As I sit here in this golden age of technology, drowning in influence, possibility and opinion, I can't help but feel like we are no further forward as humans than when we decided to stand up straight, grab a tool and leave our ape-shaped ancestors behind.
Sometimes I can feel my brain hurting. It's my own fault: I've developed an addiction to 'research'. It started off when I would use the internet to find out a bit of background information on a product I wanted to buy. The more I did this, the more in-depth I found myself going. Simply knowing the product fitted the bill wasn't enough - I needed more. I then started looking into who used the product: were they cool?? Or at least did I think they were cool?? Who do they sponsor?? Is the team rad?? Is there a video?? You see where I'm going with this....
[powr-media-gallery id=dde7e2b9_1490042689]
The thing is when I started riding bikes it was an alternative venture. Much like skateboarding it was a way to use up some of my youthful energy without having to kick, throw or bounce a ball around a box painted on the floor. I could get stoke, explore, be independent and be social all without really trying, and certainly without conforming to the norm. If my bike rolled then I hit the road and if it didn't I fixed it with whatever I could and as fast as possible because I needed to get back out there!
The point I'm trying to make is . . . what happened to that enthusiasm?? Has my youthful exuberance abandoned me?? Am I on the slippery slope to middle-aged madness and old age incontinence?? Or in actual fact has the shit storm of brain-filling media, so easily accessible to me and justified through my 'research', ruined my ability to see a bike as the engineering masterpiece of circles turning circles that it is?? Einstein spoke of wanting an innocent mind...free of scientific influence so he could discover things without any preconceived bias and I feel for him. I for one have reached this stage in my riding life. It's not that I've lost my pure unadulterated stoke for pushing pedals...I've just buried it underneath heaps and heaps of internet information.
[powr-media-gallery id=31a6e376_1490043029]
I'm sure many great post-ape pre-civilian minds have been lost this way, tool and women envy alone has surely taken up lots of room in otherwise progressive caveman minds, preventing them from making their own sick tools and finding their own rad women.
What I'm trying to say here is - if your bike works ride it, if your bike's broken fix it and if you've got some down time read a book about someone who rode somewhere. Leave the internet to the truthers and catfish. (Except conquista.cc, obviously.)
Josh
Also in Blog
The season for far …
Gent-Wevelgem in Flanders Fields
