#TBT: Learning Bicyclese

I've been meaning to write about this one ever since the first week on the Tasmanian Trail, when I first started learning the language of the bicycle. As a bike commuter I thought I knew a fair bit of it, but as with any foreign language, you can't really become fluent without daily immersion.

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When people see Booster fully loaded, lots of them want to talk. Many of the questions are predictable: where are you from, where are you headed, how long will it take you, yadda yadda yadda. If the conversation goes longer, we get to the second-tier questions: do you have a repair kit, do you listen to music, what do you mean you don't listen to music, and so on.

I don't listen to music—or podcasts, or my usual go-to, standup comedy—for three reasons. Most important is mindfulness. I came down here to pare away the distractions of Normal Life in order to learn a thing or two about myself. Second is I don't know any of the birds down here and sans phone I get to listen to them sing all day. (Kookaburra laughter is bananas.) Third—which I'm sure my family would like to put first—is safety. I need to hear the cars coming.

A big perk of not hitting the play button is learning Booster's language. It's a part of the mindfulness bit, just being with the bike. The easiest to learn are her complaints. Clicking in the drivetrain is worth looking at later, crunching down there is worrisome now, squeaking shouldn’t happen because she ought to be waxed up. Squeaking from the pedals, no big deal. Sometimes it's just my shoe against the crank arm. (Bad foot placement, a rookie mistake. Worst Bikepacker coming right up.) Sometimes it’s one well-placed bird that sounds exactly like a squeaking pedal. I haven’t identified the species yet, but the resemblance is uncanny.

Then there’s her rhythmic speech. A continual ting-ting-ting is the brake rotor speaking up. Give the lever a light squeeze. If the ting-tinging goes away, there was something on the rotor. (Happens a lot on singletrack, after rain, or anywhere there are livestock—which has been surprisingly common on this ride.) Problem solved: you just knocked it loose. If it doesn't go away, give it a look-see the next time you stop. You might have bent the rotor, usually not a major problem but one worth addressing eventually. It’s not hard to fix.

A rhythmic vubbavubbavubbavubba means something’s rubbing on the tire. Stop immediately and find it, otherwise whatever it is, you’ll wear a hole in it. On Booster, the usual suspects are either the little loop on my Nalgene bottle (no biggie; I’ll just have to buy a new lid a little sooner) or my tent pole bag (yes biggie; poles won’t fall out of a tire-width hole, but stakes will).

A rhythmic whap-whap-whap means something's dangling loose and hitting the tire. Stop right now. A strap or drawstring lassoing a spoke could be real trouble.

A rhythmic whiff-whiff-whiff is a homophone, and it could mean a couple of things. Sometimes the little tool boxes I've got in the bottom of the frame bag don't sit quite right, creating a bulge. When that rubs a crank arm, it goes whiff. When groceries settle oddly, it’ll be higher up in the frame bag, making a bulge that goes whiff when it hits a pant leg. Frame bag versus pant leg is no big deal; you just wear out your pants a little faster. But frame bag versus metal crank arm wears a hole in the bag, and that’s a real pain in the ass to patch. (Especially since whatever you patch it with is next up to get worn down by the crank arm.)

Fortunately, whiff-whiff-whiff is easy to parse. Just bow your legs out and see if it goes away. Much harder to translate—the most perplexing riddle so far—was her high-pitched rhythmic squeaking coming from somewhere right in front of me. It wasn’t the brakes, wasn’t the tire, wasn’t any of her straps, clips, or buckles. It matched the rhythm of my pedaling but had no relationship to the wheel’s RPMs. That’s damned odd, because usually pedaling and speed are besties. They go together.

Turns out it was the handlebar bag squeaking against the headtube. (That’s the vertical bit right below the handlebars.) I don’t know how it’s possible for me not to have known this, but in all the years I’ve been riding, I just assumed my handlebars stayed pretty even. After all, I stay pretty even. I’m not wobbling down the road. But as any good Daoist can tell you, balance is not a fixed state. It’s dynamic, ever-changing, and so are the handlebars. They roll left and right as I pedal, just the teeniest bit, but enough to make an overstuffed handlebar bag squeak.

I never noticed this on my commuter bike because, well, it doesn’t have a handlebar bag. Neither has any bike I’ve ever owned prior to Booster. Like I said, daily immersion is the key.

Another thing I’m not sure I ever noticed is how swiftly and completely I become deaf to her language at speed. As slow as I am, usually I don’t have to worry about that, but starting around 25 miles per hour the wind gets loud enough to drown out everything Booster has to say. I also can’t hear cars even when they’re right on my ass.

Which happens a lot at high speed, because my slow ass only tops 20 mph on a good downhill. In NZ “a good downhill” is usually a long string of serpentine curves where I can hit 30 or 35 mph if I don’t chicken out. At those speeds I don’t stay on the shoulder and hope no one clips me. I take the whole lane. You want to pass me, you pass me like I’m a car.

I know I shouldn’t be astonished by repeated behavior, but to this day it still surprises me how many people cannot figure out how to get their motorcar to pass a bicycle. If that’s you, I suggest using the neighboring empty lane and your gas pedal. You might even consider your turn signal. Any driver who can’t figure that out deserves to be stuck behind me.

Still, it would be better if I could hear them back there when I’m leaning into those curves at top speed. Or if not hear them, then at least see them. I gotta get me one of those mirrors I’ve been hearing so much about.