Full of Win.
I start every project bike with high expectations. As the parts get duct taped and super-glued to the frame, everything is still bright, shiny, and bursting with potential. I can envision this new bicycle carrying me to glory and ever higher levels of esteem within the local racing community.
Full of Win™.
Then something strange happens. The first time I throw a leg over the top tube, a little bit of that Win™ starts leaking out. Every mile I put on that frame allows just that little bit more of the Win™ to find its way out of the bike. Eventually a bike that spends too much time under my heaving carcass is depleted of Win™, and is relegated to rainy and early/late season rides.
This theory is my justification for owning so many bikes and constantly refreshing the fleet. Something about how I sit on a bike and turn the pedals causes the Win™ to exit at a higher rate than with the comparable riders that are dropping me. I can only assume the massive amount of wattage I produce causes micro-tears in the carbon fiber, allowing the Win™ to exit from the bike in exponentially increasing volumes the longer I ride it. Just my mere presence seems to repel Win™, so my window of opportunity to take advantage of this rare substance is very small. I need to change bikes constantly to stay ahead of the curve. It's science.
It may sound wasteful to leave so many of my old bikes in a depleted, but rest assured I recycle them by selling them to new racers. This way, their development in the sport isn't artificially altered by having too much Win™ in the early stages, thus forcing them to rely on natural talent, hard work, and good life choices to advance. This, in turn, results in my own supply of Win™ lasting longer, until the competition stumbles on my secret and starts acquiring some for themselves.
Yesterday a box showed up literally brimming with Win™. The cardboard could barely contain the sheer volume of Win™ stuffed into it. The shiny, carbon fiber potential is so strong that I may wait to start building the frame up until the last possible minute, so I can wring every last micron of Win™ from it. The power of this new acquisition is so strong I almost forgot about the 10 hours I spent the previous day researching bike parts for a possible Fatback Haul Road project. Almost.
Some may say that it's foolish to publish my peer-reviewed Win™ research studies in such a public forum, because the competition may adopt my strategies and use them for their own gain. After all, we aren't talking about marginal gains here. These are on the magnitude of EPO or blood transfusions. However, there are two reasons I feel the risk is minimal. The first is that most of them aren't foolish enough to go head to head with me in a bike acquisition arms race. It isn't a question of resources, because I'm out-gunned in that regard. Rather, it's the Jedi level of bull-headed financial mismanagement I bring to the table that makes me a formidable adversary in this arena. Unrestrained bicycle consumerism is my house, and nobody disrespects me in my own crib. The second is every reader of this blog is contained within the boarders of Micronesia, and they operate under a completely different race sanctioning body. If sometime in the future they become a potential threat, I can offload the Win™-depleted frames on them and effectively mitigate the risk.
When you're rapidly aging, minimally talented, tactically inept, and weak when it comes to pork fat and simple carbs, you have to play every angle available to you.
My angle is Win™.
Full of Win™.
Then something strange happens. The first time I throw a leg over the top tube, a little bit of that Win™ starts leaking out. Every mile I put on that frame allows just that little bit more of the Win™ to find its way out of the bike. Eventually a bike that spends too much time under my heaving carcass is depleted of Win™, and is relegated to rainy and early/late season rides.
This theory is my justification for owning so many bikes and constantly refreshing the fleet. Something about how I sit on a bike and turn the pedals causes the Win™ to exit at a higher rate than with the comparable riders that are dropping me. I can only assume the massive amount of wattage I produce causes micro-tears in the carbon fiber, allowing the Win™ to exit from the bike in exponentially increasing volumes the longer I ride it. Just my mere presence seems to repel Win™, so my window of opportunity to take advantage of this rare substance is very small. I need to change bikes constantly to stay ahead of the curve. It's science.
It may sound wasteful to leave so many of my old bikes in a depleted, but rest assured I recycle them by selling them to new racers. This way, their development in the sport isn't artificially altered by having too much Win™ in the early stages, thus forcing them to rely on natural talent, hard work, and good life choices to advance. This, in turn, results in my own supply of Win™ lasting longer, until the competition stumbles on my secret and starts acquiring some for themselves.
Yesterday a box showed up literally brimming with Win™. The cardboard could barely contain the sheer volume of Win™ stuffed into it. The shiny, carbon fiber potential is so strong that I may wait to start building the frame up until the last possible minute, so I can wring every last micron of Win™ from it. The power of this new acquisition is so strong I almost forgot about the 10 hours I spent the previous day researching bike parts for a possible Fatback Haul Road project. Almost.
Some may say that it's foolish to publish my peer-reviewed Win™ research studies in such a public forum, because the competition may adopt my strategies and use them for their own gain. After all, we aren't talking about marginal gains here. These are on the magnitude of EPO or blood transfusions. However, there are two reasons I feel the risk is minimal. The first is that most of them aren't foolish enough to go head to head with me in a bike acquisition arms race. It isn't a question of resources, because I'm out-gunned in that regard. Rather, it's the Jedi level of bull-headed financial mismanagement I bring to the table that makes me a formidable adversary in this arena. Unrestrained bicycle consumerism is my house, and nobody disrespects me in my own crib. The second is every reader of this blog is contained within the boarders of Micronesia, and they operate under a completely different race sanctioning body. If sometime in the future they become a potential threat, I can offload the Win™-depleted frames on them and effectively mitigate the risk.
When you're rapidly aging, minimally talented, tactically inept, and weak when it comes to pork fat and simple carbs, you have to play every angle available to you.
My angle is Win™.
Awesome piece Mike!
ReplyDeleteThanks. As a maker of bikes with an exceptionally high Win™ content, that is high praise indeed.
ReplyDelete