Real Mountain Bike Confessions

I realized my blog has been sorely lacking for humor lately. So I figured I'd remedy that with some REAL confessions - or funny mountain bike stories.

Fat and Excited Ryan

First is a picture from when I first started riding:



Click on it to make it bigger. Two things come to mind when I see this picture. First is that I'm obviously heavier. Second is that it looks like I am "excited" in this picture. Haha.


Loud Brakes

So a long time ago when I first bought my Specialized I did something pretty stupid. Actually I did it over and over. The brakes started to make noise so I did what anyone else would do. I greased the brakes.

I took some Tri-flow and squeezed it into the brake pads. I did this any time the brakes made noise (which was a lot).

Eventually I took the bike into a shop and I distinctly remember the guy at the shop asking me what happened to my brakes/rotors. Conversation went like this:

Bike Dude: There is a ton of fluid on your brakes. Rotors and pads.
Me: Oh? (acting surprised)
Bike Dude: Yeah that's not good. Know how this happened?
Me: No idea.
Bike Dude: Do you store your bike upside down? Maybe fluid from the front shock has leaked?
Me: No I don't store it like that.
Bike Dude: Well I'm going to try and burn it off the rotors. You sure you don't know how this happened? You don't oil the brakes or something stupid like that right?
Me: No.

I made a mental note to NEVER oil/grease my brakes after that. Haha.


Abstain from Ice Cream

This is a long story, but I'll make it short. I ate ice cream before a long ride and ended up relieving myself all over Blackstar. I didn't have anything to wipe with so I tried to use a bike tube.

Lesson learned: Bike tubes are a poor substitute for toilet paper.


High PSI

I used to run 60 PSI in both tires when I first started riding. I couldn't figure out why I would crash so much, but upon reflection the high PSI might have had something to do with it.

I always thought that the stiffer the tires were, the less likely they would be to get a flat.


Curbs

I am scared to ride over curbs. Still haven't been able to get over this. It's pathetic. Haha.


Ok, ok that's enough. This is not a good thing to do too much of.