recycled from my old blogue: a slow bicycle club for backward bicyclists

I was contemplating the wreckage of my bicycle* today, and my general ineptitude at maintaining/ riding the sorry beast, when I was struck by the need for a bicycle gang to serve my personal take on bike kulcha. It is time for the downtrodden riders of crappy velocipedes to rise up and celebrate a laissez-faire, yet mildly irritable approach to their transports of delight. I give you the Whore’s Delay Bicycle club (DFL Cadre). We will embrace rust and reject speed. We will wobble constantly, block paths, and let our knees go to shit. We will get distracted attempting basic repairs, cut ourselves on the normally blunt derailleur, and forget the whole blasted chore while digging for tcp. Our idleness will only be broken at full moon, when we round up hipster bike nazis and garotte them with specially adapted trouser clips.

There should be initiations and secret handshakes and special tie pins.

The admission process would be as follows:

1. The Duel. The initiate must take up a mitt thown down by their sponsor, and then ride past them, catching them on the cheek with the glove. Both riders will then pause to exchange spiky badinage on the condition of their respective mounts, family members and choice of footwear.
2. The sixpack ride. The initiates will ride in a group to a local off licence and buy six beers each. One of them will suggest an interesting place to drink the beer. They will ride there, drink, and decide on the next stop and so on. It will soon become apparent that the beer is becoming rather shaken by being kept in a plastic bags slung over handlebars. The initiates will complain that wine would have been more appropriate, although potable wine does not come in six packs, thus negating the valuable point of whole exercise. Shirts will be soaked, and a degree of anxiety raised about catching cold, and people will sulk off home before the booze is finished.
3. The initiate will have a poorly informed and slightly hostile exchange with a teenage bicycle mechanic. Their bicycle will remain shit.

*my bicycle is admittedly now awesome, but the sentiment persists.

admirably slovenly