“I don't have pet peeves; I have major psychotic fucking hatreds, okay. And it makes the world a lot easier to sort out.” – George Carlin
I fucking hate cyclists. I don’t want to be misconstrued here; I don’t hate people who ride bikes. There’s surely no more glorious a sight than a guy in his fifties on a woman’s mountain bike with two warm bottles of Kirk’s Kole Beer in a plastic bag slung over the handlebars, wearing a shirt advertising a 1997 fun run he didn’t participate in lurching wildly across the road as he tries to adjust his Ill-fitting construction helmet. My ire is reserved for those most loathsome of hobbyists; for each individual member of the phalanx of sexually confused nonsense enthusiasts known as cyclists.
Cyclists are universally reviled largely for their retardation of motorists. My disdain is far more personal. Working in a café has allowed me the opportunity to observe the cyclist at far closer proximity than from the relative safety of a car and to learn more of what makes them tick (unfortunately not a timer connected to blasting caps.)
Behaviour
Cyclists are early risers. Judging by how sweaty all these hairless fucks are by the time they get to my work, they ride for a good couple of hours before stopping off for skinny decaffeinated short macchiattos. Their thimbleful of milk needs to be as weak as possible so as not to temper the buzz they don’t get from their coffee-flavoured dishwater. Having ordered, they then spend the duration of their café visit talking about cycling. After they’re done, they cycle off again for a few more hours.
The only people who get up before sunrise to do something for hours, cease participating in said activity for a couple hours (whilst still discussing it) then resume are meth addicts and cyclists. Cycling is better for your skin, but only half as likely to give you rock-hard abs.
In my experience, women are far less likely to behave in socially inappropriate ways than men. This explains why the fairer sex accounts for roughly 5% of cyclists. The rest are a bizarre kind of alpha male who all have weird monosyllabic names like “Clint”, “Clay” and “Quint” and who don’t believe in social niceties like “please,” “thankyou,” or blinking from time to time. Despite this, they’re uniformly lame and hold themselves in a way unlike your usual football playing jock. This is largely because they’ve waxed all the hair on their bodies and are usually clad in a zipped-down fluorescent one-piece. In zoological terms, cyclists are the lion who tries to usurp the leader of the pride (football jock) only to get a loving spoonful of clawface. The lion then waxes itself and goes to a café to ask if their sponge cake is made of almond meal.
Despite their austere, borderline Asperger’s behaviour, there are strangely homoerotic undercurrents to cycling.
”But how, Alasdair? I mean sure, I’m surrounded on all sides by men with visible moose knuckles, there’s a constant dull ache in my buttocks, I’ve got a hard pole in each hand and all the while a chain is going round and round directly below me but…oh.”
As previously mentioned, the cyclist will also refuse to broach any topic of conversation besides cycling itself. Walking past their tables, one is likely to hear phrases such as:
”Well, I shaved about twelve seconds off my personal best, and about two centimetres off my chest…”
”I didn’t think they were quite tight enough, so I put them in the dryer.”
Cyclist 1: “…and that was that day’s ride. Anyway, that night we stayed in this little village on the Hungarian border and I met the most beautiful…”
Cyclist 2 [interrupting]: “Hey! Enough of that! Tell us more about how chapped your lips got riding into that headwind in Anderlecht!”
Whilst riding, cyclists are never allowed to smile. Grimaces are acceptable, but if the cyclist’s visage projects even the slightest trace of satisfaction, they are compelled to commit cyclist hara-kiri and squirt themselves in the crotch with their impractically small water bottles, making it look to the other cyclists as though they are incontinent. It is imperative that the cyclist is always perilously straddling the thin line between maximum physical exertion and instant death. Allow me to paint a picture of the cyclist in action:
”Quint felt each individual rivulet of sweat as they raced down the sprawling, frictionless expanse of his freshly-waxed chest. The bloodied flecks of enamel that had once been his teeth -long ground away as every fibre in his being fought to buck the axioms of time and space – gritted against the void. What would Lance Armstrong do? Quint decided to find out, and skipped to track 11 of his autobiography Podcast: “Chapter 37: I Felt a Lump in My Sac…So I Just Pedalled Harder.” An acrid stench hung in the air, and Quint cursed that he had opted to ride downwind of Brant, who had eaten chilli mussels the previous evening. His heart pumping nought but lactic acid, his eyes misted over with perspiration, his author fresh out of clichéd expressions, Quint willed himself onwards to the café, knowing that first sip of soy decaffeinated skim weak chai latte would soothe the veritable machete hacks of cramp he was experiencing up and down the length of his quads. With his destination so agonizingly near, Quint mustered the zeal to increase his speed, riding high on the saddle like a gunslinger of old; exhausted; defiant, but never defeated. It was then that an elderly Macedonian man in a 1987 Ford Fairlane drew up alongside Quint; casually – almost contemptuously – he put it into third and began to pull away. As the Garfield plush toy suction-cupped to the rear windshield became progressively smaller, Quint realised that for all his labours, he was, at the crux of his being, now and forevermore – a prat.”
I actually have far more material than I thought I would when I started this rant, so pending my laziness I will post part two some time in the next couple of days.
I fucking hate cyclists. I don’t want to be misconstrued here; I don’t hate people who ride bikes. There’s surely no more glorious a sight than a guy in his fifties on a woman’s mountain bike with two warm bottles of Kirk’s Kole Beer in a plastic bag slung over the handlebars, wearing a shirt advertising a 1997 fun run he didn’t participate in lurching wildly across the road as he tries to adjust his Ill-fitting construction helmet. My ire is reserved for those most loathsome of hobbyists; for each individual member of the phalanx of sexually confused nonsense enthusiasts known as cyclists.
Cyclists are universally reviled largely for their retardation of motorists. My disdain is far more personal. Working in a café has allowed me the opportunity to observe the cyclist at far closer proximity than from the relative safety of a car and to learn more of what makes them tick (unfortunately not a timer connected to blasting caps.)
Behaviour
Cyclists are early risers. Judging by how sweaty all these hairless fucks are by the time they get to my work, they ride for a good couple of hours before stopping off for skinny decaffeinated short macchiattos. Their thimbleful of milk needs to be as weak as possible so as not to temper the buzz they don’t get from their coffee-flavoured dishwater. Having ordered, they then spend the duration of their café visit talking about cycling. After they’re done, they cycle off again for a few more hours.
The only people who get up before sunrise to do something for hours, cease participating in said activity for a couple hours (whilst still discussing it) then resume are meth addicts and cyclists. Cycling is better for your skin, but only half as likely to give you rock-hard abs.
In my experience, women are far less likely to behave in socially inappropriate ways than men. This explains why the fairer sex accounts for roughly 5% of cyclists. The rest are a bizarre kind of alpha male who all have weird monosyllabic names like “Clint”, “Clay” and “Quint” and who don’t believe in social niceties like “please,” “thankyou,” or blinking from time to time. Despite this, they’re uniformly lame and hold themselves in a way unlike your usual football playing jock. This is largely because they’ve waxed all the hair on their bodies and are usually clad in a zipped-down fluorescent one-piece. In zoological terms, cyclists are the lion who tries to usurp the leader of the pride (football jock) only to get a loving spoonful of clawface. The lion then waxes itself and goes to a café to ask if their sponge cake is made of almond meal.
Despite their austere, borderline Asperger’s behaviour, there are strangely homoerotic undercurrents to cycling.
”But how, Alasdair? I mean sure, I’m surrounded on all sides by men with visible moose knuckles, there’s a constant dull ache in my buttocks, I’ve got a hard pole in each hand and all the while a chain is going round and round directly below me but…oh.”
As previously mentioned, the cyclist will also refuse to broach any topic of conversation besides cycling itself. Walking past their tables, one is likely to hear phrases such as:
”Well, I shaved about twelve seconds off my personal best, and about two centimetres off my chest…”
”I didn’t think they were quite tight enough, so I put them in the dryer.”
Cyclist 1: “…and that was that day’s ride. Anyway, that night we stayed in this little village on the Hungarian border and I met the most beautiful…”
Cyclist 2 [interrupting]: “Hey! Enough of that! Tell us more about how chapped your lips got riding into that headwind in Anderlecht!”
Whilst riding, cyclists are never allowed to smile. Grimaces are acceptable, but if the cyclist’s visage projects even the slightest trace of satisfaction, they are compelled to commit cyclist hara-kiri and squirt themselves in the crotch with their impractically small water bottles, making it look to the other cyclists as though they are incontinent. It is imperative that the cyclist is always perilously straddling the thin line between maximum physical exertion and instant death. Allow me to paint a picture of the cyclist in action:
”Quint felt each individual rivulet of sweat as they raced down the sprawling, frictionless expanse of his freshly-waxed chest. The bloodied flecks of enamel that had once been his teeth -long ground away as every fibre in his being fought to buck the axioms of time and space – gritted against the void. What would Lance Armstrong do? Quint decided to find out, and skipped to track 11 of his autobiography Podcast: “Chapter 37: I Felt a Lump in My Sac…So I Just Pedalled Harder.” An acrid stench hung in the air, and Quint cursed that he had opted to ride downwind of Brant, who had eaten chilli mussels the previous evening. His heart pumping nought but lactic acid, his eyes misted over with perspiration, his author fresh out of clichéd expressions, Quint willed himself onwards to the café, knowing that first sip of soy decaffeinated skim weak chai latte would soothe the veritable machete hacks of cramp he was experiencing up and down the length of his quads. With his destination so agonizingly near, Quint mustered the zeal to increase his speed, riding high on the saddle like a gunslinger of old; exhausted; defiant, but never defeated. It was then that an elderly Macedonian man in a 1987 Ford Fairlane drew up alongside Quint; casually – almost contemptuously – he put it into third and began to pull away. As the Garfield plush toy suction-cupped to the rear windshield became progressively smaller, Quint realised that for all his labours, he was, at the crux of his being, now and forevermore – a prat.”
I actually have far more material than I thought I would when I started this rant, so pending my laziness I will post part two some time in the next couple of days.
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