‘Cyclists are ail the same’

Press, 17 May 1984, Page 14

‘Cyclists are ail the same’

We have just waved off the last of the overseas bikies for this year, and can relax knowing that we have done our bit for tourism for the time being. Sherlock Holmes boasted that he was familiar with 42 different impressions left by bicycle tyres. But then Sherlock Holmes had never been in our garage.

Once acquired, the storage of the contents of those bike shops constitutes a major problem in logistics. A real cyclist solves it by selling the car. When he is not buying bits of bicycles the cyclist buys clothes because whatever the rate of his progress over the hills and down the valleys, he is determined to look the part.

Lots of other people have, though, most of them on two wheels. Some of them have found their way to us from countries many thousands of miles away. But no matter where they come from, cyclists are all the same.

They gravitate towards each other by instinct. Immediately they are at home in a garage where they spend agreeable hours telling stories about things like clusters that unaccountably explode in a shower of ballbearings. Preferably on a mountain. In the snow. Almost as much fun as hunting for ball-bearings in the snow is telling friends about it afterwards.

His wife is amazed at the range of clothing considered necessary for pedalling.

She has been heard to comment that with the addition of a shield and pike a cyclist, fully dressed in his longjohns and pouched wind-cheater, could walk on to any Shakespearean stage and shout, “Hail Caesar!” without anyone noticing the difference.

That is why the floor of our garage is embossed with hundreds of impressions of bicycle tyres. It is also full of bicycles and spare parts.

It hardly needs saying that a real cyclist is someone who tours rather than someone who shops or commutes on a three-speed. It takes real cyclists 36 kilometres just to warm up. Then they arrive on the doorstep glowing and stamping and steaming.

There are sometimes so many bicycles that we have to resort to angle-parking.

Any true cyclist is capable of the single-handed rescue from bankruptcy of every bike shop within a day’s ride of home.

When admitted to a nice ■warm house they peel off an ostentatious amount of outer clothing, fan themselves with cycling maga-

JOAN CURRY

zines, and complain about the heat. They do not, however, complain about the food because cyclists will eat anything. Whatever can be chipped loose from the bowels of the freezer will do as long as it can be defrosted and buttered.

Cyclists will even eat those biscuits which they refer to as duck-stunners and which, it is alleged, are

useful for hurling at motorists. A cyclist’s wife can dispose of anything remotely edible simply by heaping plates with it and standing back out of the way.

Being gentle-hearted people, these hungry visitors will sometimes attempt conversation with the cyclist’s wife, at least while demolishing her food, but

contemplates the lot of a cyclist’s wife.

unfortunately, she has never mastered the language. It has become clear to her that whenever two or more cyclists are gathered together the words “bottom bracket” will be uttered within the first ten minutes. The cyclist’s wife now knows what a bottom bracket is, but still can’t understand why discussions about it should be so enthralling.

What she does understand is that these words usually signify the end of intelligible speech. She might as well retire to the bedroom and watch television. The cyclist, however, has no time for television. He has no time to mow the lawn, or to paint the house. He goes away at weekends, riding hundreds of kilometres just for fun. He comes home on Sunday evenings scarcely able to stand, scarcely able to speak except to whisper what fun it has all been. He is too tired to wash the dishes. On week-day evenings the cyclist disappears into the garage to tap a sprocket or oil a spoke and is not seen again for several hours. He disappears up the road to test the brakes, an exercise that seems to require a journey of interplanetary proportions. Come to think of it, a cyclist often just disappears Sunday rides or weekends away constantly amaze the touring cyclist’s wife. She is bewildered by the way cyclists talk about their experiences when they return. They don’t rhapsodise over the scenery they have

travelled through or the people they have met. They talk instead about equipment carried, gears engaged and mechanical disasters bravely overcome. Then they write about it in the club magazine so that everyone can read about it all over again. Apart from club magazines, cyclists read only bicycle accessory cata'logues. Cyclists know more about bikes than anyone else cares. And even those cyclists who are mathematical morons regularly study tables of gear ratios and understand them.

These are pinned up on the garage wall, flutter out of every book in the house, and are graven on the hearts of all true cyclists. But just try to get them to tinker with the gear ratios on their wives’ bikes.

You can always tell the touring cyclist’s wife’s bike, it’s the one in the darkest corner of the garage, leaning up against the dustbin next to the lawnmower.

It is almost never checked over.

Only the other day a cyclist wiggled his wife’s back wheel and said her cones were loose. Now a touring cyclist’s wife may not know, or care, what goes on under the mudguards but she is likely to be alarmed at the notion of riding around with loose cones.

After all, they could drop off just anywhere.