One of my favorite things about San Francisco is that this city has a really serious biking culture. Whether it’s weekend tourers in Marin, teched-out recumbents and racers from the peninsula, or hipster fixies from the Mission, this city is full of bikes of every variety. Get all of these bikers together in the same place (along with a healthy dose of hippies, progressive city planners, and winding forest and coastal roads,) and you get an amazing environment for recreational cycling. Bikes are beautiful pieces of equipment, with a significant amount of tech and craft coming together in one package. And, if all this wasn’t enough to get me interested, what other socially-acceptable reason am I going to find to wear spandex in public?

I caught the cycling bug shortly after arriving in the city. I’m not even sure where I heard about it or how I decided that I wanted to participate. I’ve never been exposed to a strong cycling culture before, either in Boston or Billings. I could never get into running outdoors because you just can’t get moving fast enough to keep the view from becoming depressing.

I had never ridden a decent bike before, but when I took my first test-ride on a road bike, I was instantly hooked. The effortlessness of high-speed riding on a road bike is really surprising, especially when compared to the Huffys and Diamond Backs of my youth. I shopped around for a bit and ended up buying a bike that was expensive enough to make sure that I’d ride it on a regular basis. Or at least that was my theory.

That’s my bike: A Raleigh Grand Prix ‘07. It’s got really great components from the 105 and Ultegra groupsets, which is cyclist code for “all of the little moving bits.” I spent a decent amount of time reading through Wikipedia articles on cycling gear and racing bikes, and was staggered by the vast amount of domain-specific knowledge that exists. I hope you can see how this hobby appeals to tech-oriented folks. It’s like a more expensive version of Legos, racecars, and superheros all mixed together. *swoon*

And, if the sheer amount of techy aspects to cycling isn’t enough, bike maintenance and construction is also an amazing craft that takes years to learn. I had no idea about the amount of finesse and artistry that goes into making something that seems as simple as a bike wheel. I bent my rear wheel slightly out of true recently and discovered that they are straightened not by pounding on them with a hammer or squeezing them in a vice, but by carefully tightening certain spokes to pull the wheel back into alignment while keeping it round.

That’s the alwaysBETA/Olin bike team. That’s right, when I caught the cycling bug, I managed to transfer it to Zach as well. (Don’t ask about the transmission method.) Zach and I actually have identical bikes through no fault of my own, although Zach’s is almost a full 10 cm shorter. What can I say? Zach is a huge copycat. We now have identical Google bike jerseys as well, and when we go riding on the weekends, we get the “are you guys sponsored” question quite a bit.

Cycling is awesome, and I’m so glad that I decided to jump into it. My latest accomplishment is riding to work weekly from the Mission with the SF2G crowd, a 44 mile ride. Getting up at 5:30 in the morning on a semi-regular basis is a pretty new experience for me. Cycling is a fun opportunity to change my life routine up a bit, try something new, get outside more often, and get some exercise in the process. Oh yeah, and it provides an easy outlet for all of that pesky money. I highly recommend that you try it.