This previous weekend I used to be in a well-liked trip spot the place I noticed this note-perfect reproduction of the Wagon Queen Household Truckster:
The verisimilitude was staggering:
Naturally I used to be delighted and located it hilarious, although by the following day it turned obvious to me that the man simply drives round day in and day trip ready for individuals to note him, which struck me as form of unhappy. Then I noticed that as a semi-professional bike blogger since 2007 that’s precisely what I’ve been doing for the previous fifteen (15) years. So my disappointment gave strategy to compassion and respect for a fellow member of the small fraternity of people that have devoted our lives to sustaining a working joke for the advantage of an excellent smaller viewers.
Talking of household trucksters, and holidays, I’ve begun planning for the latter and discover myself considering the automotive equal of a gravel bike handlebar bag, that being the rooftop cargo basket:
Every year we journey stuffed to the gills, and it’s develop into clear to me we’d like further storage. Nevertheless, my worry is that I’ll be too lazy to take away it and hold it on the opposite 50 weeks of the yr, thereby becoming a member of the legions of people that appear to put in them solely for aesthetic causes. Subsequent factor you already know you’re getting all-terrain tires simply since you like the best way the sidewalls look…which, by the way, is the premise behind 95% of gravel tire purchases:
Displaying up for a gravel experience with out tanwall tires is sort of as gauche as displaying up with out a tattoo in your thigh.
Extra importantly although, I’ve nonetheless acquired to determine which bike will get to come back with me, and I proceed to lean in the direction of the Homer:
It’s been awhile since I changed the Gravel King tires with Schwalbe Marathon Supremes, and I proceed to be more than happy with their efficiency–even when I do have to beat the psychological hurdle of the black sidewalls with reflective strip, which is essentially the most un-gravel-est sidewall it’s attainable to have on a bicycle tire.
Within the meantime, circumstances nonetheless compel me to experience on the street, and I’m simply gonna go along with it in order that once I do lastly go on trip after weeks of using a classic plastic street bike with large gears I’ll actually get to savor that mac-and-cheese impact:
Nonetheless, even street rides afford the chance for contemplation and reflection, and on this morning’s experience I thought of what makes somebody a “biker” versus what makes them a “bike owner.” One concept I’ve acquired is {that a} “biker” is somebody for whom security is a prerequisite with a purpose to experience, whereas a “bike owner”–even when they too demand bike lanes and all the remainder of it–are finally going to experience it doesn’t matter what, and on a sure degree are even ready to die. This isn’t to say cyclists are foolhardy or reckless, however it’s to say they “have” to do it, and that they are going to accomplish that even when their municipality doesn’t indulge or encourage them and any “regular” individual would assume they’re loopy. (I believe I had a considerably totally different definition of “bike owner” in my first ebook, however I can’t be bothered to test.) So I posed the next query on Twitter:
Apparently, plainly most individuals would proceed to experience, however that they’d additionally (oddly?) proceed to put on a helmet. Individuals have their causes, however finally I believe as people we discover consolation in totems, but we’re additionally compelled to comply with our spirits even within the face of sure dying. I suppose it’s a vestige of the identical pressure that impressed our forbears to paddle out into the ocean in tiny boats, or to cross land bridges, or all the opposite loopy stuff our ancestors needed to do for us to wind up wherever we’re immediately. However they carried crests and flags and talismans on their transcontinental migrations, whereas we sport helmets and thigh tattoos and tanwall tires on our epic bikepacking holidays.
Fuck it, I’m getting a roof basket.
