Working in Tandem: Love and Cycling

In many parts of the country, February is the bleakest month in terms of weather. However, for this reason it is also a time of hope during which the popular imagination turns to spring. For example, back on February 2nd we celebrated Groundhog Day, though there were conflicting prognostications: Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow and declared six more weeks of winter; Staten Island Chuck said there would be an early spring; and Williamsburg Ethan (the "hipster" groundhog) was too hung over to get up at all and anyway he didn't have anywhere to be until like 5:30pm.

Once hairy things start going in and out of holes, it's only a matter of time before people start thinking about love, and on February 14th many couples will reenact Groundhog Day groinally in honor of the holiday known as Valentine's Day. Inevitably though, these expressions of love will be tainted by outside influences as foolhardy people attempt to incorporate their own interests into Valentine's Day instead of temporarily setting them aside and focusing on their partners. Cyclists especially have a tendency to do this, since many of us are unable to focus on anything besides bicycles for more than a few moments. Sometimes though, both members of a couple love cycling as much as they love each other--at least according to this recent post on the New York Times "Spokes" blog:

Here is the story of the happy couple pictured above:

In this case, it would appear that two people can live together in a blissful state of love and perpetual cycling. This makes me very happy, I wish them many joyful years together, and I have absolutely no issue with them. I do, however, have an issue with the Times and its description of the couple as "young, tattooed lovers." I'll take the their word for it that the couple is tattooed, but 30 is not young. I realize that our culture now grades youth on a curve, and that 30 is the new 20 and so forth, and that Williamsburg Ethan's parents do not expect him to "get serious" and pay his own rent until he's gotten that MFA he's been "pursuing" for the last eight years. But in the context of love, young still means young, and even in the 21st century "young love" is "Juno," not "Sideways." On top of that, the couple has been together for six years, so it's not even a young relationship. If mainstream media like the Times keeps pushing the physical definition of "young," before you know it "barely legal" porn will mean pictures of people making withdrawals from their Roth IRAs just a few days after the maturity date, and as "hot" as that may be from a financial standpoint it's not terribly arousing.

Of course, you can't talk about love and cycling without talking about tandems, and the Times also looks at another couple (at age 60, I guess they just missed the "young lovers" cutoff) for whom the tandem is a "mirror onto the relationship:"

This is absolutely true. Relationship warning signs you might encounter on a tandem ride are:

--Your partner pedals too fast;

--Your partner pedals too slow;

--Your partner is giving you "the finger;"

--You are alone on the tandem because your partner is in bed with somebody else;

--Your stoker is a sex doll.

I also agree that you can tell a lot about a couple by the way they share a tandem. For example, this couple both care deeply about the environment and only occasionally have mild disagreements about which items can be composted or who borrowed whose Native American beaded hair tie:

This couple have different feelings regarding recumbent versus upright bicycles, but they made it work:


And this couple is so in love they don't even need a tandem:

Ahh, young love.

Still, not everybody can ride together so successfully, and sometimes you've just got to set the bike aside and pay attention to something else. Even though I taunted "Bicycling" for going skiing yesterday, the truth is sometimes you've got to "switch it up" a little, and the well-rounded person can continue to enjoy life if circumstances make cycling difficult or impossible. For those that can't, though, there's always roller racing. I recently received a newsletter from "Rollapaluza," who were breathlessly excited over a drop-in from Mark Cavendish:

Roller racing is a unique area of cycling in that it seems to appeal to both uptight racers and the shants-and-wool-caps "bike culture" set, though to me watching people race without going anywhere is about as interesting as one of those water balloon games. I guess the reason roller racing works for these two disparate groups is that the only way to get "serious" racers into bars is to hold bike races in them, and the only way to get "bike culture" people to race is to hold the races in bars. ("It's OK to be in a bar as long as there's a race," the roadie tells himself, just like the porn-addicted homophobe tells himself it's OK to watch two penises touching as long as there's a vagina in the shot somewhere.) Marginally less boring than roller racing though certainly more ridiculous is underwater cycling, of which a couple of readers recently informed me:


It's interesting to note that, while people do some pretty dumb stuff on fixed-gears, when it comes to truly idiotic cycling endeavors the low-end mountain bike is almost always the vehicle of choice. In this sense I suppose it is the Rhesus monkey of the bicycle kingdom.

Speaking of the "bike culture," their appetite for overpriced designer u-lock holsters shows no signs of being sated anytime soon, and another reader recently forwarded this item to me:

Unfortunately, if you're in the market for an exotic fanny pack, or a hands-free purse, or the wallet equivalent of a colostomy bag, you're going to have to wait because this isn't available yet. You can, however, purchase this delightful frame bag:
I'm not sure what an "artisanal itch" is, but if you have one I recommend seeing a doctor--or if you're still snowed in, at least apply some Preparation H and resist the urge to scratch.