passing it on
When I started to plan my move, one of the first things that I did was post various things on Craiglist: things that I may have loved and appreciated but needed to let go. Of these, none was moreso valuable than my old Trek. I credit the Trek 520 with being the catalyst for my long distance cycling. I did my first bike tour the year after I bought it, and started doing brevets shortly thereafter. It was a fine, trustworthy machine, but the new obsession with brevet riding got me into getting a custom bike more suited for the extreme hours and distance. Once I had the ANT, the Trek languished in the basement. I had plans to refurbish and sell it, but didn't really follow through until the move made it particularly necessary.
I posted the Trek for a modest price. I wasn't looking to make any money on it, just recoup the price of parts that I had to replace then rechannel that cash into moving expenses. As soon as I posted it, the activity on the post was frenzied and offers came in from all sorts of people who could sniff a deal. In the end, I wound up selling it to an eager young guy who looked rather familiar until I realized that I had seen his photo on the internet. In the now increasingly quaint tradition of Internet nicknames, he went by the handle of joeyfresh.
Over the last couple of years, since getting the fixed gear, I've intermittently lurked on an online forum called Bostonfixed. I came for the advice and stayed, as the kids say, for the lulz. The regulars are young to my eyes: students, messengers, and mechanics, and constitute an alternate channel for tracking the eternal shifting and endlessly entertaining patterns of net slang and pop culture memes. I post from time to time, too, usually on politics threads or touring or route advice. Someone asks about riding from Boston to the Berkshires, and I'll throw something out based on past fleche or 350k routes. I will likely never approach the near encyclopedic knowledge of New England roads that are held by other folks that I ride with, like Bruce or Pamela, but it can still be amazing how much experience one can pick up after five or so years of doing something.
There are a couple of marketplace threads on Bfixed places where folks can just post stuff that they wanted to buy or sell, or repost Craigslist ads that might be relevant to someone's interests. I didn't post to the "For Sale" thread just because I didn't think about it, but within hours of my Craigslist ad going up, it was indepedently reposted to Bfixed, and different people were specifically telling joeyfresh to jump on that shit, like, right the hell now.
The forum has been going through its own fascination with long distance cycling, especially as promotion of epic rides like the D2R2 have spread. joe had gone out with some folks to pre-ride sections of the D2R2 and it's gotten him into thinking about touring and long distance cycling. When we met, he told me how he was looking for a bike exactly like this, and I said to him, "well, you know, it is the classic touring bicycle. It's fine as a commuter, but it needs to be ridden to the horizon. I felt bad keeping it cooped up in the basement for the last couple of years."
"And now that i know where you post," I said, "I'd better see you do something awesome with it. No excuses"
So, yeah, he bought the bike and then two weeks later, he took off for Tampa, Florida to see his family. No excuses, indeed.
To hear joeyfresh say it, a day or so after getting the bike, he was drinking coffee with friends and while high on caffeine just said, "I can go anywhere with this thing. Why, I can ... I can go to Florida, even."
I need to ask him where he gets his coffee.
Bear in mind, that prior to this, joe's never done a multi-day bike ride. He's never toured. He didn't own panniers or any bike luggage. I don't think he's even done a century before this year. There is wisdom in preparation, in being deliberate about your plans; and there is also a different sort of virtue in just realizing that preparation has its limits, and ultimately one just has to go for it.
On my end, three days after I sold the Trek 520 to joeyfresh, I was hit by a car while riding to work on the ANT. I have another post to talk about how my summer essentially vanished before it started, but suffice to say that physically I was fine, but I was without a bicycle for nearly a month. So, when joe returned from his trip and offered to host a gathering so that he could tell us about his voyage, I thought it would at least vicariously scratch an itch left in my mind that was craving a bit of adventure.
It was a humid summer night in Jamaica Plain, when we all gathered in his apartment, while Joe hooked up a borrowed projector to his computer and started running through slides. His friends hooted and hollered at some of his goofy pictures and goofier stories. The kid can spin a yarn. But I also cracked a sympathetic smile when he started talking about the soul crushing climbs of Connecticut, and dealing with some of the typical challenges that every bike tourist faces; realizing how much dead weight you've packed after your second day, and how the flip side of riding on quiet, beautiful country back roads is that they are beautiful, isolated and have precious few places to top up on water.
But then, he went beyond that and talked about wild camping in baseball dugouts in Maryland and dodging bar fights in the Deep South. He showed us photos of some of the weathered cross-country riders that he'd come across, and other random strangers who'd take him in, exchanging food and shelter for a little story of adventure.
During a break, he asked me if I was enjoying myself because I was being quiet and I just said that it was just my way in a new space with new people; but I was enjoying the stories. Listening to people chatter about what was on TV last night, or gossip about celebrities was boring; but I never tired of listening to people following dreams that were so similar to my own.
The night ran along longer than expected. It was a long trip and there were a lot of stories. But I was happy as I rode home, alone, weaving my way through the quiet midnight streets, smiling at how in life, you sometimes don't gain something until you let something else go.
I posted the Trek for a modest price. I wasn't looking to make any money on it, just recoup the price of parts that I had to replace then rechannel that cash into moving expenses. As soon as I posted it, the activity on the post was frenzied and offers came in from all sorts of people who could sniff a deal. In the end, I wound up selling it to an eager young guy who looked rather familiar until I realized that I had seen his photo on the internet. In the now increasingly quaint tradition of Internet nicknames, he went by the handle of joeyfresh.
Over the last couple of years, since getting the fixed gear, I've intermittently lurked on an online forum called Bostonfixed. I came for the advice and stayed, as the kids say, for the lulz. The regulars are young to my eyes: students, messengers, and mechanics, and constitute an alternate channel for tracking the eternal shifting and endlessly entertaining patterns of net slang and pop culture memes. I post from time to time, too, usually on politics threads or touring or route advice. Someone asks about riding from Boston to the Berkshires, and I'll throw something out based on past fleche or 350k routes. I will likely never approach the near encyclopedic knowledge of New England roads that are held by other folks that I ride with, like Bruce or Pamela, but it can still be amazing how much experience one can pick up after five or so years of doing something.
There are a couple of marketplace threads on Bfixed places where folks can just post stuff that they wanted to buy or sell, or repost Craigslist ads that might be relevant to someone's interests. I didn't post to the "For Sale" thread just because I didn't think about it, but within hours of my Craigslist ad going up, it was indepedently reposted to Bfixed, and different people were specifically telling joeyfresh to jump on that shit, like, right the hell now.
The forum has been going through its own fascination with long distance cycling, especially as promotion of epic rides like the D2R2 have spread. joe had gone out with some folks to pre-ride sections of the D2R2 and it's gotten him into thinking about touring and long distance cycling. When we met, he told me how he was looking for a bike exactly like this, and I said to him, "well, you know, it is the classic touring bicycle. It's fine as a commuter, but it needs to be ridden to the horizon. I felt bad keeping it cooped up in the basement for the last couple of years."
"And now that i know where you post," I said, "I'd better see you do something awesome with it. No excuses"
So, yeah, he bought the bike and then two weeks later, he took off for Tampa, Florida to see his family. No excuses, indeed.
To hear joeyfresh say it, a day or so after getting the bike, he was drinking coffee with friends and while high on caffeine just said, "I can go anywhere with this thing. Why, I can ... I can go to Florida, even."
I need to ask him where he gets his coffee.
Bear in mind, that prior to this, joe's never done a multi-day bike ride. He's never toured. He didn't own panniers or any bike luggage. I don't think he's even done a century before this year. There is wisdom in preparation, in being deliberate about your plans; and there is also a different sort of virtue in just realizing that preparation has its limits, and ultimately one just has to go for it.
On my end, three days after I sold the Trek 520 to joeyfresh, I was hit by a car while riding to work on the ANT. I have another post to talk about how my summer essentially vanished before it started, but suffice to say that physically I was fine, but I was without a bicycle for nearly a month. So, when joe returned from his trip and offered to host a gathering so that he could tell us about his voyage, I thought it would at least vicariously scratch an itch left in my mind that was craving a bit of adventure.
It was a humid summer night in Jamaica Plain, when we all gathered in his apartment, while Joe hooked up a borrowed projector to his computer and started running through slides. His friends hooted and hollered at some of his goofy pictures and goofier stories. The kid can spin a yarn. But I also cracked a sympathetic smile when he started talking about the soul crushing climbs of Connecticut, and dealing with some of the typical challenges that every bike tourist faces; realizing how much dead weight you've packed after your second day, and how the flip side of riding on quiet, beautiful country back roads is that they are beautiful, isolated and have precious few places to top up on water.
But then, he went beyond that and talked about wild camping in baseball dugouts in Maryland and dodging bar fights in the Deep South. He showed us photos of some of the weathered cross-country riders that he'd come across, and other random strangers who'd take him in, exchanging food and shelter for a little story of adventure.
During a break, he asked me if I was enjoying myself because I was being quiet and I just said that it was just my way in a new space with new people; but I was enjoying the stories. Listening to people chatter about what was on TV last night, or gossip about celebrities was boring; but I never tired of listening to people following dreams that were so similar to my own.
The night ran along longer than expected. It was a long trip and there were a lot of stories. But I was happy as I rode home, alone, weaving my way through the quiet midnight streets, smiling at how in life, you sometimes don't gain something until you let something else go.