RobbieTunes

Normally, not much, but often people see the rack on my car and bring it up. It has led to rehabs of about 4 bikes, advice/sales of about 4 more, and great conversations. I've been led to garages and sheds to look at tons of bikes, and it's all been good....

How so with you?

SteveSGP

Comes up all the time, someone asks what I've been up to and I say "Restoring/refubishing old bikes and riding a lot" and I've come across some great deals that way as well including my Tour de France.

repechage

I often have a few bikes scattered around at work, clients from time to time recognize the brand names, or the component brand, a few can tell they are old, but get amazed, "that bike is 35 years old!" A few mod bike riders are amazed that one had to move their hands to the down tube to shift! And you have to manually locate a gear?

wrk101

+1 Rehabbing, fixing bikes comes up constantly. Ditto the ebay hobbies: designer shoes and clothing mostly. A lot of people are interested in selling excess stuff on ebay, but for whatever reason, they are intimidated by it.

What did you find at garage sales? And, what did you sell on ebay are weekly topics Monday morning at my part time gig.

nlerner

Well, the conversation stopper for me is when someone asks, "How many bikes do you have?" It's gets freakish soon thereafter.

Neal

bigbossman 

Most of my shirt wardrobe consists of event T-shirts from the various rides I have done over the years - especially the one's that sell their last year's T-shirts for $5.

So, yeah - they seem to be conversation starters.

stien

I don't talk about anything else

David Newton

Where I attend church there are several that ride. My best friend there has done the MS-150 twice, and a woman in our band and her husband has done it once, so it isn't hard to find a "how's your ride?" conversation.

sailorbenjamin

No. That's why I hang out here.

ftwelder

Everything in my life is cycle related except some of my friends and they stand out quite a bit.

cyclezealot

Well. Ya... Most of those I associate with are cyclists. Most days of the week, the tee shirts I wear normally have some kind of bike theme Sort of hard for anyone to not notice my bike fetish.

auchencrow

+1

dashuaigeh

Living in austin means the average person knows a fair bit about bikes, so there are plenty of good convos there. Additionally, I'm friends with a few undergrads, and tend to help people fish out good CL bikes - often the convos I have will end up with the person asking "so can you find me a bike for under $___?"

And at my church, the pastor and staff own Schwinn Waterfords, Milwaukee Travelers, Bridgestone RB-1 and RB-Ts, Rivendell Bleriot, an old Ciocc, Trek 660 (and they sold me my first Waterford Paramount). There are tons of convos that go on around bikes there

cycleheimer

I work with quite a few avid cyclists. They ride the $6,000 to $10,000 bikes, and a few ride competitively at different levels. They are very nice to me, however, and allow me to converse with them about my 40 mile or so rides on 30 year old bikes.

brian3069

I enjoy watching my friends eyes glaze over as I tell them about my current project.

jebensch

A guy in one of my classes this semester had a Mellow Johnny's cap, so I struck up about bikes and it turns out he's the #1 Cat. 4 in the country this season! That's when all I can add is - "I like shiny old parts."

ciocc_cat

I have a large (poster-sized) photo of my early 1980s Ciocc San Cristobal hanging on the wall of my office, so the topic is frequently raised by clients and vendors.

cyclotoine

Same,

A conversation without bikes can be refreshing these days.

I commute and do all my daily activities by bike.
I play bike polo with friends.
I ride mountain bikes with other friends.
I road road bikes with other friends.
I race triathlon.
I ride/race a bit of cyclocross.
I work on bikes for a living.
My travel plans are for bike touring.
I also work on and collected vintage bikes and parts for a while and still keep them around as pieces of industrial art mostly.
Some day I'll revisit track riding.

When a conversation doesn't include biking, I usually don't have to much to say. It actually makes me a pretty boring person to about 99.99% of people.

JunkYardBike

I don't have normal conversations.

ScottRyder 

No, I avoid any cycling references at work. They don't get the "wool" thing. But it's ok, I don't get into what they do either.

Scott

WNG

+2

Most of our neighbors know I'm into bikes, but their jaws drop when they see the garage. I keep it off topic and focus on regular stuff, since they already think we're eccentric.

Pompiere

Same here. There are a bunch of people at work that ride but I never knew about them until I overheard one talking about the MS150 one day. Most people that I know are amazed that I can ride over 10 miles in one day.

MPC Biker

Me and my friends have developed our own code of sorts when talking about bikes. We use shorthand terms so much of the time that most of the people who know us don't even ask us about it anymore. We've entered our own vintage italian road bike universe!

Veloria

Actually, yes - But I live in Boston, so it's not that unusual.
Also, I get stopped on the streets or on the trails and asked about my bicycles a lot - though that's not really the same thing.

-holiday76

sure, but it usually results in me talking bicycles for 45 minutes before i realize the other person left after a few sentences. My son weighs about as much as 34 front 29 rear is in gear inches. What do you think of that?