Originally Posted by
I like free
I show up to road rides with my wife on my old friction shifting SR and I am an outcast, even though I can outride over 1/2 of them there on the old steel girl.
People say that all the time here, but I have never been part of a club that had any such attitude. Have you considered the possibility that you don't go to many rides and therefore the other riders simply
don't know you?
Originally Posted by
deadprez012
Hmm...well, roadies don't hang out here. They have those little house arrest anklets to the 41 so they don't leave the porch.
There's this guy I ride and used to race with - roadie to the core. Well, actually, he raced triathlons, too, for a number of year. Oh, and he just recently got a Surly LHT, and he's planning to do a cross-country ride pretty soon.
Personally, I got into racing after first being into touring and utility cycling. Touring isn't so much on my radar at the moment, but it would be nice to give it another go at some point.
The big problem is the assumption that all those other cyclists are out there looking down on you, and getting a chip on your shoulder because of it. And then people like me get kind of irritated and defensive, because our experience is that roadies are as diverse, friendly and practical a group of people as touring cyclists. They just have some slightly different priorities. A lot of them just love to ride. Like me, they're not just "roadies," they're riders with interest in all kind of riding, for sport and for practical needs. I've been on plenty of group rides with people on a variety of equipment. I've never seen a new person mocked for their bike. Friends might give each other some friendly ribbing, but that's it.
But yeah, show up feeling defensive, to a group that you don't ride with much, and you might not get a lot of conversation. If you go to a party with a lot of strangers, do you expect them to just come up and start talking to you? Or do you expect that a good social experience will require some reaching out on your part? Think about it. There are a lot of posts on BF from people who are really defensive about what or how they ride, who then show up to group rides and come home complaining about how everyone wasn't gathering around to shake their hand and congratulate them for riding what and how they do. It's kind of odd.
What I'm trying to say is that riding is fun. Turf wars between different "kinds" of riders are NOT fun, and often don't make sense. The divisions are largely imaginary.