I loved the Anna Wiener profile of Grant Petersen, founder of Rivendell Bicycle Works. Wiener has a way with paragraphs.
About halfway through the ride, I came to a fork in the road. I didn’t know which path the others had taken, and I stood for a while, appreciating the shade of the oak trees, the quiet, the bandanna crisping around my neck. I tried to channel an essay of Petersen’s, written in 2002, on what he calls “underbiking”: taking a bike somewhere it isn’t obviously built to go. “Riding an UB changes how you look at any terrain,” he wrote. “You ride where it lets you ride, walk when it wants you to, and rely more on your growing skills than on the latest technology.” This struck me as a harmonic way of moving through the world – not my way, but whatever. I pushed off, found the group, and followed them down a steep, exhilarating slide. Dry earth sputtered against my calves. I loosened my hold on the brakes. Even in the heat, with friction shifters I didn’t understand how to use, I felt a flicker of my favorite feeling: competence. The wide tires were emboldening; the saddle height was psychologically fine. It was by far the longest, heaviest bicycle I had ever been on, and it moved with a surprising grace.