Beating Boyish Bicycle Burnout

For as long as I can remember I've been obsessed. I started skipping soccer practices in grade 9 to go for long runs and rides, and from that point forward there was no going back. It was all bikes, all the time. Racing is perhaps one of the only irrational decisions that marked my teens - it ruined relationships, strained family members, plagued my academic performance, and lowered my income. But heck, was it ever worth it. I kept chasing that high, the feeling when suffering and pride weave together to create a rewarding blend of chaos and order. I still can't rationalize it. But then again I don't think that's how addictions work.

Leaving racing left me in a state of confusion, of nothingness, without a goal, not knowing what I ought to do or who I ought to be. I'd gone all in and now that something was gone. It was two years of structured training, racing, and riding on the trainer for three hours at a time - with a broken scaphoid - blasting ‘Gold on the Ceiling’ on repeat, but eventually that bubble burst. I’d had enough. I gave up. The strict nature of it all, and perhaps me taking it a bit too seriously, zapped the fun out of riding entirely. After I quit I didn’t ride for a month, swapping wheels for running shoes, the bouldering mat, or skis. The absence of bikes took quite a toll on a teenager who’d built his entire identity around being the bike guy.

That year, I took the time to reflect on my weaknesses. One consistent theme was the importance I placed on physical objects. For as long as I can remember I have always been into the procurement of nice things, perhaps accentuated by working in retail for so long. When I was nine, I very quickly learned the benefits of saving one’s chore money from the year to buy something, usually with wheels, that would elicit equal parts adrenaline and fear. Year after year while my friends walked to the candy store in Edgemont Village I bought a Ripstick, a longboard, a scooter, and a mountain bike. And then many, many, more bikes.

When I got my first ‘real job’ at a bike shop 9 years ago, 13-year-old me decided that I was gonna save to buy a Subaru Crosstrek by the time I had my license. That quickly faded and by the time I was 16, my goals had changed. After the love affair with my family’s SUV was cut short by my dumb ass wrapping it into a concrete post in an attempt to “hear that 5.0 purr” (the now-destroyed vehicle had brought me home from the hospital 16 years earlier, a symbolic nod to the cycle of life). I bought an econobox and decided to save for an apartment instead.

A pivotal moment, and perhaps this is just the natural process of maturation, (oldies please advise) was the realization that I could apply my desire for building resilience amidst suffering in an employment setting. Suffering can be monetized? And in a more lucrative way than trying to win a 10 dollar prime at a local crit race by divebombing into a corner and nearly taking half the group out?

Despite this, I couldn't stop thinking about one of the best bikes I’ve had the pleasure of riding. It had filled a similar emotional void earlier in my life and produced indelible memories. There some things that even the hyper rational can't get over.

Trying to solve my bicycle burnout, I was browsing Pinkbike and came across a Kona Unit. It was adorned with Chromag bits, SRAM Eagle, Hope hubs on Chromag rims, a Soma Dreamriser bar, Maxxis Rekons, XT brakes, and a Thomson seatpost. The seller was a middle aged man from Nanaimo, a lovely fellow with a passion for building niche bikes the proper way. He was selling it because his partner had enough of the 15 odd bikes in their apartment and was threatening action. Touché.

It had a full frame bag that fit perfectly and he'd even fashioned fender stay extenders out of a drilled out bolt, some very fussy time on the drill press, a tap kit, and some grub screws.

Bling build aside, the importance of that bike was hewn from the experiences it delivered. I rode it to university, an hour each way for an entire year. I had a massive 170km fully loaded day with a dear friend while bikepacking the Sunshine Coast, which revealed an affinity for camping on bikes. We pulled into the campground at 10pm hooting and hollering with a dozen beers in hand. I drank a single IPA and was done. Soft!

A bike that versatile meant I could attach my daily necessities, wrench on bikes all day at work and then hit doubles at our local pumptrack after work with flat pedals and Blundstones. It enabled going on group rides with full squish riders while probably giggling more than everyone else. I was having fun. Nothing else mattered. Now that's bikes.

The Kona unit was up for everything. I had three other bikes in the garage at the time and this is the only one I was riding. Want to go for a ride and have fun? Hell yeah. Take the Unit.

This bike arrived at the end of a four year case of confused biker identity. Growing up invested in mountain biking, followed by a road racing stint, and then a brief period of gravel Kool-Aid drinking that admittedly I’m still sipping on through a narrow straw. Who was I? This do it all ripper didn’t have an identity, and in that lay the solution to my identity crisis. But don’t we all have that one bike, that one riding experience whose glory will never be replicated?

Hold on. Wait. It's not just that. There’s so many overwhelmingly rewarding things in this world that require immense amounts of time and effort that I’ve been able to pull fleeting moments of joy from these last few months.

During this time I have been locked into studies, reading all about Weber, Durkheim, and Marx. There is endless wisdom to be gained if you just give them a fucking chance. Writing as much as space on the site will allow, and having to ride as a part of the writing has been a push that has me spending more time. It also means I'm breaking more shit so I’ve gotten slightly better at fixing it. Spending time with family, grandparents especially, has enabled an appreciation of my heritage - especially making handmade cavetelli or tomato sauce with tomatoes grown from the garden. I’ve been more open to exploring opportunities.

I’m not fun in the classical sense due to the type A-nus of my mentality but I’ve been trying to say ‘yes’ just a bit more and it has lent itself towards new memories created with new people. The point of this paragraph was not to tell you about my weird and wonderful past times. I don’t expect you to care. These are pillars. Pillars of family, of fitness, of mental stimulation, of health, and of happiness. Hopefully you have some of them. And if not, stop what you are doing and go find them.

But at the end of life, is it really the physical entities that we lament having let slip away, from our now arthritic fingers, requiring brake levers to be dialed to the bar? Or is it the plethora of experiences that those entities have facilitated?

Is all regret bad or does it serve as a reminder to some of us non-empath cavemen that we are in fact capable of emotion?

I don’t regret leaving mountain biking to pursue road racing. I don’t regret those 3 hour after-school sufferfests smashing hills in the rain. I don’t regret moving on from road racing to explore bikepacking. And I sure as hell don’t regret any of the pain and suffering that typically accompanies an obsession.

Would’ve been nice to still have that Kona Unit though.