Was surfing around some bike sites just before bedtime and finally got to check out
Matt Chester's site. He builds simple, beautiful, ti single speed frames. While checking out his blog, I found this story and wanted to share it with all of you. Head on over to check out the rest of his site and blog. Enjoy!
THE DEVIL YOU KNOW by Mike Ferrentino
Well, looky here. This issue is one of those "buyer's guides," pages full of shiny new products aimed at boosting the ever-spreading flag of consumerism up the flagpole of our general consciousness. So it seems appropriate to spend a few minutes talking about Cory Cuthbertson's bike. If there's a solid counterweight to the force-fed perversity of rampant buy-new-stuff now marketing pap that's shoved down our throats by an industry hell-bent on not only just its own survival but on expansion, ever bigger and better, then that counterweight is Cory's bike. A bike, which, for lack of any better fitting description, is known far and wide as a dangerous, rolling shitbox.
It's a classic shitbox though. A fillet-brazed steel Bontrager cyclocross frame heated together in Santa Cruz during the prehistory of mountain biking by Keith himself. A bike ridden by Daryl Price to the national junior cyclocross championship back at the down of our sport. Or maybe 1987, but don't quote me. A bike inherited by Cory when he was a tender lad of 13. A bike upon which he won his age group in that year's district 'cross championships, garnering a natty kid-size California bear-flag skin suit.
A bike that he loved and rode for the next decade, all the while folding his ever-growing body into a too-small skin suit - which many of his friends suspect for the noticeable slouch that out boy Cory exhibits - riding and racing with a grace that many aspire to but few can match. A bike that never saw a wrench in the five or six years that I knew it.
Five-speed freewheel, non-index Suntour bar-end shifters. A worn out chain running on worn out cogs and worn out chainrings, skipping like a fairy at Christmas time in every gear when pedaled forcefully. Death-defying Lilliputian drop bars, probably 40 centimeters wide, drooping narrower at their bottoms after a decade of landing jumps, wrapped in faded pink Benotto ribbon. Old non-aero plastic Modolo brake levers, pulling Mafac cantilevers sporting original pads weathered to the consistency of teak and offering the same lack of stopping power that any flimsy piece of aluminum pushing tiny blocks of wood into dented rims would be expected to generate.
Saaverda cranks, an Argentinian company that spent the '70's manufacturing knock-off Campagnolo componentry (no joke), with visible cracks at both spindle ends and which creaked with protest at any attempt to pedal with conviction. Worn out bottom bracket with bearings most likely shaped like tiny metal footballs. Worn out and old KKT Lightning pedals with half-severed nylon toe straps. Hubs that were all crunchy. As previously noted: a classic shitbox. Everyone in the county deemed it unrideable. Everyone but Cory, that is.
He rode it on group road rides. He rode it in 'cross races. He converted it to a one-speed and entered it in a 50-mile mountain bike race. He rode it in the dirt, often preferring it to the feel of his mountain bike. He rode it well and he rode it fast. Once we were floating downhill on pavement, rolling about 25 miles an hour, and Cory on his shitbox drifted casually up onto a sidewalk, bunny-hopped a nearly 2-foot-high picket fence onto a lawn before wheelie-ing down the driveway and back onto the road, all the while slouched in on himself like some skinny cartoon character.
He was also fond of doing this flying crucifix move. He'd get going fast downhill, preferably on dirt, then stand up and lean all the way forward, thighs pushing into the handlebars, arms outstretched, grinning into the wind. This, on a bike that most of us had a tough time riding in a straight line on perfectly smooth and level ground. He and that bike had an understanding. It never creaked or skipped gears when he rode it. They were like an old couple, fully in tune with each other. And they were magic to watch. There was a grace and smoothness about them that was beautiful to see. No waste. Just this pure and fluid motion.
Nobody else could do that. If anyone had tried to ride that bike even half as fast as Cory, they'd have killed themselves and the bike would have died beneath them. Cory and that bike were like a fragile ecosystem. Everything in perfect harmony with everything else, all quirks and weirdness accounted for. There's a term called dynamic homeostasis. It basically means that a systemic stability, a status quo, is maintained in spite of constantly changing input. Most of nature exists in this state, at least when we aren't around to mess it all up. That's how I like to think of Cory and that thrashed old Bontrager. They are in a state of dynamic homeostasis, adapting and adjusting to each other's ever changing composition.
That is a rare and beautiful thing. It can only come about over time, massive amounts of time. Cory spent his teenage years on that bike. He knew every little thing wrong with it; he worked around every one of those jagged and potentially flesh-rending future failure points until they became part of this intuitive map that he and the bike shared like a fingerprint. And he used that bike with every shred of his and its potential. That shitbox was perfect for him and he never wanted anything more.
We should all dream about and hope for that. Because that's what riding and life is all about. It's not about buying next year's shiny new stuff. That all tarnishes soon enough. It's not about buying new technology to overcome your shortcomings. There will always be new technology and you will always have shortcomings and some punk kid like Cory on a thrashed old bike will always be better/faster/smoother than you. Sorry, but it's true.
And it's not about buying new, expensive toys to prove your commitment to the sort of to justify your ego to you id. That's just kind of sad. Once, during one of our marketing hype-ups that happen in Corpoland, we tried defining what this magazine is supposedly all about. Someone tossed out the line: "BIKE - Enjoy the ride." Whether that fits or not, here, amidst the new and shiny sandwiched between pages of expensive glossy advertisements, it becomes a matter of conjecture. But that sentiment, "Enjoy The Ride," that's what I hope all of you are here to do. It's what Cory does.
Posts
