251 Tips that Suck
1. Ride your bicycle piss-drunk. Fun will rain upon you like blood from your forehead. You may run down a pedestrian, engage in fisticuffs with a motorist, lose a big gamble or even invent your own particular style of a good time. Or you might crash and burn on the median, losing your helmet in the process.
2 – 251. Subscribe to the premier cycling publication in the USA, Bicycling Magazine and receive a few issues for the low low price of some math to make their price look lower. And you’ll get Mountain Bike magazine for free! If that exciting publication isn’t enough of a bonus to convince you to get magazines with oiled oil muscled dudes on the cover you’ll also receive the best 250 recycled and rehashed old tips ever, for free. Maybe your next issue will be about Shonny VanSomething or even about America’s next Tour Champ, Floyd Landis. Clearly these people know what they’re talking about, on the cutting edge of the sport. Hardtails are dead dude, haven’t you heard?
Sorry Rodalians, gotta bust your balls on this one. Venture to subscribe to Bicycling Magazine, the biggest of the big boys, and you are greeted with the above thumbnail featuring the face of disgraced Pennsyltucky native Floyd Landis, linked to the role-model Rock Racing as of late based on the bathroom rumor. Some people held on to hope longer than others, but even for the relative neighbors in Emmaus it’s time to give up hope. Change the thumbnail already.
dan on January 10th, 2008 8:02 am
The December Issue of Bicycling has 6 full page adds for bicycles. It has 11 full or two page adds for cars. One of my customers suggested they change the name to car-cycling. I have to say there is nothing better than driving your bike places.
-You too can pose with the rest of the cat5 roadie douchebags. It’s easy… pile a bunch of Record or Do-you-race and Carbon bicycle shit on top of your Audi and drive it 5 miles out of town to a place that has access to “backroads”. Then, get a bunch of like minded, leg shaving, 15mph average beginners in team kits and turn your nose up at the one-off dude that shows up on a steel bike with 105. Make sure that not one person in the group has ANY handling skills, this keeps the local shops stocked with your douchebag team kit and the local burn units busy. For the loe of God, DO NOT allow any mountain bikers on road bikes.
Next, and this is the hard part, attack every hill with wreckless abandon while flailing your elbows like a BMX racer. Never mind the cars, YOU are a racer. You have to remember you are fast to keep the picking order in check. After the 25 mile “hard training ride” be sure to ridicule the slowest two douches in the group. If you find you are not able to keep up with the lead douchebag, make sure everyone knows you are doing base miles that day and don’t want to blow up at the next weeks cat5 beginner criterium training race.
Most importantly, and this is serious, see to it that the dude on the steel bike, who was seated on all the climbs while he talked to you, and kept up, will never, NEVER feel welcome.
Post ride, go home and tell your wife how fucking cool you are while sucking down a prepared recovery drink and reading, what else? Bicycling’s latest Car review magazine. Make sure to follow every tip, it will also help with the purchase of a new Powertap, cus you are a racer.
(yeah, I got a grudge.)
-Al on January 10th, 2008 8:05 am
No shit.
I received a scrip to this rag as a gift. It only took one glance. I don’t even open the thing. It’s straight into the recycle bin. I even requested they stop sending it but it keeps coming!
You forgot to mention that it has more ads for cars and SUV’s than anything. And regardless of what they might print, the attitutde towards cycling and the cyling lifestyle they promote only perpetuate habits like using performance enhancing DRUUUUGS!
DrunkenBiker on January 10th, 2008 8:29 am
“(yeah, I got a grudge.)”
A grudge ??
That is way beyond a grudge.
Some spandex clad sissy boy bang your wife or something ?
hehehehehe
dan on January 10th, 2008 9:29 am
Drunkenbiker, my friend, I was the dude on the steel bike that handed all of them thier asses may years ago. The owner’s of the shop I work at support a team of these guys and I deal with them on a daily basis. One of the team “leader beans” stop racing cross cuz I would show up with furry legs smelling like beer and hand him his ass.
sommerfliesby on January 10th, 2008 11:02 am
Keep it real for the hair-leggers Dan! I LOVE beating people at the local training crits and then telling them I don’t race. And I just now moved up to Ultegra.
Mikey on January 10th, 2008 1:34 pm
Guys-
Bicycling keeps showing up at my house too. There is usually at least one excellent article each month, the rest is pretty fluffy indeed. I like looking at bike ads, but I find the SUV ads obnoxious. I guess that’s how they pay the bills. Yeesh.
I am too slow to race but I love to ride my carbon/DA “trophy bike.” You can’t take it with you, so why not spend it on cool shiny things? I try hard and hang with guys a lot harder than me, even if I don’t take all my pulls. As long as I’m smooth and safe, most guys seem okay with that. I started tagging along on club rides on a 20 year-old steel POS and the guys were diffident… actually they were annoyed because I always made the break, Now they love me because my bike is as cool as theirs. Enjoy the ride.
Mikey
Milwaukee Urbanbiker on January 10th, 2008 1:41 pm
When everyone was on steel, this same team existed. Un-natrually tan, legs clean, team jersey freshly pressed. Everyone knows when you race and you are good, parts don’t mean crap. Fear the MF’ers w/ 105 or some other silly combination of parts because they will crash you if you get in the way and expensive parts are expensive parts even to the A-hole in the Audi.
Marrock on January 10th, 2008 3:39 pm
We have a Mr. & Mrs. Lance Wannabe in town here, usually found very early in the morning or just around dinner time, matching kit, matching bikes, matching piss-poor attitudes, they look down their nose at absolutely everyone they feel is not in their “league”, which, as it turns out, is everyone else on the planet.
I like catching them as they go hammering up the hill, I smile and wave as I pass them on my beater with an overloaded BoB trailer behind it.
I’m not sure but I think they hate me.
DrunkenBiker on January 10th, 2008 6:09 pm
“show up with furry legs smelling like beer and hand him his ass.”
1) Showing up smelling like beer is all good. Basically 1/2 my life story.
2) Handing me my ass is all good. Basically 75% of my biking life right there. 100% when hills are involved. ha
3) Furry legs ?? Shoot on sight I say.
Opus the Poet on January 10th, 2008 8:32 pm
As a cyclist that loses 2-5 pounds every spring when the leg fur comes off to make room for the sunscreen, I like Bicycling magazine. I just don’t like it enough to pay for it since they hardly ever have articles on bikes like mine (recumbent) or on how I like to use my bike (I ride to distant cities and visit in person with friends) I was riding 112 miles a day to go have lunch with a friend last year, until she died. For the most part Bicycling ignores me, and I return the favor.
Opus
Joe on January 11th, 2008 1:39 am
I bought the last issue only because it had Ross Dillion writeup
in it.. use to race with that guy before he got hit..
Sad thing is last time we raced we had diffrences. I wish him well
always. He has come along way.
Peace,
Joe
slappy on January 11th, 2008 1:42 am
Well that one MOuntain BIke looked farmiliar cuz i still have my copy.. cuz it has an ariticle on sswc05 and they have some pretty nice shoots of the whole crew their in pennslytucky gettin ready to suffer.. just so you know, as a bike mechanic whose pretty objective at this stage of the game, reading rodaile or any other publication is just another bit of information to digest, it doesn’t have to hurt you unless you’re real fragile – like. Then when you work in a shop and someone comes in who has yet to learn just how cool they can be, and happens to have picked up bicycling in the dentist office and wants to know if there is a used bike with their name on it, well then you can understand what their level of knowledge is, given that it’s derived from the coprorate propoganda that Bicylcing and others spew.. and then you can cut right to the chase and explain the rational of the 10 yr old 8 spd. 100% legit road bike that you’re gonna sell them instead…. gear exchange g’wood springs Co
Joe on January 11th, 2008 5:24 am
BTW hair takes people down.. LOL
hellbelly on January 11th, 2008 7:28 am
I received a subscription for christmas this year all because of my re-interest in the sport. My only comment would be that there are not enough scantily clad women. Why print a magazine without some skin? To address the comments about beater bikes / bike snob annoyance, my trick, back in the day, was to put a kick stand on my race bike during the week on group rides. Nothing annoyed anyone more. Having the guy with the kick stand win the town sign sprint, while everyone else had been busy backing out crank, stem, chainring bolts and replacing with titanium. It was priceless. It’s not the equipment!
sommerfliesby on January 11th, 2008 8:52 am
That’s a nice technique hellbelly. I always wanted to show up on the line at a mtb race with a baseball card in my spokes…never did, but hey, maybe that’s an excuse to race again?
mxracer652 on January 11th, 2008 11:58 am
Hmmm,
I think hellbelly is onto something. Spring crits on a triple, with frame pump & seatbag sound appealing. I’ll be the scourge of the series.
sorelegs on January 11th, 2008 8:50 pm
Kick stand off the front at a City Limits sign. Now that is puddin’. Nice leadbelly.
sorelegs on January 11th, 2008 8:51 pm
ooops I mean hellbelly…
BillStrickland on January 15th, 2008 11:29 am
Bradq — you were right to call us out on that stupid leftover thumbnail graphic. If it’s not changed already, it’s in the process; we told our subscription/marketing depts to get rid of it.
Dan . . . I apologize on the behalf of my shiny-legged brethren all those years ago. For sure we can be jackasses. And if you’ll send me your address I’d like to send you some stories we’ve done that might show you we can be a good read between iterations of how to change flats and do wheelies.