“SNUB THIS” BY UNCLE CHAD
“Snub This!”
By Uncle Chad
You’re basically saying “SNUB THIS” with every boutique item you buy. I just saw a rider who bought a saddle for a sale price of $600 US! Yikes on toast! Problem is, next month there will be one for $650 and a whopping five measly grams lighter! Does that mean he bought the latest and greatest? Or dated and hated? Or is he just trying to show off? IMO, cyclists have perfected the art of the “snub”. Simply defined as; “the sticking up of the nose at another”. Considering there are only about 10 noticeable parts to a bicycle, to do this by buying a part or two takes considerable skill and knowledge, or sometimes just money. The point of “the snub” is to make all the other cyclists feel like a cheap tire on a bumpy road. Why it involves buying expensive parts is beyond my comprehension. It must be some Napoleon complex that involves some form of self fulfillment, since most of these items don’t make you faster, nor can you even see them when you are riding.
Sometimes you don’t even need to buy the part. If you read the trades, and or go to the bike shows, you may have the knowledge to simply poo-poo another rider’s choice of components! This costs you no money, and still makes that cyclist feel cheap and inferior.
With the thousands spent on coaches, heart rate monitors, power watt monitors, (or not), I have tried to come up the ultimate equation for “the snub”.
The Snub equals (the original weight of part minus reduced weight of new part), times $ spent on both parts, divided by the time (in days) spent reading and researching the part. Take the square root of those days and multiply by 1.45 to get the percentage of when you will be dropped on the next ride. After getting dropped, take the number of miles you saved as you took the shortcut to limp back home, press the cosine key on your calculator and multiply back into the mileage of your next ride.
Pretty soon, you will figure out when and where you will get dropped, and will never buy a new part again.
So do you have your own rant? Send it to me, you never know, we very well might use it. And if we do we will send you some Bicycle.net swag.
Categories: Cranky Mechanic, Features, Hub
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BMC Working Well
It’s related to penis size; or perceived penis size. The more flashy parts and money spent on bike parts, the smaller the penis that the “weight weenie” is trying to overcompensate for.
It’s just like bigger and louder car stereos, faster and flashier cars, taller and louder 4×4 trucks, etc. Men are amusing creatures in that we somehow equate bigger, louder, flashier with tribe rank, manliness, and penis size.
Me, I don’t care. I have no need to assert dominance over the pack, impress women (or other men) with my massive manliness as demonstrated by my SRM power meter and carbon fibre saddle, or really impress anyone at all. I ride a bike because I enjoy it. I ride for the freedom to get away from the stupidity of societies; posturing, competitiveness, schedules, quantification, etc. I ride to be free.