I Confess…I’m Secretly in Love With Cycling

The Giant OCR3: 24 Speed; 22.2 lbs.; ALUXX aluminum frame; “meaty” Kenda Kotender tires; $650 bucks, a “find”, a “tremendous deal”; a good entry-level road bicycle that has everything “for any new rider who is not sure exactly what he wants.” Available in gorgeous “pearl blue”. That’s what the glossy review/ad in Bicycling magazine said last week as I sat there salivating in a Barnes & Nobles Cafe. I must confess I’ve long had a secret love for cycling. Yet in my adult life the affair has been platonic.

What gets my juices flowing about cycling? Well, several things: the exhibitionism, the self-generated speed, the rhythm, the “outdoorsiness”, the bikes, and the accoutrements (which may now include an I-pod Nano). Racing-wise it’s those last few hundred meters: to me nothing looks cooler in professional sports than the front camera angle of 10 cyclists breaking toward a finish-line. The way they aggressively torque their bikes and pump their legs like pistons makes me wanna run down to Art’s Cycles in Hyde Park (oh wait they closed).

The last time I owned a “real” bike was when I was 12 years old: sky blue, Bianchi, ten-speed, featherlight, and bad as hell. In the summer of ‘85 my jet-setting Dad descended on us and procured this piece Italian luxury for me–a poor, downtrodden runt.

Two summers previous, when myself–and most of my family–relocated to Chicago from Saudi Arabia, my Mom picked up a more likely contraption from a Hyde Park yard sale. For the modest price of $40 I got a rusty 10-speed of unknown origin (the whole frame had been laquered over with thick black wall paint). Honestly…I was so excited that I rode it home, following and waving to my family in the car ahead. That same afternoon, however, I got a lesson in American Consumer Values 101 when I–and my new bike–were laughed off the playground. All I really remember, about that incident was the pre-Crocodile Dundee-esque quip of one of those kids as I made my way to the gate: “that’s not a bike, that’s a bike”.

Now, what that kid had was no bike: heavy, with black foam on the handle bars, and cherry red. I guess it was “better” because it had a brand, “Huffy”. So two years later I had to go inter-continental on those biaaattches. My Italian-made Bianchi made me the prince of the alley. My dad said it cost $200, but I suspect it was much more–and I wasn’t even a cyclist. I pimped it out royally. I got some plush white handle bar tape, shimmering stir-ups, and a tote bag. Looking today at old pictures of me on it, with my loose curly fro and shadow ’stache wearing blue Genera shorts and white polo, I was El DeBarge meets Miami Vice. Come on folks it was the 80s!!!

At first glance cycling seems to appeal to our all-American values: It’s primal, privileging grit over skill; its individualistic; its goal-oriented; and it incorporates our obsession with accessorizing. To put it another way cyclists wear cool gear and compete in grueling races to either win or lose.

Yet, if there is one thing that keeps cyclists firmly outside America’s mainstream it is that they ride bicycles, as opposed to horses (as in Kentucky Bluegrass), or drive cars (as in NASCAR). Men don’t ride bicycles here, we drive cars, vroom…vroom. Didn’t countless car flicks like American Graffiti, Canonball Run, and The Fast and the Furious establish this? The bicycle is associated with childhood. Those few men who ride bikes are not registering their place in the horsepower hierarchy that is American manhood and are, therefore, not quite men. They are either poor, or dainty European types. Can you think of any Hollywood flicks that glorify a man and his bicycle? Oh wait…Baby Boy with Tyrese.

Underpinning the low status of Cycling in American sports is the idea that sports are a rite of passage for American males. Furthermore, each sport has its natural place on the evolutionary chain of development: boys play T-ball, dodgeball, soccer, and kickball; adolescents play football, baseball, and basketball; and grown men play golf, motor sports, or fish. However, this whole system, as I will argue below, is built on improper associations.

As is with most things in sports these days the Europeans represent the opposite pole of sensibility. For them, the bicycle represents health, harmony, and fitness. In some countries, such as Holland, Cycling is a definitively masculine activity; so much so, that during World War II the Nazi occupiers forbade Dutch men from riding bikes in order to immasculate them, and also root out subversion. Anyone who’s been to Europe would be surprised at the deference given to cyclists by motorists. By contrast, try riding in rush hour traffic on Chicago’s East Roosevelt Road and you’ll be impolitely informed that you don’t belong. In order to fix the problem of Chicago cyclists getting run over, Mayor Daley has recently been studying Swiss ideas, such as raised bike lanes and Sunday closings of certain streets.

Some of the most celebrated athletes in Italian, French, Belgian, Dutch, and Spanish history have been cyclists. Names like Jacques Anquetil, Bernard Hinault, Eddy Merckx, Laurent Fignon, Gino Bartali, and Miguel Indurain don’t exactly roll off Yankee tongues–but the Euros know them well.

Of course we Americans also have Lance Armstrong and recently disgraced Floyd Landis. But my hero growing up was Greg LeMond. That dramatic victory over Laurent Fignon on time trials in the 1990 Tour de France was pure genius; and It marked an inspirational high-point in my teen years. I mean the guy had 60 shotgun pellets in his body from a hunting accident two years previous!

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t reject the idea of associating certain sports with certain stages of development. On the contrary I support it. All I’m asking is that those sports on the scale more closely reflect social, cognitive, and physiological reality. Why, for example, are children under 10 encouraged to play soccer, which is not only high contact but also requires sophisticated spatial intelligence at the team level? Any playground soccer game is simply a crowd of kids chasing a ball. Better to have them shoot hoops. In some parts of the country, such as Arizona, they’re already riding ATVs at that age. See what I mean…the whole chain is screwed up.

As this pertains to Cycling, why not make it socially admirable for 30-something men like myself–who clearly need the exercise–to engage in an active sport like cycling. Golf, fishing, and Motor Sports just won’t cut it for me. Riding a bicycle is low impact, and if you need to stop to catch your breath you can do so without losing face. If you stopped running or swimming in a race, by comparison, you’d be toast…or drowned. Not only that, Cycling–with its upscale product line–appeals to the older man’s sense of financial elitism: young Jason can kick a $20 soccer ball or shoot hoops; sugar daddy here is gonna drop 3 Gs on a carbon-framed Carrera…well, ahem, let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

On the other hand, I think I’ll buy that Giant OCR3 in pearl blue for a not-so-modest $650…I’ll consider it a rite of passage.

Written by Sati

Written on August 28, 2006