Groucho Marx famously made this remark in his resignation letter to the Friars Club in 1949 or so. It’s a quote that has always amused me, and to a certain degree has also rung true. Although I have always cycled on the road, I also had many years of riding cross country mountain bike too.
Road riding has long had a club affiliation, particularly for the road racing scene. However, mountain biking was always much more independently-minded. Certainly, in my experience, it was much more about riding with friends, and friends of friends, than any formally organised process. This informal way of riding suited me, and probably explains why I never joined a club.
So, what changed? Well, three summers ago I had a really serious cycling accident, involving a compression fracture to a vertebrae in my spine. Luckily I have recovered decently well, and haven’t had any permanent life-changing injuries. There are certain things that I will live with forever, however, such as the two rods and eight screws attached to my spine.
Anyway, a year after the accident, I was still recovering. I was trying to get stronger and fitter, but I was still a way off becoming fully better. I must include a massive thank you to the NHS physios who helped me during that first year. You were amazing!
A chance conversation at a bike jumble…
So one year on from my accident, I met a chap called Richard at a bike jumble. We got chatting, and he mentioned that he organised a regular ride out from a local coffee shop, and that I’d be welcome to join them.
At this point I was still quite nervous riding alone, as I felt quite vulnerable from the injury, and my stamina was quite low too. So a few weeks later I rode over to meet up with them. I was welcomed into the tight-knit group, bought a coffee, told the route, and off we set.
On a Tuesday ride the pace is deliberately steady, and not too far, which suited me perfectly. As the group is mainly retired racers and ‘clubman’ riders, their road craft and bike positioning were excellent. I appreciated all the pointing out of potholes, and the point behind the back to move out around a parked car. I felt safe within their peloton. Over the next year I became able to join the longer and faster rides, as my stamina had started to return.
The Men of Steel
The group are known as the ‘Men Of Steel’, partly from their fortitude and riding all year round, unless there is a risk from black ice. But mainly it is from the choice to ride steel-framed bikes on the Tuesday ride! It’s not obligatory but preferred. A wide variety of bikes appear from the 1950s through to contemporary steel frames, such as the Genesis Equilibrium and the Condor Fratello. Whilst it’s not a formalised club, the spirit is very much that of the classic clubman setup.
One thing that I’ve really enjoyed is the sociability of the group, whether it’s in the coffee shop or riding side-by-side in the peloton and chatting away. I’ve made some firm friends in the group too. It’s been nice for me to help out with someone’s new (old!) bike project, be it a stuck seatpost, fitting a headset or cleaning out threads with a reaming tool. It’s pleasing to add my skillset into the group, and contribute a bit back.
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An aspect that amuses me is that everyone seems to have a nickname. From the sporting heroes of previous eras, such as ‘Pantani’ and ‘Delgado’, to jobs. ‘Jumbo’ was a pilot! It might be a favourite cheese sandwich for ‘Charmer’, an incident without explanation for ‘Streaker’, or a continentally styled surname for ‘Le Duc’. But my favourite story links to ‘Speedy’, who is a fast and strong rider, but that’s not why he is so named. It relates to him buying a Speedy Boarding Pass on a certain airline, so that he could board before the rest of the group. That story always makes me smile.
True clubman behaviour
I had a ride the winter before last where I punctured on the ride over. As much as I searched, I couldn’t find the source of the deflation. So I put my spare tube in, pumped it up and carried on to the meeting point.
The tyre held pressure fine. I rechecked it before setting off for the ride proper and all was fine. Of course, approaching the furthest point on the ride the tyre went down again. By now the weather wasn’t great and everything was getting wet and grimy. I still couldn’t find the reason for the puncturing. Added to the mix I had used my spare tube and half of the charge on my electric pump.
Charmer offered me his spare tube, and Speedy lent me his pump, so I’d have some charge left – all fine and normal. I was feeling somewhat anxious however about riding home alone, with half a pumps-worth of inflation, two tubes with holes in, and not having found the reason for all of this. I really didn’t want to get stranded, and there was nobody I could think of to ring for a lift that day either.
God bless Charmer when he said: “I’ve had enough of riding today, I’ll ride back with you.” We arrived at mine without further incident. It turned out to be a shard of flint that took some finding later on! I now carry a tiny manual pump, as well as the e-pump. But it was Charmer’s kindness recognising my anxiousness over getting stranded, not making a big thing of it, and shadowing me home, which meant the world. A true clubman.
So, now what?
Nearly three years on, I’m fully recovered and I’m riding decently well again. Although I can’t regularly ride with the Men Of Steel as regularly due to work commitments, I’m still in touch, and ride with them whenever time allows. I’m also thinking of joining the local club to have some more folk to ride with on the weekend!
I thank them for their kindness and camaraderie, and allowing a younger bloke into their circle. I’m not sure whether they realise what a difference the Men of Steel made to my life during that difficult time.
Ride safe fellas, and see you on the road soon.
14 thoughts on ““I don’t want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member”… why I changed my mind about cycling clubs”
Excuse me while I get political.
In a world dominated by neo-liberalism, social media echo chambers and isolated individuals bashing away at keyboards at home moaning at each other, cycling clubs, or any other group so far as I’m concerned are a political statement.
No Thatcher, there is such a thing as society, just because you’re too miserable to recognise it, doesn’t mean the rest of us aren’t. Forming groups and clubs and having the opportunity to show care and compassion towards your fellow men and women is one of the true joys of life, and is one of the few things in this world that give me hope.
Two things here:
– There is a fantastic book called Bowling Alone, published in the mid-1990s, which traced the movement in the US from people doing things as parts of clubs in the first three quarters of the 20th century (e.g. ten-pin bowling clubs and leagues) to doing them solo. This is linked to all kinds of other social declines, e.g. to increasing crime, lower social trust, etc. And of course, linked to the rise of neoliberalism. Basically, when we do things alone, society gets a bit less good and a bit more rubbish.
– The ‘Clarion’ cycling movement was very much about social solidarity in cycling, indeed very much about socialism.
@the little onion Yep, its also a reason the more people cycle and walk in their community, the more connected to it they become. Its surprisingly hard to hate someone who isn’t an asshole if you actually have to engage and see them all the time. Its very easy to read the news every day and hear about “group X” who are doing Y and dehumanise them and see them only as the negative portrayal you’re fed.
I now carry a tiny manual pump, as well as the e-pump
Great. What an advance! Carrying an extra piece of kit that you always have to worry about, in addition to the piece of kit that still works after you’ve carried it about for decades. I’ve never used one of the CO2 cylinders that morons use to litter up laybys, and I was so much out of touch that I initially thought they were supplies of nitrous left by a different type of moron. I can’t see me using an electric pump either, despite the attraction of a well-made gadget with durable motor and bearings
Just to give the other side, after over a decade of not having a puncture on the summer bike I had one recently and found that the rubber seals in my mini pump had rotted away for some reason, I was glad I was with the club run and someone pumped it up with a CO2 cartridge for me. When I got home I checked all the pumps on my other bikes and found one of the others in a similar state! Just another thing that’s worth checking before you go on a solo ride.
I picked up one for about £30 off AliExpress, and you know what? It’s bloody brilliant.
Yes, it is an arduous and technically demanding testing régime on a small pump, what with having to pick it up, stick your thumb over the outlet and execute a couple of pumping motions.
That wouldn’t actually test the seal around the valve though (I agree with you that electric pumps and CO2 are solutions for a problem that never existed and what with Garmin, Go Pro, phone and lights all needing to be charged I don’t need another thing to remember).
The modern mini pump is the problem, if you’ve ever used one of the old fashioned frame fitting pumps you know what the solution is but the frame manufacturers are determined not to let us have them.
Author writes thoughtful piece about the joy of cameraderie that cycling inevitably delivers…. Cyclists get irked by his approach to tyre inflation. Come on guys – big picture here. An injured cyclist is back on the road and smiling because of mates.
Camaraderie is one of the many things that draw people to cycling and should be celebrated; narky comments not so much.
I always say spending the extra few minutes making sure you find and eliminate the source of a puncture is time well spent. If not immediately obvious, one option is to pump up the punctured tube and then feel for the escaping air (I find if you hold it close to your face, you’re likely to feel/hear the leak). Once you’ve found the hole, you dramatically narrow down the part of the tyre you need to search for the offending object.
The only thing to remember is to be careful to maintain the sidedness of the tube with regards to the wheel/tyre – you can rotate the tube in the plane of the wheel whilst searching for the puncture (and then re-align the valve with the valve hole), but if you’ve turned the tube around, you’ll end up looking for the cause of the puncture in the wrong place.
Awesome!
I would also be very happy to help mates fix bikes and have a group for my wife and I to ride with.
There are no clubs in my city of 75,000. Sad. I’m just not connected enough to start one, but it’s on my mind.
I was knocked off my bike in 2018 and left with life changing injuries.
I got left with a small brain injury [no … the brain is normal size, its the injury thats small], a limp and the inability to walk any further than a couple of hundred meters unaided.
CoVid was a blessing for me; I got the all-clear to ride again early 2020, purchased an ebike and took advantage of the empty roads.
This built up my confidence and helped bring up my fitness levels.
However … going back to group riding was the best thing I could do.
On days where I can’t walk due to the pain, I can get on the bike; knowing that I have friends and a Club that I can call on for the motivation and company [cycling helps to ease the pain, whereas walking and inaction only increases it] is a great mental and physical driver.
I gravel as well as road ride. I won’t gravel alone as the risks of injury are higher. Not only that … watching others do something that you would shy away from – riding a ditch or crossing a log – is great motivation.
Its not for everyone, and I wouldn’t force it on anyone.
But … knowing the choice is there is the difference between an opportunity or an opportunity missed.