I am a past master at making a ride less enjoyable for all of the other people who are riding with me.  I do not say this with pride, I simply acknowledge that, for some of us, the learning curve is pretty long and slow, and I have had not only my share of goofs but probably your share and the shares of seventeen other people and their dogs as well.  I will now share with you some of my rules for making the ride less enjoyable for everyone else. These have, unfortunately, worked for me, and they make work for you, too, if that's the route you decide to go.

1.  If a driver ticks you off, do your best to tick him off in return, 
     preferably with obscene hand gestures. 

If your response encourages the driver to come back to discuss the matter with you, so much the better.  A person on a seventeen pound bike should always be ready to argue with someone driving a two thousand pound motorized vehicle

2.  When you get up front to take a pull, be sure to do one of the
     following things:

A. Sit up and take a drink, slowing the group down without warning

Everyone will like the unexpected rest.  The group was probably going too hard, anyway

B.  Suddenly and unexpectedly go as hard as you can

We all like it when we're having a nice chat and suddenly have to blow out our lungs because someone has taken off.  It gets the blood moving.

C. Don't hold a steady speed.  Instead, keep speeding up and slowing
     down

Doing the same thing for too long gets boring, so everyone will appreciate the variety that you are introducing into the ride

 D.  Don't use hand signals to let the people behind you know what
        you're doing and don't point out road hazards.

Everyone loves to have their reflexes tested, right?

 3.  Take every opportunity to leave the rest of the group behind and
       take off on your own

Your strength and speed will make you the admiration of all of those slow-pokes who just wanted to hang out and ride together

 4.  If, at the end of the ride, it is obvious that no one is going to sprint,
      then sprint all by yourself. 

There is no sprint because a truce has been called, usually unspoken, but respecting that sort of thing makes the ride boring.  Spice it up for everyone else, won't you?  As a corollary, before doing this, you spend some time talking excessively about how you aren't going to sprint because your legs aren't feeling good.

This is especially effective if you can do it by talking about the really hard ride you were on yesterday that nobody else was or all of the extra miles you got before today's ride by heading out early.  Simply stating that you got some extra miles or had a hard ride isn't annoying, so make sure you finish it off with the complaints about your current physical state

 6.  If there is a sprint at the end and you lose it, be sure to invoke the
      previous rule and explain your loss by complaining about your
      excess of miles.

 7.  Always unclip with both feet at the same time

This will make everyone else nervous because they will think you won't be able to control your bike properly, but don't listen to them.  They may not be able to ride well that way, but you can.

 8.  Never arrive for a ride until the moment when the rest of the group is
      pulling out of the parking lot.  For bonus points, don't have either of
      the wheels on your bike and make sure that neither one of your tires
      has air in it and you don't have a pump so you have to borrow one

Certain people have a permanent exemption from this rule.  In their case, the surprise caused by their showing up early would be detrimental to everyone's health 

9.  Say you'll be there for the ride and then simply don't show up

I like to think that people are waiting for me even though I'm not coming.  It makes me feel special.

10.  And, most of all, don't have fun.  We hate it when we have fun.

A Close Shave 

I do not shave my legs.

I don't know about you, but this makes me unusual in the circles in which I move. In fact, after I had been riding for awhile I was told that I should shave my legs because I was "good enough now." The idea, of course, is that if you show up for a ride in full kit and with shaved legs but you have no get up and go, you'll look silly. (I think it has been conclusively demonstrated that I look silly regardless of how I ride, and expecting the scraping of hair off of my shins to alter that is just wishful thinking on somebody's part.)

I have considered the concept of a guy shaving his legs (well, I have considered it theoretically. I'm just not tempted to go to that much trouble myself) and I have given some thought to why people do it. (Please note that, while it's too much trouble for me to actually shave my legs, it is apparently not too much trouble for me to spend an excessive amount of time thinking about shaving my legs. Go figure.)

So why do amateur cyclists shave their legs?

Here are some reasons I have been given:

Road rash will heal better if your legs are shaven. Well, that's probably true. Of course, the same logic applies to your arms, your shoulders, your back, your face (ouch!). What if, like me, you are apparently part Wookie? Logic dictates that, at the very least, if I'm going to shave my legs, I should shave my arms as well, and that's clearly waaaaaaaay too much trouble. I would say that the best solution for me personally would be to not get any road rash by the simple expedient of not falling off my bike anymore. If only. Falling off my bike is a talent that I have practice and honed over the years, and somehow I don't see me giving it up any time soon. My general lack of coordination will take care of that, but I'm still too lazy to shave.

It's much easier to massage and rub oil into the legs if they are shaven. Hey, no doubt. I can just imagine how much of a mess it would be to rub oil into my furry little walking sticks, but the simple fact is that no one is lining up to give me a leg massage or to rub anything into my legs after a ride, alas.

It cuts down on wind resistance. You know, I just don't know enough physics to tell you whether it does or not. There are people who believe that Laurent Fignon lost the Tour de France by eight seconds because he had a pony tail. The pros do wind tunnel testing to look for drag and to find ways to reduce it. Maybe if I shaved my legs I could cut five seconds off my time, or even ten. Unfortunately, speeding me up by ten seconds is a lot like dropping Wile E. Coyote off of a cliff that's ten feet lower. Sure, it's a difference, but it isn't really going to help that much. There are guys who can profit by a small gain because they're already so good that even a small gain is valuable. I'm just not one of those guys.

It looks cool. Well, there it is, really. If you ride well, your legs probably look pretty darn good. Shaving them shows them off to advantage. Riding well with shaved legs makes you look cooler than riding well with unshaven legs. Cool is in the eye of the beholder, but we're looking with the eyes of a cyclist, and shaved legs are definitely cooler than unshaven. This lets me out, though. As I've already indicated, I'm so terminally unhip that a little thing like shaving my legs isn't going to up the Fonzie factor in my case by enough to do anyone any good at all.

I know my limits.

Mind you, if you're one of those guys who does shave your legs, more power to you. I know you can ride me into the ground any day of the week.

I also know that my shaving my legs isn't going to help that any, so I won't bother.

See you on the road, furry legs and all.

My Midlife Crisis 

Apparently, I went through a midlife crisis. I didn't know I was going through a midlife crisis, but there are certain things in life that people around you are always willing to point out to you. I had the classic symptoms. First of all, I had turned forty. Second, I took a look at my old clunker of a car and decided I needed something new, something sleek, something sporty, and no automatics for me, thank you very much, I'll shift those gears myself. And, while we're at it, who wants to be closed up in a car? I want the wind in my face and that glorious sense of freedom that only comes from being on two wheels instead of four.

We have a Harley Davidson dealer in town. I know because I went right past it on my way to the bicycle shop. 

Bicycle shops have a certain smell that all cyclists recognize - rubber, chain lube, vinyl, I don't know what all goes into making that aroma, but every cyclist I've ever met knows it and to us all it smells like home. That is not intended to be an insult to my housekeeping skills, by the way.

I looked around at all the gleaming machines. I hadn't ridden a bike since I was a kid, and that one had been red with coaster brakes. You know the kind - you kick back and down on the pedals and your bike skids to a stop, possibly leaving rubber on the pavement. I didn't think I'd want that kind now, though. What works when you're eight doesn't always seem like such a great idea when you're forty.

After my eyes were finally able to tear themselves away from all the shiny chrome, I started looking at price tags. Whoof! Those things are expensive, aren't they?

Note to all noncyclists. Don't ask a cyclist how much his bike cost. He will probably lie to you, giving you a much lower figure than he really paid. This is not because cyclists are embarrassed by how much they paid, it's just that they don't enjoy the pitying looks that noncylists give them. We know you don't get it. We just don't like it that you think we're the crazy ones. Some people think it's rude to ask the cost of a bike. Oddly enough, it is not considered rude to ask how much a particular component on the bike cost. I suppose that means that the only polite thing to do is to ask the cost of each component individually and then total it all up in your head and figure in the sales tax. Seems like a waste of time, really. Still, it's your time. Do what you like.

I eventually settled on a bike and purchased it. 

That makes it seem like a quick thing, doesn't it? It was really a long process that was stretched out over two weeks. I don't like to rush into these things. Would you like to know everything I thought about during that time? No? Right, then. Moving on.

I once sat in on a conversation by two car enthusiasts. It was full of words like "torque" and numbers like "400 cc" and strange bits of gibberish that communicated nothing to me at all, even though they were both practically drooling over some imaginary vehicle they could both see in their heads, and I could do the same thing to you now about my bike, gabbling on about the component gruppo, the gearing ratio, the frame geometry, but I imagine that even that list of terms has made your eyes start to glaze over and your head start to droop, so we'll skip it for now.

Finally, though, Steve held the door open and I pushed my new bike out of the store. As Steve and a friend watched me as I prepared to set off on my maiden voyage, I climbed unsteadily into the saddle, pushed off and wobbled my way along the asphalt. I can tell you exactly what I was thinking at that moment: "Don't fall off! Don't fall off!" That was followed by "Huh. It's true. You really don't forget how to ride a bike." I made it across the parking lot and back to the store alive and with my skin intact. Nice.

I got my bike home and set out on my first real ride. It was June. It was 97 degrees out. The humidity was high. I rode for twenty minutes. At the end of that time it felt like my legs were going to fall off, and I was kind of wishing they would because I thought that would hurt less. And yet, somehow, it had been fun. I was ready for more. That's the odd thing about cycling. If you do it seriously, it often hurts, but somehow it's still fun. 

I think I'll go ride my bike now.