I have some friends who think I’m a cycling fanatic. I used to think so myself but I’ve learned that clearly I’m not.  Really.

I have a bike, not a bevy of bikes.  The bike I have cost me hundreds, not thousands.   I don’t display it in the living room, I store it in the garage.  I have supplemented it with a few accessories but I don’t have a warehouse full of gear. I can tell you that it is a, “21 speed,” but I can’t converse about tooth counts or gear ratios.  Furthermore, I think and speak in terms of parts rather than components.

Generally speaking, I don’t use the term local bike shop often enough to warrant shortening it to LBS.  I did buy my bike from the LBS but I don’t consider an LBS to be tourist attractions when I travel.  (See what I did there?)

I own a spoke wrench but I don’t own a truing stand.  I’ve “met” both Presta and Shrader though I don’t always remember which is which and I certainly can’t debate their relative merits.  My concept of maintenance is airing the tires and lubing the chain; beyond that involves a trip to the LBS.

I ride hundreds of miles a year, not hundreds of miles a week.  I ride in t-shirts not jerseys and the shorts I wear don’t have bibs or padding.  I pass and get passed; I don’t break away or get dropped.  I don’t spin or mash, I simply pedal.  I’ve been known to complain that a particular hill was steep but I’ve never bemoaned that I had to climb an X percent grade. I’ve ridden in a group but I’ve never been party to an echelon or peloton. I know that a “century” isn’t a hundred years but rather a hundred miles in one day. A century is not something I make a habit of but something to which I aspire.

I fill my water bottles with water, not electrolytes. I eat but I don’t carbo load.  Sometimes, I stop and have a snack but I don’t grab energy gels at feed stations.

Lastly, winterizing my bike means storing it, not adding bar mitts and mounting snow tires! Oh yeah, and I have hobbies besides riding… like writing.