Bike Rides And High Fives.

In these last few dying days of the school holidays I have taken a little bit of time out of my hectic socializing schedule to go out into the mountains and ride up and down hills. Half way up a particular brutal ascent I realized that I was enjoying the torture more than most punk rock shows that I go to. So here, for your reading pleasure, are a bunch of reasons why biking is better than shows.

1. The faux-environmentalist ethical overtones of biking are grounded in something close to reality (you know, using your bike to commute instead of a car...), as opposed to the faux-anarchist ethical overtones of punk.

2. Biking hurts, sure. But rarely as much as the busted nose I saw at the Mindsnare show last weekend. Biking also hurts your back, but with changeovers between sets at shows seeming to take longer than ever, standing up for an entire show hurts our poor, aging spines a lot more.

3. Biking actually increases your health, as opposed to shows, which decrease it. As evidence I offer my dramatically thickening thighs and my dramatically thinning hearing.

4. Sportswriting - even cycling writing - kicks all kind of ass over music writing. As well as reading BikeSnobNYC, you should also check out Dave Zirin's Edge of Sports column. There's a long and impressive history of sports being used as a vehicle for social justice. In addition to the writing kicking ass, sports movies also kick ass over music movies. Come on, which would you rather watch, the first Rocky or Almost Famous? That's what I thought.

5. When you're at a show, it's a disappointing inevitability that you will be almost surrounded by fuckwits. This sometimes occurs when biking, but when you're biking, if there are fuckwits around, you can just ride away from them. Simple as that. And, as an added bonus, when you're biking, no one deliberately crashes into you and, when you take umbrage, tells you that "it's punk rock, man..."

So, there it is. Time to get rid of all your black t-shirts and replace them with lycra. Trust me, you won't ever look back.