for death or drugs. Maybe even nobody is caring for you. Maybe nobody even knows. Or maybe no pain, but you’re paralyzed.
2. Wheelchair-bound & bikeless. Tolerable pain, with medication.
3.  Crutches or a walker. No bike riding. The doctor says it’ll be this way for years and maybe forever, but you’re not in any pain.
4. Stroke victim, only one leg working. You could ride as a stoker on a tandem, but it’s not like riding your own bike, and it’s also not like you have tons of tandem-owning friends who want to ride with you all the time.
5. Â Temporary injury that keeps you off the bike for weeks to months, but not permanently.
6.  Chronic injury that allows you to ride, but limits you to certain kinds of riding. Maybe no hills, maybe nothing adventurous…forever.
7. Temporary injury that limits your riding but doesn’t nix it entirely. There’s hope for better, again or for the first time.
 8. General unfitness that limits your riding, but no actual injury or pain. But you’re getting there.
 9. No fitness problems, but a lifestyle or location that curbs your riding and keeps you from the adventures you see others on the internet having seemingly all the time. You’re busy making deals and a living.
 10. Good health and fitness and location, but lousy weather and no riding community to ride with. All the riders in your area are weekend racers who see you as prey, even on club rides.
 11.  Good everything, but you can’t afford the bike you want. You’ve spiffed up your old, trusty Univega.
 12. Good everything and you’ve got the bike of your dreams.
 13.  Good all, and with internet fame that comes with posting your adventures and writing about them in a way that unintentionally makes others jealous and wins you a good fan base.
 14. A major bike company pays you well and supplies all of your gear needs and you fly business class all over the world to ride your bike in great places, make great friendships that last a lifetime. You make enough money to set some aside for the future; not to mention a book deal that pays you an advance of $100,000. On your book tour, a team of experts creates a PowerPoint presentation for you that goes viral and doesn’t require any rehearsal or anxiety before every presentation. Your website becomes a money-machine, and you make enough to employ many friends who remain friends, and a dozen or more hard luck cases who become friends and turn their lives around in your not-too-small, not-too-big empire.
Everybody’s somewhere on this spectrum, right? My circle of friends includes people from 2 to 14. It doesn’t have to be indexed. It can be mostly 7 but some of 12, or something.
Poll: Figure out your number and send
in the subject field. For instance:
On August 8 I’ll tally them and post the average, the high, the low, maybe even the mean. OK? Tally ho!
OH, this isn’t worth a post all by itself, but here—from about a month ago:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/24/sports/cycling/power-meters-speak-truth-to-professional-cyclists-but-can-mislead.html?_r=0
I think it’s true, the line in there, the quote about how in a few years, when you buy a bike above “a certain level,” it will come with a power (wattage) meter.
The second-round of bicycles dealing with their inferiority complex by adopting motor technology has unofficially begun. Last time was in the early 1900s.
The big year was 1903: Harley-Davidson formed. First Model T. The Wright Bros. flight. Bikes seemed ancient.
————sheep & goat pix———–
Warning: You may, if like me, find the following images some kind of combination of fascinating, spectacular, and weirdly troubling:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/in-sight/wp/2016/08/01/these-may-be-the-most-magnificent-portraits-of-goats-and-sheep-youll-ever-see/?hpid=hp_no-name_photo-story-d%3Ahomepage%2Fstory
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