Interlude 9: Quality Still Matters, Again, Some More, One More Time

Heeeey, and stuff.

Sooo...

Tonights post is sort of an extension and continuation of last weeks post.  In case you couldn't tell from the title.

As you know, I have a "new" bicycle.  It's great.  I'm really liking it.  I've been riding all over.  And, as I'd hoped, it worked out great for the Sunday run/ride with my wife.  All 16 miles.  She ran while I sort of goofed off.  Up curbs, down curbs, down stairs, small bump jumps... I enjoyed myself like a 9 year old boy when he gets his first "real" bike.

Since last week, I have set off converting my bike to a single speed bike.  As I may have mentioned, for the riding I do, I really only need one gear.  I found the proper hub and gear combo I liked and have purchased it and it is now on the bike.  That is a whole amazing story in itself that perhaps I will share next week.

I have NOT been able to ride it yet as my new tires have not arrived and were not in stock at the store and as the old tire was being put on a new rim (also part of that other story for another time), the old tire split down the sidewall.  I was expecting this would happen eventually which is one of the two reasons I ordered new tires.  So, alas, I must wait till next week, when my new tires arrive, to see how it all worked out.

I have also been trying to nail down all the other bits I need to finish the basics of the bike build.  There are a few things I'd like two do as time and money permit, but there are two other things I need to do.  They are a new seat and hand grips.

The old hand grips were cut down short so the previous owner could put bar ends on the bike.  Which is too bad because they were relatively nice grips.  But, they are old, and too short for my hands, and now they are starting to come apart under the friction of my riding.  So, I have grips coming.  (unrelated, Ebay has been awesome for sourcing new, quality parts at half price or better.  I have no advertising contract with them, it's simply the truth.)

The seat was an absolute necessity.  My old bike had a seat that was about as comfortable as an uneven brick.  My "new" bike's seat is 22 years old and has holes worn through in a number of places.  It is more comfortable than my other bike's seat, but only just.

The research on my seat choice led me down an interesting path of discovery.  I wanted a soft comfy seat as I have an old, boney bum.  I talked with the guy at the local bike shop about seats and in my ignorance had asked him about a gel seat.  He recommended against it as he's found a high number of people find that, while the seat is comfy to sit on, they start getting numbness as the seat compresses and pressure begins to be applied to areas of the leg that you wouldn't be ordinarily sitting on whilst on a bike.

I've always wanted to use the word "whilst" in a sentence.

As I started my search based on his recommendations and sampling some seats in his shop, I started reading customer reviews of seats.  As the guy at the shop suggested, people were pretty split on gel seats.  So, I began looking at other seats.  But it was tricky because I also have a specific visual idea for my bike.  This means the seat needs to be a specific color, which dramatically narrowed down my choices.

I found a seat that was the color I wanted and it was the appropriate style for the riding I do.  The big question was, "is it comfortable?"  It looked sort of thin.  So, I started reading reviews on it.

I read hundreds of them.  Seriously.  There was skimming involved, but still.  Out of the hundreds, I only read one reviewer who didn't like it.  It was universally (almost) hailed by everyone (almost) that not only was it comfortable enough to rival high end seats, it's price was very inexpensive (and it is).  Professional and novice riders alike have found this seat to be comfortable and quality.

There is that word again.

Here is what I learned in my seat search that helped get passed my hesitation.  Buying a bike saddle (don't call them seats as I have.  they are saddles.  get it right.  or else.  ELSE!!) is a super individual process.  What is comfortable for one bum is not for another.  Part of this is because saddle comfort is almost more about the shape of the saddle, than it is about the softness of the saddle.  This is because all of our back sides are shaped just a bit differently than each others.  Sometimes more than a bit.  This means, you can have a rock hard saddle that is more comfortable than a super cushy saddle, if the cushy saddle isn't shaped right for you.

I'm a little nervous about getting my saddle because I've spent money on it and once I get it, it's mine.  That, and another truth is that it takes time to break in any saddle you use, quality or not.  So, you can never truly tell right away whether or not it's going to be just right.

However, today I experienced the reality of proper saddle choice.  I was at the gym and decided to do some stationary cycling since my knee still isn't prime for running.  I found an open bike with a nice cushy saddle and rode on it and could never get it comfortable.  In fact, I finally had to stop riding because I went numb in, um, sensitive places.  

Soft saddle, shaped wrong.

And now for my point.

A persons walk is much like a bike saddle.  It is usually a very individual thing.  What is needed for one person does not necessarily work for another.  It is not always a "one size fits all" type of proposition.  What brings a person to a better place spiritually, philosophically, etc., may be very unique and specialized for that person.  It may not work for someone else.

Don't walk another persons path just because they walked it.  Maybe it is the right thing for you, but, maybe, it's not.

This is a tricky thing for a pastor to say, but it's the truth.  My way may not work for you.

You need to do the leg work.  You need to find the way that works.  No one can do that for you.  Conversely, no one should try to make you walk a path just because they said so.  They might not have any idea what is best for you.

Do your home work.  Find what is best for you.  Find the way that guides you the best.  Don't do the thing not shaped properly for you simply because it's there.  There is always a better way.

Do that.

Interlude 8: Quality Matters

Hey class!  How's everyone doing today?

Excellent, glad to hear it.

Except for you, I'm sorry to hear about it.

Well, I have exciting news for you all.  Are you ready for it?  You sure?  Here it comes.

I have a new bicycle.  That's right.  I have a shiny red new bicycle.  And by "new", I mean a used, 22 year old bicycle.  23 if you factor in build date vs model year date.

For some of you, (all of you?), this is probably underwhelming news.  I doubt a single one of you is anywhere close to whelmed.  However, I am pretty stoked.  "Stoked", a word almost as culturally old as my "new" bicycle.

Not that this matters to most of you, but allow me to explain.

For those of you have been longer time readers, you might remember my historical affinity for bicycles.  If you don't remember (or never knew), feel free to catch up by reading this old post of mine Lesson 10 - Soft Like Concrete.

Now, I already had a bicycle.  Back in the year 2000, I think, my wife and I decided one day on a whim with no research and even less common sense, to just purchase a couple bikes because we wanted to ride bikes.  They were cheap Target specials and, fortunately, we didn't pay that much for them.  But hey, we had bikes and we rode them.  They were both mountain bikes, which made sense because we were living in Colorado at the time.  In case you didn't know, that's where the mountains live.  Not that we ever rode them in said mountains.  

Ya.

Fast forward to 2014.  We are now living in Chicago.  As it turns out, there are not a lot of mountains in Chicago.  These old bikes were full suspension bikes because, um, they were suspension bikes and isn't that what the cool kids rode?  I mentioned we just sort of did it, right?

As such, these old bikes are heavy.  HEAVY.  My bike tips the scales at just a smidge over 50 pounds.  That may not sound like a lot, but for a bicycle, it's obese.  Morbidly obese.  But, hey, it looked super cool and, to be fair, the frames were close to indestructible.  I learned this recently when I decided to research the bike I already owned.  

In Chicago, a bicycle is more than just reasonable transportation.  It makes a ton of sense.  One doesn't measure travel time by distance here.  Most places I will ever go in the city are within four miles of my home.  Much of it less than two.  If we head downtown it's more like 12ish if you go straight, or 15 if you take the lake front path.  And, you can do those trips in not much longer than driving if there is any traffic at all.  In fact, the shorter distances, especially in traffic, are often faster for cyclists.

I started riding my bike more recently.  Especially when my wife started running 14 miles at a time, just for fun.  No race.  No event.  She does it just because it's a Sunday.  So, I decided I would ride and keep her company.  I run, but I can't run that far yet.  And now that I messed my knee up (which in theory should heal up good as new), the bike is making more sense as opposed to jogging.

After that first ride/run session, I learned the truth about my old bike.  It is, and always was, a giant, heavy piece of (insert preferred negative term, here).  Navigating paths and people and hopping curbs and descending stairs (that's right, down stairs), the weight and overall uselessness of all those suspension components became crystal clear.  I'm not saying there aren't good suspended bikes.  There are tons of them.  Mine simply isn't one of those examples.

But mostly it was all the extra weight and floppy, rattly, parts that, no matter how much fine tuning you do, will not change.

Sooo, I decided it was time to upgrade.

Now, as a former design guy, the look of the bike mattered to me.  It needed to have the appropriate function, but also the right style.  

I began researching bicycles.  I hadn't really kept up once I went to college, had a car, and got married.  (Hence the garbage bikes we bought shortly there after.)  It became clear that what I wanted was a single speed bike.  I realized that I was pretty much using the same gear all the time on my bike.  I had found one that allowed me to ride slow, accelerate well, but also ride fast enough to tackle street riding.  

I then realized that I really like the simple, clean look of fixies.  Those are the fixed gear bikes all the cool kids in the city ride.  They look like old road bikes, but with out all the gears and switches.

The problem was, they have those super skinny tires.  Which are fine except that their designer never road a bike on Chicago streets.  The problem isn't the endless potholes and cracks.  It's all the energy it takes trying to find a path that's rideable between them.

Ok, it's the potholes and cracks.

But also, I didn't like the harder ride of the thin tires and I wasn't keen on the gear options on the brand new bikes.

I looked at beach bikes and the like, but I just couldn't find the thing that made me all giggly in my insides.

Then one day I had an accidental epiphany.  One could argue that all epiphanies are accidental, but whatever.  I was over at the church and one of our youth rode up on a bicycle.  It was an old Raleigh.  But it wasn't a road bike.  It was an old mountain bike.  And that's when it hit me.  I had missed the obvious.

I needed to find an old mountain bike and convert it to single speed.

Here's why.

The older, first and second generation mountain bikes all had frames that more or less visually mimicked the road bike frames, except they were much stronger, and just as importantly, were designed for fatter, more comfortable tires.

And... and... because they had no suspension on them, like every single bike we all grew up with, they are much lighter.  

Problem solved.

Except, where do you find one?  And, which one should you get?

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why God invented the internet and Ebay.

I started searching for old mountain bikes.  Or as the internet calls them, "vintage" mountain bikes.  Even if it's from the 90's.  Sigh.

That's how I stumbled across the early 90's Bridgestone mountain bikes.

"But isn't Bridgestone a tire company?"  I hear you ask.  Yes.  Yes it is.  But they have also been importing bicycles to America off an on for a long time.  Currently, they do not, but their last round of bicycle importing (Bridgestone is actually a Japanese company) came from 85-94.  Mine is a 92 (frame stamped 91, but I'm sure I'm the only one who cares).

I won't go into all the things I learned about these bikes and the various models.  But I will say this because it helps me get closer to the point of all of this.  The guy who was designing the mountain bikes for Bridgestone at the time decided to go against convention.  As a result, he almost single handedly set the tone of all mountain bike made by everyone for the next decade.  Better frame geometry.  Better frame construction.  He did all the stuff that the then current frame makers felt didn't matter.  He was even criticized for it.  But in the end, his bikes set the tone.

Most people probably don't even remember these bikes were made.  The bike aficionado's do, but other than that, not many.  But those who do all say the exact same thing.  These were some of the best (but not THE best, just being fair) bikes made during that era, maybe ever, especially for the price.

And that was the thing.  They were stronger, better made, not as light as some, but they lasted and won races.  But most importantly, they were less expensive than the ultra expensive competition bikes.

In 1992 the bike I now own cost just under $900.  I picked it up for barely a fraction of that. I've spent more money on shoes than I did on this bike.  And you could argue, "ya, but it's old."  My response is twofold.  One, shut up, it was only 1992.  That's not old.  Respect your elders.  Two, quality is quality.  Strong, straight, excellent build quality, good condition, old paint not withstanding.

Now, I have a bike I can modify slightly and have exactly what I needed, to do what I wanted to do.

But here was what surprised me the most.  It shouldn't have, but it did.

This bike is older than my old bike.  A 21 speed mountain bike that hasn't seen adjustment in a long time.

Once it was delivered (Ebay rocks), I reassembled it, aired up the tires, and it rides better than my old bike ever did, even when bran spanking new.  It's solid, smooth, quiet, and oh so light compared to my old bike.  It was like a revelation.  Right now it weighs 27 pounds.  It will probably weight about 4 pounds less when I'm done.

But oh man, the quality.

And this is the great lesson.  Quality matters.  I will stick my neck out and say that this is true 100% of the time.  Quality often costs.  But, not always.

More importantly, quality matters in every part of our lives.  Not just in what we do, but how we do it, and who we do it with.  Quality matters in who we are and how we live.  Quality is that thing in life that makes your eyes light up and your heart speed up and causes you to have that slight twinge of regret when you find quality when you hadn't noticed that quality was what you'd been lacking for so long.

Do not just exist and complete life.  Live it with quality.  The amount of your years matter, but not nearly as much as the quality of the years you live do.

Seek the best you can in all you do.  Not costliest, not the most quantity, but the best quality you can muster in all things.  It is here you find the beginnings of satisfaction in everything you do.

Have a truly great night.

Lesson 10 - Soft Like Concrete

Over the last couple chapters or all of them, the idea of self comparisons with others has repeatedly poked it’s head into the discussion.  At one or more points, the idea of our egos being to blame has also been suggested.

Not to suggest an overly simplistic question that I’m sure all of you have a correct answer to, but, what does that really mean?  And why is that bad?  And why have i just turned one question into three?

It’s a compulsion.  Sorry.

Let me ask a different question.  Is there a difference between having an identity and being completely self focused?  Or, how about this one.  Is there a difference between personal growth and maturity, and having to be better and win and all cost?

When the questions are asked like that, the answer seems obvious.  But when the question hasn’t been specifically delineated and we are left to assess our own life without the question and answer check list, it can get pretty muddy.

And muddy is icky.  I really don’t like mud.  I know it’s only wet dirt.  But dry dirt brushes off relatively easy.  Wet dirt sticks and stains and gets in the cracks of everything.  It’s slippery and dangerous even.  Mud is only funny when someone who isn’t me slips and falls into it face first.  It’s never funny when I fall on my face, no matter how much everyone else maybe laughing.

This is because falling hurts.  So said Commander Obvious.  Remember when you were a kid and you would fall in the grass playing tag or football or whatever other things we did in the grass?  There was this window in our age range somewhere between 8 and 18 where falling down didn’t really hurt that bad.  We might get a small bruise or a scrape, but otherwise we pretty much got right back up and continued doing whatever we were doing with joy and glee.

But before and after that, it was a big deal.  Before the age of 8ish, we would hit the ground and cry like a baby.  After the teenage years, we would hit the ground and pretend like it didn’t hurt like, something… painful and hurty (shut-up, i’m not an english major.)  But during that golden range of resilience, we had to do something pretty stupid before we really suffered for it and it almost always had something to do with trying upstage someone else in some macho alpha dog beat our chests as we hurdle the fence in my neighbor’s back yard and caught my shoe lace on the way over but managed to catch myself with my liver.  Or, you know, something else like that which didn’t happen to me when I was 10 or so.

It’s always funny to everyone else.  And it’s always funny when it’s someone else.  But when I land on my face, it’s never funny to me.

By the way, have you ever actually done that?  Landed relatively squarely on your face?  

When I was roughly somethingteen years old, me and two other friends who’s names will remain unspoken conspired to build two of the gnarliest(it was the end of the 80’s, beginning of the 90’s... we said stupid words like that.  You are lucky I didn’t say they were “rad”.) launch ramps for jumping our bikes and skateboards that had ever been conceived of by pubescent testosterone sacks with more bravado than brains.  I mean, it’s what you do when you out grow planks of wood set at angle on fireplace logs for the sake of launching ones bicycle into the stratosphere.

After collecting all the rickety and half rotted wood we could find, we shed some skin and collected some splinters as our feat of engineering came together.  When all was said and done, we had built two almost quarter-pipe launch ramps that stood around four and half feet high at the point of full take off.

We were the envy of our block.  All the “ladies” loved us.  The little kids wanted to be us.  And why not?  We were “manly men” and all that.  Daredevils of awesome awesomeness.  

But we weren’t stupid(he barely said with a straight face.)  We started off slow.  We put them back to back for “safety” purposes.  This way, we could start off by riding up one and across the top of both and then down the other side.  Eventually one of us, I honestly don’t remember who, managed to actually get some air.  He made it almost across the flat space in between the two ramps before landing.  

He almost crashed, but saved it at the last second.  Which was good, not because he didn’t die, but because we had learned something.  When you land on a steep landing ramp, you must come down nose first or else the bike will just flip out from under you as you try to ride the back tire down the ramp.

This was new to us.  Previously we had done all our jumping on to flat surfaces which require you to either land level or slightly on the back tire to keep from crashing through the handle bars and into the pavement in some spectacularly crunchy fashion.

So, armed with this new information, the next guy did the same thing, except a little faster.  But instead of a shaky landing, he nosed over as he came down and completed a beautiful rockstar landing.

Well, now we were all stoked.  We had seen it with our own eyes.  It could be done.  Soon, all three of us were jumping from one ramp to the other with the grace and ease of ballerinas.  In fact, we got so good at it, we started to get a little bored.  Which is when one of us decided we should put some space between the ramps.  Not a lot, just a little to make the distance greater.

That almost ended badly.  We didn’t know how much faster to go for sure, and with space in between, you didn’t want to come up short.  Which is exactly what the first guy did.  Fortunately, again, he didn’t crash.  But he did have to step off when he landed on top and caught one tire in the gap.

But no harm, no foul.  We simply just solved the issue.  We found a piece of plywood to put across the gap.  From there, we just kept at it till we had mastered that distance.  At which point we would widen the distance between ramps and do it again.

We continued to do this until we had put the length of a full sheet of plywood (read:  eight feet) between the two ramps.  This does not include the distance of the top of each ramp which was a couple feet each.  That piece of plywood was just barely crossing the gap.

Did that phase us?  Not even a little.  At this point we had learned to judge the speed and distance and were launching ourselves into the sky with such skill that even Evil Knievel would have been proud.

At this point you might be asking yourself, “So... where were their parents during all this stupidity?”

My answer is “Yes.  Yes...”

Back to the story.  Because our skill had become so great we started going faster and faster with the intention of going higher and higher.  And it was working.  Every time one of us would go, the next one would start farther away to get more speed before hitting the ramp and attaining higher altitudes than previously thought possibly.  But more importantly, higher altitudes than the friend who had gone before us.  

Now, it was no longer about beating the ramp.  It was about beating the other guy.  We had to be the one who did the jump that the other guys couldn’t beat.

Historically, even though I was the tallest of this group of friends, I wasn’t necessarily the fastest or most daredevilish.  But I had decided that this time, I wasn’t going to blink first.  I was going to keep pushing till they backed off.

Why I decided that starting toward the ramp from three houses away was a good idea I will never know.  One detail that we had all over looked was that, in our quest to attain higher jumps, we were also attaining greater distances.  You can’t do one without doing the other.  But because our gains had been so small and we were still landing safely on the landing ramp, we hadn’t noticed the gains had been there.

Fortunately I figured it out.

Unfortunately I didn’t figure it out till I was already in the air.

I hit that ramp at near lights-peed.  That’s the speed you can attain from three whole houses away.  Everyone knows this.  It’s scientific bicycle fact.  And at such speed, time weirdness and relativity goodies occur.  For example, while in the air at such great height and speed, I had time to look around, smile at the small crowd of local onlookers, pose for the nonexistent camera’s, consider whether the cute girl was going to want to go out behind the bushes with me because I was now going to be super awesome, and I even had time to consider what might transpire there should she make the suggestion.

It was at that moment I decided it must be time to land.  Nosing the bike over into proper landing position, I was struck by the fact that the landing ramp looked awfully flat suddenly.  Then I was struck by the fact that I wasn’t looking at the landing ramp and instead was looking at the pavement past the landing ramp as my relativistic speeds had propelled me well beyond the entire ramp.

If I hadn’t already nosed over, I might have pulled it off.  Maybe.  Instead, I hit the ground nose first with force of a tactical nuke.

My front rim bent in half to something that resembled a hard taco shell.

My front forks crack and bent at expensive angles.

My gooseneck, the thing that holds the handle bars to the stearing hub, snapped clean off as my body plowed through the handle bars and into the not-nearly-as-soft-as-it-looks concrete.

The handle bars themselves, however, were completely unscathed, so, that was nice.

I, on the other hand, was much less unscathed.  You see, as I pointed out, this was right around the turn of the 80’s into the 90’s.  This meant that safety gear included a tank top, shortish shorts, and no helmet.  I don’t even think I had socks on.

After my bicycle exploded into it’s various components, as I said, I continued right on into the pavement, and then after bouncing a couple times, continued to slide the entire distance of a two car driveway width.  I know this because I had such a great vantage point of where I was about to land, before I landed, and I remember very clearly, unfortunately, the entire tumble and slide and noted very specifically where I finally was able to pull myself to my feet.

There was a lot of skin missing on one side of my body.  Fortunately it was contained to the space between the top of my head and my feet.  Right leg, right arm, bits of my face and head, all nicely rashed.  Palms nicely raw, right knee very open and bleeding.

After I realized I wasn’t dead, I dragged myself to my feet, saw the carnage of my bike, then started feeling the carnage to my body, and did what any other self respecting teenage man-boy would do.

I cried all the way home.  Which, fortunately, was just across the street.

Amazingly, nothing was broken.  In fact, I don’t even have any scars from it.  If I hadn’t somehow managed to roll as I grenaded the earth I’d probably be dead from head trauma.

I had huge scabbing scars for weeks, though.  But not on my face, thank goodness.  I was much to pretty to handle that well.

I had no bike.  So I couldn’t jump anymore till I put one back together from a borrowed frame and left over parts.

But you know what?  I was totally fine with that because I had done it.  I had beat them both.  No one out did that jump.  It doesn’t matter that I hadn’t landed it.  I had done it.  I wasn’t embarrassed about biting it so hard.  I was hardcore and had just poked the bear and walked away from it.

At least, that’s how I felt till I finally had a bike again.  I went back to the ramp, rode up at approach speed, and panicked.  I tried again and panicked again.  The best I was ever able to manage was to simply ride over the top of it.

I couldn’t do it.  I had lost my nerve.  I was scared to death.

That’s when the embarrassment set in.  I was out there, in front of my peers, and I didn’t have the courage to do it anymore.  I may have crashed hard when I hit the pavement, but I hadn’t fallen till that very second.  That pain hurt worse than any bruise ever had.

My ego wanted me to win.  To be the best.  To beat them.  To show them who the man really was.

My ego wanted to be seen so badly that it caused me to not think at all about the consequences of my actions.  It made me feel invincible so that I would keep at it.

        The ego wants to survive at all costs.  That’s why it has to die before it pushes us into a fall that we can’t ever recover from.  It’s the “not recovering” that matters here.  If we don’t recover, the fall happens to completion and as we know it’s not the fall that hurts.  It’s the sudden impact with the concrete at the bottom that ruins our day.