Essay: On the 700th
(2023) Three-and-a-half years after writing our article celebrating the 500th publication - and subsequently forgetting the 600th - a lot has changed in our world, our friends’ worlds, and the cycling scene. It’s all symbiotic. Our epic outings of eight hours each weekend are somewhere in the past. Friends who, when creakybottombracket.com was started, were childless, are now loading cars up to head to practice or recitals. Race directors and event promoters have either altered their model or closed up shop. Meanwhile people’s heads come off when the word gravel is mentioned. A lot can happen in nearly 1,300 days.
Our last milestone article was penned during the height of the pandemic. People who normally avoid others, suddenly couldn’t stop complaining about social distancing. Meanwhile buckets of anxiety came with every rider to an event starting line. Tiger King was quoted daily. I was sort of digging the quiet roads. It was hard to come up with content knowing it could all get canceled days later. Contacting our closest event coordinators was an exercise in caution. They were the ones walking around unsure if the event they had set up, charged for, geared for, permitted for, would even go off. Some didn’t and all that swag stayed in boxes while the money came out of the accounts.
Since those dramatic days of color coordinated maps of outbreaks, cycling has been in a weird sort of daze. Sure the Tour de France made headlines because it was the fastest ever, but in local races it’s like people vaporized. Large races were now medium sized. Had people burnt themselves out during the Shut Down? I postulate super competitive people suddenly found out how much could be accomplished instead of training for races. A new group of competitors is years away, perhaps.
One by one our riding buddies have headed off down the path of adulthood. We once took jobs that kept one foot in youth while claiming we were ‘making it.’ Slowly each of us moved out of apartments into houses. Then we all got married. Now we all have kids and we try to pass along the love of cycling to them. And yes, every kid’s bike should have a SpurCycle bell on it. Now we have the fast bike we lusted over in youth. Only we can’t make them go as fast as they could have when we were younger. It’s only a matter of time before the kids commandeer them and properly put the bikes through their paces.
In all the days since our 500th post, we have lost count how many events have disappeared from the calendar. Some events have dwindled in their presence. Others have plowed forward, coming out on the other side with steadfast determination to remain. Further, many of our comrades have purchased gravel bikes, having ditched the race bikes for the chic new chubby tired bikes. Perhaps those bikes are the reason our Strava has been full of daily century-plus rides. It’s like people put down the competitive spirit in exchange for the ability to go the distance. Meanwhile our content has changed. Here at creakybottombracket.com we have strived to encourage people to come out and ride our events. We also strive to slip some bike shop experience out into the open. Either way, a new hope has entered, and we are dearly pulling to write an 800th article about how events have come back, friends ride events with their kids, former racers are now putting on rides, and that strange post-lockdown daze has passed. We also hope the next one hundred articles come sooner than this one. It would mean our inspiration has returned in full.
