The Face of Jesus in Matt’s Saddle Bag

Look!  I think I see the face of Jesus.  Like the shroud of Turin, inside his saddle bag, the spare tube and Allen wrenches were wrapped in a tie-dye-esque aged rust stained cloth.  I unraveled the wrenches and held out the cloth.  Behold!  That might fetch a few bucks on eBay.  They’ve been in the seat bag a long time, not quite B.C. old, but maybe before Bieber.  25 miles from home, I was helping Matt from Smitty’s Cyclery in Cincinnati replace a broken shift cable.  Yes.  He carries a spare.

Wrapping your tube and tools are just one of the lessons I learned from Big Matt’s saddle bag.  A former racer on the track and on the road, I’m sure Matt’s no stranger to weight weenie tendencies.  Matt proved you can pack a lot and still pack light.  The bag was packed with the expertise of an Everest climber, the necessities of survival in a few cubic inches.  I’ve had a day to think about it, and there’s not a mechanical incident that would’ve had Matt calling for a ride home.  Inside Matt’s saddle bag: tube, mini-tool with chain breaker, select 4-5-6 Allen wrenches, patch kit, brake and shifter cable, a five spot, a zip tie, and a chain pin.  I wouldn’t doubt there were a spare cleat and/or bottle cage bolt in there somewhere.  He kept the mini pump in his jersey pocket.

The black thing is the free hub body.

Matt explained the zip tie was in case your free hub body dies.  The free hub body is the thing your cassette rides on.  Its ratcheting pawls allow you to coast and engage the gears.  When it dies, and they do occasionally, you’re left…coasting home.  To fix on the fly, you can zip-tie the cassette to the spokes and get yourself home in a fixed-gear sort of way.  A zip tie can also fix a broken bottle cage, keep a busted derailleur out of your spokes or can be traded to the locals for corn and beads.

Wrapping your spare tube and tools in cloth accomplishes two, three, maybe four things.  For one, it prevents you from being the annoying Mr. Jangly Bag on group rides.  Two, it keeps sharp edge tools from serrating your spare tube.  Three, I would hedge a bet that it keeps spare tubes from drying out and/or prevents the valve-tube junction from becoming oxidized.  Lastly, it never hurts to have a rag for sweaty hands or keeping gooey chain greased hands from messing up white bar tape.

The black thing is a zip tie.

While Matt worked to get the broken cable end out of his shifter, I reached over his bike and undid the fixing bolt on his Dura Ace rear derailleur.  Matt’s got many miles in his legs, no stranger to being 2 hours from home with a mechanical.  He’s a mechanic at Smitty’s Cyclery in Cincinnati.  Yet even he packs a spare derailleur cable and a spare brake cable in his seat bag.  I scratched my head.  His Land Shark bike was impeccably clean and well maintained.  Having worked at a shop myself, I take pride wrenching on my own bikes and used to have a relative comfort in thinking that my cables are new and all bolts are properly fixed.  I don’t need to bring a multi-tool or anything beyond a tube, cartridge, mini-pump and five-dollar bill.  There on a flat road, 2 hours from home, Matt snapped a cable, fixed it with a spare in the span of 5 minutes and left me questioning my minimalist logic.

A Dog On The Carpet, A Fish In The Air

I want to say you look like a dog scooting across the carpet desperately trying to get a dingle berry out of his fur, but I can’t. I keep it bottled up, because when it comes down to it, I should just be glad there’s another soul out there on a bike. I see riders all time, usually older more portly gentlemen, riding road bikes with their knees sticking out to the sides and their hands on the tops of the bars doin’ the poop scoot boogie. I try. I try so hard to mentally put a smile on my face and say way to go! So, glad you’re out there riding your bike, enjoying the outdoors, and losing a little weight. Then I see the knees akimbo, the hands close to the stem, and the legs wildly spinning two gears too small and something gurgles up inside that makes me want to roll up to them and say, “for goodness sake man, look at your reflection in the storefront windows. Are you seeing what I’m seeing?” Your riding looks like a dog trying to get a poop out of it's fur! But, I’m a non confrontational man. A wussy trait I know. One day they’ll have the revelation or someone with bigger stones than I will approach them.

That’s how it happened with me. I used to scoot across the roadway knees pin-wheeling to either side of the bike. Then one day a veteran racer on a group ride said, “Eh, Joe your knees are sticking out. Get your knees in, like this. It’ll make you more aero, efficient and faster.” I saw some truth in that. Who doesn’t want to get faster and use less energy doing it? Looking back I’m sure it was all a diabolical plan so he wouldn’t have to be on a group ride with someone who rode like a dog with a rear-end issue. I wrote about the experience in a previous post here.

Sorry. I know I shouldn’t cast judgment. Maybe the big-boy thunder thighs can’t come any closer to the top tube. Maybe the larger belly in tandem with the thighs causes an inability to put hands on the hoods or in the drops. I’ve never spun a mile in a large man’s chamois. It could physically be impossible. That’s why I dare not approach and instead take the long slow road of hoping that when the butt scooter loses a few pounds and ends up riding with some veteran riders that osmosis will take place, he’ll take note of the knees and slowly they’ll migrate toward the top tube.

There are so many ins and outs, dos and don’ts and unspoken “rules” of cycling, the fact that anyone new to the sport can pass the scrutiny of veteran riders is nearly impossible. There’s always be poofy jacket guy, seat bag big enough for an Everest expedition guy, and too much reflective flair guy. However, that’s true with any sport. I’m sure my golf swing looks like I’m shoveling a pig pen. No doubt my basketball lay-up has all the grace of a fish being thrown on the Seattle dock. Certainly I’m not the person to be dispensing cycling tips.