MrBearSir

I don't get it. Seems like a large percentage of experienced cyclists are crazy elitist jerks who take no consideration to a new and eager rider who may not know much starting out. Why?

They were once in my position I'm sure. Why aren't they a bit more understanding when I walk into a bikeshop rather than giving me that look like I'm a hopeless moron. I don't have friends or family into cycling so the only place i CAN learn from is the internet (bikeforums/etc) or the dudes at my LBS who never seem to really want to enlighten me or engage in a legit conversation for that matter. What's the big idea. I look at these guys like cycling gods of knowledge as I wait to be taken under a wing or two. But no..

Ironically, I'm sure that plenty of these gentlemen I've just described are reading this and readying themselves to post some sort of sarcastic and witty response. I'm sure this will still happen despite my efforts to call them out on it.

dcbikeguy

Maybe its just you?

urbanknight

I see you joined just last month. [turns nose up in disgust]

racin jasin

could be just where you live...here in iowa the more riders the merrier!!!

Cdy291

Go find another bike shop. Hell the shop I work at is the Fred Temple of Georgia, unfortunately. They still have some pretty good stuff though.

kidonabike

There are people like that in every sport. At the gym I go to there are a couple of blue belts who routinely pick on the smaller/less experienced members.

Just go talk to some other guys, there are plenty of cyclists around and a few of them are bound to be nice.

phantyk

One reason might be that they get calloused to the requests for assistance and no longer feel like helping. Not that that is the nicest thing to do, but once they've answered the question once they'll tell you to search for that post. This is regards to the forums though, of course. I don't know why they wouldn't want to assist at your LBS as that seems in their best business interest as well.

Sixty Fiver

As a cycling god I always try to impart as much knowledge as I can to lesser beings so that they may too attain an exalted stature.



We should all be like Sheldon Brown, a guy who was never too busy to answer an e-mail about another dumb assed question

Cdy291

There are some people that will come here and ask questions though that I have known since I was six.

wanders

Try waving more.

MrBearSir

haha! I don't know if that was sarcasm or not, but every time I wave to fellow riders when I'm out, I rarely get any response. Though I do understand that some are just really focused

ilmooz

You can't dig for gold bullion. Sometimes you have to sift through a lot of mud to pan a nugget here or there. If you're getting nothing but mud at that bike shop try another one upstream.

MrBearSir

ahah!

MrBearSir

Just to clarify: I wasn't strictly limiting this observation to my local bike shop. Those guys are cool, even though I sometimes feel really inferior.

I was just generally confused about the cycling culture as a whole with regards to that sort of beginner/advanced relationship

Sixty Fiver

And your point is ?

rollin

That is a sad reflection of the people at your lbs. As mentioned already, find a new shop.

Ironically, what I have found over the years is that the lbs that stocks the uber high end components and caters to the racing community is usually run by enthusiasts who will give advice to new riders.Those that make a living fixing punctures and selling generic low end bikes can sometimes be elitist and belittle new riders.

Most of the riders I have met on the road are fine. Sometimes it just a question of timing. I have been riding for a long time (although I still have so much to learn) and am happy to chat to new riders if I'm not killing myself riding intervals/ training. I will wave at anyone but sometimes I feel so close to the edge that I can only concentrate on breathing! If you look closely, you'll see I'm trying to nod at you.

Keep at it, you'll find the good ones!



(results based on a totally unscientific survey, conducted over 20 years and 4 countries)

rydaddy

I call it motivation.

FlashBazbo

Why does it happen? Here's the truth. (I'm breaking the Code here, so I hope you appreciate it!)

It's a deep-seated insecurity. They are nerds -- unable to function out in the real world and they've found one solitary domain (cycling) where they appear to be the "cool" guys and worthy of snubbing somebody else.

So, they look at you like you're an idiot. They yell at you on casual rides. And they shun you. Fact is, they really are nerds and they couldn't carry on a decent conversation with you if their lives depended on it. It's not so much that they WON'T talk to you -- they really have nothing interesting to say, and they know it!

Fortunately, they are a fanatical minority among cyclists. Don't let them get to you. Ignore them. Other experienced cyclists do!

Machka 

I grew up in a cycling family so I might have been in your position when I was about 6 years old. But I did take a few years off in my late-teens/early-twenties, and when I got back into cycling again at the age of 23, and wanted to find things out, I didn't have the internet or LBS people to help me. Instead, I went to my local library, took out every single book they had on cycling (all 5 of them), and read them from cover to cover. I also started taking out Bicycling Mag from the library too (not that doing that would help you these days).

We just get a little tired of the constant barrage of "I'm a complete newbie and I'm not going to give you any information about myself and my goals, but what bike should I get" type of threads. The answer is: "It doesn't matter!" Or ... "What works for one person might not work for another." Or ... "We don't know anything about you, so how should we know what will work for you."

For years I rode an older department store road bicycle, which worked just fine. Sure it was heavy. Sure it wasn't a state-of-the-art racing bicycle. Sure it was too big for me. But I sat down with the books from the library and set the bicycle up all by myself into a position that came the closest to fitting me. And I rode a thousands of kilometers with that bicycle, including my first century.

As I started getting interested in organized cycling (centuries and racing), then I started looking at bicycles and equipment that would be suitable for those pursuits. But by then I had a pretty good idea what I was looking for because I had experienced, read, and observed.

So feel free to do a bit of research on your own ... go to the library and read a few books, check out informative websites (there are several on my website here, and I'm hoping to add more in the coming months: https://www.machka.net/links.htm), use Google to look for clubs in your area that might be appropriate to your interests (type your province or state and the words: bicycle club), observe other cyclists ... and if you do want to ask a question here, provide some brief background information of where you've been with exercise and cycling, and where you want to go.

So ... did you have a specific question?

Mr. Clean

I just moved back to Oklahoma from a short time living and working in Indiana. The guys I started riding with there were a bunch of racing types, a few former cat 1s and 2s among them I think. Aside from the cursory niceties at the start of my first ride, they were a frosty group, and I got dropped hard week after week. I could tell it was nothing personal, so I kept coming back for more. It took about 2 months for people to start warming up, and not long after that I was in shape to pull my weight in the group and finish the rides. If all of them started out like me, I can see how it would foster a "no mercy for the weak" or "tough love" mentality. I know it helped me get a hell of a lot faster than I would have on my own, but that kind of group mentality isn't for everyone.

Of course, some guys are just pricks too. That's always an option.

urbanknight

Yeah, I rarely get a wave back, and sometimes those are even my teammates who don't recognize me because I'm not in my team jersey.

FlashBazbo

OFF TOPIC: Mr. Clean, what takes you to Stillwater? I spent some of my young cycling/racing years as a student at OSU -- and my daughter is very likely starting at OSU in the fall.

Gluteus

Most of the cyclist and LBS people around here are pretty friendly, don't mind at all answering your questions, giving you advice or helping you if you a problem with your bike during a ride. Maybe it's a Midwest thing.

As rollin stated, certain rides are not for socializing but for riding hard. Frequently you find yourself holding on for your dear life; if you drop, you drop; no mercy.

You'll find the right people. When you become more comfortable with the lingo, equipment, culture and you're in better cycling shape, don't forget how you feel now; maybe you'll be the one "taking under your wing" a newbie.

calyth

some interesting perspective for you:

I'm a computing science guy, so naturally everyone ask me for computer questions. I'm normally interested in helping others, and not to exude too much hubris, I know my computers for most of the questions that I've been asked.

But after a while, I'm just bombarded with the same questions, or tasked to do the same things (e.g. virus / spyware removal), so I'm bored to tears. Once you lose interest in answering the most mundane question over and over again, you get tired, you get cranky when yet another person asks you the same questions.

Worse yet, you might have done someone a favour, and their callous responses to their problems makes you wish you haven't done it. I've given my dad my old desktop about a year and a half ago. It's not fast by any standards, but it was at least 2 generations faster than the Pentium 3 700 he was using at the time. I've been told that the computer was slow - for crying out loud I've done my programming assignments and gamed on the bloody thing, it was not slow by any stretch of imagination - but what he really meant to say was the internet was slow.

Sure enough, him being the one who keeps asking me the mundane questions and be callous at describing his problems leads to a cranky, surly me.

Them people at the bikeshop may be just dealing with the same situation. If you're bringing your bike for repairs (since you mention a bike shop), and you want to learn more, Lennard Zinn's repair book, and the Park Tool book isn't bad at all. You don't have to get the tools and do your repairs, but knowing what they're talking about usually makes them do a double take, and respect the fact that you're a "newbie who does their homework". I sure didn't know a lot about bikes before I got my used Cannondale R2000, but reading the repair books allowed me to describe my problems well, in well-known vocabulary, and shop guys appreciate it.

The difference is like telling your computer guy that "my computer crashes" vs "my computer crashes whenever I'm doing X,Y, and Z".

Ratfish

I think it's funny how this was the avatar of the first response to "MrBearSir"