Not Even I Care What I Think About Your Bike

Like you, I have opinions. I have even been called ‘opinionated’ by people who know and like me. But the older I get the fewer opinions I have, because there’s so much I’m either not qualified to have a take on or just don’t care enough about to throw in my two cents. Arguably, I’m an expert when it comes to bikes, but mainly that expertise extends, in my later days, to more fully understanding what I don’t actually know.

And I don’t know what you like about bikes.

Your bike, as long as it is rolling and you are happy, seems like a good bike, maybe even the best bike. What I am thinking about, while you are rolling along and happy, is myself. As someone smart said to me once, “I’m not much, but I’m all I think about.” And unless there is a problem with my bike, a gear cable not quite properly tensioned, so that a periodic tick-tick breaks the monotony of the chain through the jockey wheels, or maybe an infinitesimally misaligned rotor kissing a brake pad, then I’m not thinking about my bike either.

My mind is on my legs, or maybe my heart and lungs, or even more likely, my fragile ego.

My fragile ego used to assess my place in an imaginary pecking order based on a ground-up eyeballing of your bike, as if it mattered, once I was dropped on the last hill, whether or not you were riding Ultegra or Dura Ace, whether your bar tape was clean and well wrapped.

One of the faults of an inflated ego (which can express itself in judgment or in self-deprecation) is the assumption that what you value is or should be what other people value. This is the false premise of know-it-all-ness. And I have been that guy. Yes, I have.

(What feels like) a million years ago, I worked in restaurants. I waited tables. I tended bar. I worked take-out and did prep. I washed dishes. I bussed tables. Eventually, I got offered a job in management, and I asked the general manager, a nice man named Mark, for any advice about how to be a good restaurant manager, and he said, “As you work, night after night, try to become more and more aware of what’s happening in the restaurant.” That was it.

I didn’t know how to do it, at the time, but of course as I’ve gotten older, I get it. He was just saying, stay open to new information and try to be aware of what’s important. It’s the best way to give yourself and the people around you the best possible experience.

And even on those old-days, Wednesday night, throwdown rides, when we were gleefully trying to break each other, I never wanted anyone to have a bad experience.

I suppose you can occasionally help people by expressing an informed opinion, assuming they want to hear it, but I’ve been working this restaurant a long, long time, and I’ve become aware that, actually, not very much matters but the wind against your face and whatever joy you can glean from the effort. I’ve mostly stopped even having opinions to express, and no one has yet complained.