It is finals week here. The picture would be be more accurate if it had a teacher rather than a student keeled over somewhere. I miss the days when all I had to do was prepare, sit down, unload my brain, and then walk away. I always thought taking exams was rough, but preparing students for over 5 months of information they have forgotten, typing and preparing a fair and accurate exam that will take current high school students at least an hour to complete, grading 1000's of questions in a small period of time, and then answering parent emails about why their progeny scored a 20 on an exam that they studied 25 minutes for while watching tv, updating their Facebook account, streaming music, and texting their friends, or the other type of parents who email when their student scores a 98 and they want to know just where those other two points are and just what kind of nerve do I have. The answer to that is that I have the kind of nerve that is acquired after spending almost a decade making 12.5 cents an hour for a job few people respect and where people are continually telling me or other teachers that they just make too much for what they do. I want to be around, even if its just briefly, when the tables are turned.
And true to form, finals week calls for distraction from the monotony and so we here at the Darkroom want to provide the best of what's around, but not in that Dave Matthews kind of way. A friend of mine works for a local manufacturing firm where they build components for private jets, but have begun manufacturing excellent bicycle components. He has one of the neatest jobs of all the people I know. He designs and builds bike components, tests them, and then tries to convince the owner of the firm to mass produce them. And when they go to market, his job is to travel to all the bike shows in Europe and here in the States and attempt to show them off. Not a bad gig, right? I didn't think so. Every now and again, he posts some pretty neat items when it comes to bicycles and bike components on Facebook or other places and I like to check them out and I'm usually pretty glad I did.
Most people have a certain perception of road bikes and the people that ride them and the stereotype comes because so many people feel they must be it in order to get on a road bike and be that way or they won't be taken seriously. You know...these guys:
...lean, mean, spandexed, no smile, and weighing in at 98 lbs...
Or the other stereotype:
...tattoos, skinny jeans, Vans, no helmet, backpack, some more tattoos, gauges, excessive, but held onto into their 20's teenage against....
There are many people trying to change these images and stereotypes and I am thankful for that. There are a lot of people who just like the freedom and joy that comes from riding a bike around the block. I know Mel, FH, and I do. I saw these videos and thought they were incredible and the guys doing the riding are doing some things that most everyone would think was impossible to do on a road bike. They show a road bike to be much, much more user friendly and versatile than most people think. I think this is true of most bikes. Hope you enjoy both videos and show them to your people. I showed them to mine and they loved them. And mom, dad, and Mel, don't worry, FH and I haven't begun riding like this just yet. And if we start, we'll get you to film us.
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