Back for more

Wow. Why not read a blog that's updated once a month? Pretty darned exciting.

I'm back, not that anyone noticed I was gone. It's kind of like my old college radio show: The only people listening were my roommates, and they knew that every time I played the 11-minute-long Layla I was down the hall taking the Browns to the Super Bowl, if you know what I mean.

I've been reading Bike Snob NYC, and I do truly enjoy his sense of humor. I've also come to grips with the fact that my writing style doesn't lend itself to humor. So don't expect the guffaws here. Or maybe you're the type that sees the sly sense of humor below the monotone grey exterior. Whatever.

Thinking of snobs, though, reminds me of a photography course I took in college. Part of the deal was having to buy your own 35-millimeter camera, and the prof gave us a talking-to about our options. He opined that the Pentax K-1000 was a perfect student camera. He taught us how to use all the manual settings, and said that with our newfound knowledge, we could do things with a $100 camera that the nit-wits brandishing the expensive new models couldn't touch. He described himself as a reverse snob, and I immediately took a liking to the term

Reverse snobbishness runs through my life. I love having the same job as a guy with an Ivy-League degree, though I was educated in public schools. My old piece-of-junk Justy had almost 300,000 miles on it when some moron stole it on Christmas morning and blew the engine. The old car still got 35+ mpg when it died. I was very happy looking down my nose an people in fancy new cars that cost 50 times what mine did.

I'm not sure what bikes BSNYC has, or what he would think of my pitiful fleet, but I love seeing people on expensive bikes that have nowhere near the character that my pieced-together old machines do. I love to ride bicycles that I assembled from scavenged parts. It's fun to take pieces out of a pile of junk and make something that works, and works well. They may not be as light or fast or pretty, but they're pretty cool to me. While I usually don't look down my nose at folks on nice new bikes, I would certainly change my tune if they snubbed me. They might wonder why I was laughing out loud as I rode off on my $25 pile.