Hey, It's Friday! Don't Even Read This Post, Just Drop What You're Doing And Go For A Ride!

I'm willing to bet an artisan wooden bicycle that when you woke up this morning the very last thing on your mind was wanting to learn more about me.  Nevertheless, the good people at Banjo Brothers, apparently desperate for content, have just published this interview with me:

I think it's wonderful that, thanks to the Internet, you can now fill your brain up with utterly useless information such as what I like to make for dinner.

My false modesty notwithstanding (the truth is I'm fascinated with myself and the minutiae of my existence and expect others to be too), I was surprised to find myself described as a "cyclist" (not to mention "notable," but that's something else):

FIVE THINGS is a feature on the Banjo Brothers Blog. It’s a short interview about life and bicycles with a notable person. This week's notable person is cyclist Eben Weiss.

At first blush this seemed wildly inaccurate, as there are generally two situations in which I think it's appropriate to describe someone as a cyclist:

• If they're like a professional racer or something;
• If they've just been creamed by a bus (e.g. "The cyclist, whose pelvis was flattened like a crêpe, was not wearing a helmet.")

At the very least, you'd think a "cyclist" would be someone who rides a bike in an interesting way, which I emphatically do not.  I'm a Cat 3 club putz, a middling mountain biker, and my idea of "bikepacking" is hitting the Trails Behind The Mall for an hour and then spending $25 on lunch at the Whole Foods.

If anything, "writer" seems more appropriate than cyclist, as there are actually people who are foolish enough to pay me to do that, though "blogger" is probably even more fitting since writer implies you can do more than bloviate about bikes on the Internet.  (Self-absorbed douchebag would be even better though I suppose there are matters of search engine optimization at play that preclude the use of such descriptors.)

However, the more I thought about it, the more I realized maybe it is fair to call me a cyclist, since it's only by churning the cranks that I end up generating anything worth reading, to the extent that I even do.  (More false modesty: my writing is fantastic.)  Also, I spend like 10 hours a week or something on a bike, and while most amateur racers I know ride a hell of a lot more than that it's still a depressing amount of time to fritter away on something that's not remunerative.  So really I'd better start to consider myself a cyclist or else I'm just a guy who wastes most of the work week and who might as well spend weekday afternoons doing bong hits and playing video games.

Anyway, I've now not only linked to an interview with myself but also written far too much about myself in the process of linking to said interview, so I think I'd better fuck off and go for a ride now.

Hey, I am a cyclist after all.

from Bike Snob NYC http://bit.ly/2F9ZN9y