1. Thou shall not refer to your bike as "she", "he", or any other mortal name.
2. Thou shall not repaint or intentionally mar, befoul, or abominate any bicycle. ("Thus triathletes are resigned to a fate of eternal suffering and gnashing of teeth" - Gino Bartali)
3. Thou shall only lift your bicycle over your head for the purpose of storage or to throw it. Posing for pictures, or cheesing it up with tacky exhibitions of exhilaration are forbidden.
4. Thou shall not buy a wonder bike and brag about it at parties while it sits in a perpetual state of immobility.
5. Thou shall not bother thy mechanic or frame builder with lame, inept, uninformed, obnoxious, absurd, and depraved ideas on how to do his job.
6. Thou shall not seriously compare any rider to Eddy Merckx or Fausto Coppi.
7. Thou shall learn to fix thine own flats, oil thy chain, and learn to accept some dirt under thy fingernails.
8. Thou shall know when to replace thy steed and retire thy parts.
9. Thou shall tow the line of respect and not give in to the primordial wonts of lust and worship of exquisite bicycle frames and parts.
10. Thou shall not invest more time into reading, writing, buying, talking about, tinkering with, and otherwise stroking the bicycle than actually riding it.
Gee, the last one's a tough one.... If one has total bike addiction, then it's almost impossible to honour such a creed. One may ride for three or four hours, then spend another five surfing the net, reading a mag, writing articles for magazines, blogging, and cleaning/adjusting/maintaining. What if you work in the industry? You'd have to ride a hell of a lot, or not do any of the other things at all for number 10 to be feasible. I'm calling 'no dice' on the last one.
1 comment:
I am with you on the last one as well. I do a lot of internet surfing dreaming of new bikes and equipment. I do think that I have hit my saturation point.
I am disappointed since I have been planning a portrait with me holding my bike over my head. I just needed to find someone to take the picture. I was even thinking of doing it one handed.
Somebody hand me the tape because I am ripped! (Hey I live in New Jersey)
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