Back in college, I had the biggest crush on a cokehead.
He was absolutely gorgeous. Curly light brown hair and empty brown eyes, the permanent smirk of an overconfident asshole smeared across his lips. He’d bend down to murmur something in my ear, letting me in on a secretly snide remark. He took me out on my first proper date. I was swooning.
It lasted all of two weeks, before his perfect ex-girlfriend reclaimed control. A skinny brunette with an impressive rack, she was small and stunningly cute. The girl every guy wanted.
She was also notoriously crazy. Beauty can be a real bitch, I guess.
It’s odd, I hadn’t thought of her in a while. But taking Whit Yost’s advice to lose some teeth on my track bike, my new cog was exactly like that girl. Small, dark, and cute, it’s the first cog I’ve had that doesn’t peek its teeth over the flange of my back hub. And while you shouldn’t compare, it just looks so much sexier than my 17T on the other side of my hub. It looks like it belongs there, draped across the threads of a double-fixed hub, chain encircling her tiny waist.
But not unlike that perfect girl, this new cog of mine has supplied its own host of problems.
Its tiny size meant that, while it looked awesome on the bike, that the wheel was pulled further back in the fork ends. Which means that it changed my wheelbase length ever so slightly. Which means I’ll have to adjust the rollers if that chain stretches.
No big deal so far for non-lazy people. But knocking two teeth off the back also means I’m feeling every push of the pedals and I’m gasping for breath within minutes. And that’s all after I’ve finally managed to actually get the wheels rolling. Because for about 3 seconds, I’m screwing up my face while remaining mostly motionless on the rollers, trying to start the first pedal stroke. It has to look ridiculous.
Still, like the cokehead I fell for, I’m still reaping the benefits associated with that cog. I’m finally warming up at the proper gearing for track cyclists. I’m passing out at the end of the day into the blissful unconsciousness too similar to post-coital sleep. I get to be associated with participating in something most consider insane.
That doesn’t mean it’s not painful. It is. But you get over it, and move onto better things. You know, just like junkie crushes.
