It is with some trepidation that I’ve finally undertaken the onerous task of purchasing a “real” bicycle.  For the past several years at the local sprint triathlons, although I manage to hold my own fairly well on my 1970′s bike, I’ve always been passed by the fast riders of the wave that starts after us.  These UFO’s hum up behind you with their disk wheels and pass you as if you’re standing still; and they started 5 minutes later!  Never having paid more than $150 for a bicycle in my life and it being the weeks of the Tour de France, I thought I’d share some of the important lessons that I’ve learned thus far.

• After riding a beat-up, second hand ten-speed for the past 10 years, any machine costing more than $200 is like riding in a Delorian.

• When you prefix any equipment with “tri,” the price is automatically adjusted upwards by 30%.  The same is true with the word “aero.”  Never, never ask for the aero version of the tri- time-trial bike for triathlon sprints.

• I’ve been reading Bicycling Magazine and Inside Triathlon enough to almost handle the lingo: downtube, chromalloy, brazons, clinchers, skewers, schraeder, presta, cassettes, head sets, cleats.

• Bicycles made of precious metals (e.g. titanium, uranium, tritium) are very expensive.  They also move so fast that I can’t catch them to ride on.

• When you live in a resort region, its tough to find a shop with more than one highly priced “show” bike and a fleet of three thousand rentals.

• Triathletes will snatch up any performance enhancement, even aero water bottles (just $19.95 with mounting bracket)!  I guess now I can get rid of those weighty brazons.

• Every shop has someone working there who rides that exact same model and loves it.  I guess these people have a lot of bikes at home.

• You used to buy the bike that was on sale on the rack at Sears.  Now, bike shopping is like buying shoes; bikes have to be tried on for the correct “fit.”  And if you’ve got the money, you can get a bike made just for you, exactly to your physical dimensions.  What’s your frame geometry?

• Bikes come in a lot more flavors than they used to.  You used to be able to choose from road, country or kids – yeah, that thing with the basket and banana seat that you used to deliver newspapers on.  Now you can pick from mountain (full suspension, cross-country, downhill, recreational, street (?), touring, vert, bmx), country (manual or automatic, performance, touring, cruiser), road (time trial, sprint, touring, triathlon, cyclocross), not to mention track or any combination you can think of.  Now, do you want that with a double or triple chain ring? … front and rear disk brakes? … record, chorus, 105, ultegra or dura ace drive train?  The catalog I currently have in front of me has 27 different models of mountain bike, 19 road bike models, and 20 hybrids!

• It’s the same story with wheels: you can get wheels with 28, 24, 20, 18, 4, and 3 spokes, deep section, or disc in 650c or 700c.  “Full length spokes with structural carbon fiber skin ….” ??

Well, I guess I’ll take a break and get some nifty new sunglasses so I can look real cool when (if) I finally get my new bike.  Watch out at the next triathlon because I’ll be the one humming up behind you on my brand new speedster … and if you happen to have a gently used Litespeed or Griffen lying around your garage, send me an e-mail.

I’ve always been partial to the natural and physical sciences and thus, in high school, was drawn towards astronomy, a field which uniquely, I think, melds the sometimes chaotic natural world with the exquisitely refined computational and logical world.  It is one of the few disciplines which encompasses almost every aspect of human existence.  I came to believe over the course of my studies that if everyone in the world took just one introductory astronomy class over the course of their lives (the earlier the better), the world would be a much saner, “happier” place.  After you’ve seen yourself as a mote in space and time, a speck of expelled star-stuff on a non-descript planet around an uninteresting star in the outreaches of a run-of-the-mill galaxy existing for a nano-second out of infinity, fighting over parking spaces, strip malls, and artificial borders through a desert seems downright silly.

Our passions beget our truths.

I ran in high school but not until recently could I call myself a runner.  When you run every day heedless of the weather, show up for a race in the middle of a blizzard or hurricane, take several weeks off (and loathe every minute of it) to rehabilitate yet another injury, then you may call yourself a runner.  Once again I came to believe that if everyone were a runner, they would care more for themselves and their environment and in so doing, would come to care more about the well-being of those around them.  The crystalline moments under the stars and at the end of a completely exhausting long run would stand in sharp relief against a background of daily existence and enhance all future moments with a new perspective and clarity.  I strive to feed my body the fuel it deserves from natural rather than synthetic sources; I seek renewable forms of energy for myself and my household; I acknowledge my position in the chain of life.  If everyone were a runner …..

Lately as I struggled through my most recent injury with hours spent on the bike and in the pool, it became clear that it is within each of our passions that we find the truths with which we shape our world.  As I touched the worlds of the swimmer and the mountain biker, I glimpsed the truths which defined their realities and in so doing, became more sensitive to the forces that drive each of us.  We all have our passions whether they be in automobiles, insects, professional sports, religion, on-line chat rooms, or running.  These passions define our very being and the ways in which we perceive and interact with our world.  Through our passions we learn and grow; we create realities based on the layers of truths spawned from our passions.  Let us not forget these things when we work and play with others.

Know me then; now, I am a runner.