Maybe I need a hobby. I was thinking about this as I sat listening to my brother. He collects vintage motorcycles, restores them, loses sleep over them, caresses them lovingly like Kobe beef, says things like, “you sure have a pretty tail pipe,” and then spends most of his waking hours buying parts from far-off lands so he can get them to run for all of 13 seconds. Then they stall and the engine has to be rebuilt. These are really old bikes. When I say “vintage,” I’m not talking about 20-30 years old. I’m talking about the kind of motorcycles the Hun used to invade China back in 176 B.C. Well, maybe not that old. But these British bikes certainly pre-date me. I don’t typically pay attention to all these conversations with my brother about timing chains and oil gasket breaches, so I can only guess they hail from around World War II. With my brother, though, it’s not enough to merely collect and restore bikes. And it’s not enough just to ride them. So instead he has taken up racing — what you call “hobby expansion” or “hobby extreme.” That’s when putting something on a shelf or in a garage simply won’t do. This way you can consume more time and money on your hobby, and further infuriate your wife. (Guys who want to prove that they’re really into their hobbies have steel plates holding their legs together. My brother does. That way people know you’re hardcore about […]
Hooked on the Tour de France … and its fanatics
I’ve never been interested in racing a bike. The seats look like shoehorns, I’m not a fan of the hats, you spend the whole time hunched over as if your back has snapped midway up and those bike shorts would make my legs look like half-filled sausage casings. I’m all about the glamour. But I am absolutely hooked on the Tour de France. This happens every year —a sport I normally care nothing about lures me in with the promise of horrendous crashes, nail-biting finishes and this weird desire of mine to see a top racer inhale a bee at high speed. (So far, no luck.) It is a fascinating race, full of tactics and strategy, not just mindless pedaling. Riders have to be thinking about all manner of things like, “do my legs look like half-filled sausage casings?” or “I wonder how bad it would hurt if my bike seat broke off and I didn’t realize it.”