Re: [CR]Appearances......uh-oh......

John,
> Tom Sanders wrote:
>
> > Am I hearing this correctly that there are folks
> here who make judgments
> > about other cyclists because they are not wearing
> clothes that the critics
> > find to be not matching their own tastes?
> > I ride in what I consider comfortable...I do try
> just for fun to wear a Masi
> > jersey if riding a Masi

For all of the years I rode in cut-off shorts, tennis shoes, and my JAWS T-shirt I got criticized to death about it--(this was back in the "Greg LeMond era"--before Armstrong came along and basically erased Lemond's name from the record books for good.) But that was what I was COMFORTABLE in.

People would laugh at me for NOT wearing jerseys, the correct shorts, etc, etc. I did not wear the jerseys because I had and still have rolls of "baby-fat" on my body; the jerseys make it look like I have these little breasts.

You guys lash out at me about criticism, yet the riders at the time (in the Bay Area) were so anal that they would criticize everything about me. Example: One guy had the nerve to say "Hey, you are not 'ankling' correctly" as I struggled to climb one of the local hills. Others would flat out criticize the bicycle I was riding--a Centurion Super LeMans. The easy way out would be to challenge these guys to fist fights. I may come across as a barbarian at times, but I'm not. And I know that people who fight go to jail because my favorite show is "COPS."

I would like to talk about bicycle advocacy as one fellow suggested I stop complaining and do more for advocating cycling. I have been unearthing, excavating, digging through basements, rummaging through old parts bins at just about every single bicycle shop in the Bay Area for years. I in turn take these old parts clean them up and recycle them via selling them on ebay. While most of you go to normal well-paying jobs, I attend garage sales, flea markets, swap meets, estate sales, etc in an attempt to find the stuff that people WILL eventually throw away. My job is to bring these parts back to life and pass them on to you by fair open auction via ebay. Now if that is not bicycle advocacy I don't know what is. But if you think for a second that I am going to set up shop in Berkeley, weave dread-locks into my hair and ride around with a bunch of stoned guys with Reggae music blasting through a boom box strapped to a Pletcher rack while yelling slogans through bull-horns, that's not going to happen. That kind of thing is called making an ass out of yourself.

Ted E. Baer
Palo Alto, CA