Yesterday I read this. Which, I suggest you stop reading my post and read that first. But, if you're not going to, because for whatever reason you can't get enough of my grammatical mistakes, I'll give you the reader's digest version.
Guy hangs out in drum shop and starts to notice a trend in the customers. There are guys who only want really specific vintage drums. There are guys who can't play a lick but have a ton of money so they buy expensive drums anyway. Then there's a kid who doesn't look the part but when he plays it's amazing and they ask him what kind of kit he has and he says he picked it up from the ChuckECheese when it was about to close down. It's the kit that the fake animatronic mouse played on. He then points out that now as he likes to hang out in bike shops, he notices the same trends in bike consumers. Then he wraps it up a with a question of how many kids with tons of talent have shown up at a local group ride not looking the part, being ignored, and talent gone to waste?
I guess that's a valid point, except every time I've been on a group ride with a super talented guy, it generally doesn't matter what he's riding. He kicks everybody's teeth in pretty quickly and we stop making fun of his socks.
When I was in high school my baseball coach used to always say, "Son, if you're not a ball player, at least you can look like one." That was his way of correcting all of the sideways hats and un-tucked jerseys. I remember pretty vividly one game when the other team's short stop had on bumble bee stripped socks with his pants rolled up high to his knees. We all made fun of him. Then he went 3-4 with like 4 RBIs and made a couple great defensive plays that left us all in agreement that he could play in a tutu if he wanted.
It's the same in cycling. We all dress the part, mimic the pros, follow the rules and quietly poke fun of the new guy with hairy legs and a pie plate. Well, until he drops your ass on the climb and then you go find out his name as you're still gasping for air.
But just as the author notices a trend in rich guys buying drum kits way more expensive than they need, there are no shortage of rich, fat guys rolling around on $10gs worth of carbon fiber and it's always drove me absolutely insane. I know it shouldn't bother me. In fact, it should make me smile every time I drop one of those guys on their sub 14lb bike on my 19ish lb aluminum CX bike. But, jealousy takes over and one always wants what one doesn't have.
A long time ago I came up with this Title IX-esk system that I thought all bike shops should employee. Every time some slow, rich dude comes in and buys a PRO level bike there should be a sliding scale that actually increases the mark up of that bike based on his ability to actually ride it fast. That extra mark up would then go into a community fund that would help those uber talented poor kids get on bikes that are actually worth riding. When I first proposed this concept to anyone who was unlucky enough to be in ear shot the extra pot of money was to benefit me. But as I've gotten older, wiser and much more philanthropic, I realized I don't need fancy stuff to continue to ride my bikes medium fast. Instead, the talented kids who can't even afford the level of stuff I have should get it so they can go from riding plastic Sora junk to at least Rival or 105.
Obviously this is never going to happen but I think about it every single time I see a rich dude on a [fill in the blank] bike with [highest level component line] rolling on [$3k+ wheels]. But, a boy can dream can't he?
(In the drum scenario there are those guys who want vintage kits and there are those guys in the bike world as well. They ride custom bikes hand made by some buy in a garage or a boutique artists space. While those bikes are often just as expensive as the primary offender I'm speaking of, they are excluded from this discussion as they are riding art slowly, not bikes meant to win the cycling's biggest races.)
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