I've been pointing the house today and it's one of those jobs where my mind wonders and thinks about all kinds of things, so please accept my sincere apologies.
While at the Adventure Cycle festival earlier in the year, I overheard a comment ... " ooh they're proper bikepackers, they're from Bear Bones". I kid you not. I smiled at the time and forgot about it until swaying on my ladders this afternoon, trowel in hand. I recalled that it's the kind of comment I used to hear a lot at motorbike 'do's' and was usually directed towards members of various backpatch / outlaw clubs. In the main, it was said with a level of respect, a little awe and maybe even a touch of underlying fear.
Then it dawned on me ... somehow and unbeknown to all here, we've obviously become the cycling equivalent of an outlaw patch club
I disagree. Backpatch bikers are often not very nice people coz they think they're hard and mean and different to the rest of us in society. Bikepackers however, well the ones I've met are, well, erm, hard, but in a different sort of way but they're also nice and helpful and accomodating and generous and, well, you know, not like shitty backpatch bikers (funny how most of them wear the same uniform too, shaved head, goatee, camo pants/jacket). Backpatch bikers, I'm not a fan.
Well we were most of the proper bikepackers there....
I think it's a compliment, people looking at this forum, and the denizens of it, and thinking - that is something to aspire to.
Maybe we should start an advetisement for new members: "Crave the open hillside? Do you want to look like this after a long multi day ride? Unable to straighten your fingers to wipe the 7 day old salt from your eyes? If so... well...ok. ERm...you're a proper bikepacker if you have/do/or at least think about doing it lots."
Backpatch club bikers , Hells Angels etc are known as 1%ers in the USA, does that mean we are the 1% ers of bikepacking? Do 4 panniered Dawes riders hide in bus shelters until it`s safe to come out in case a "Bearboneser lets their tyres down??
Thats so cool , I`ve always wanted to live on societies fringe and inhabit the dark side of the street.
The 1% thing stems from a quote in a newspaper after a riot / high spirits in the US in the late 40's. It said that 99% of motorcyclists were respectable and law abiding ... hence the patch clubs apopted the 1% to signify that they weren't.
This thread is even more brilliantly bonkers than the touring/bikepacking one. Or maybe I've just been eating too much dried food rehydrated with cold water and am having some sort of hallucination .
Being part of an elite sect sounds quite jolly actually, I think Stu needs to start coming up with some sort of elaborate handshake. We probably have the 'strange garb' well covered already.
"My God, Ponsonby, I'm two-thirds of the way to the grave and what have I done?" - RIP
"At least you got some stories" - James Acaster
"A little nonsense now and then is relished by the wisest men" - WW
Given the number of Bearbones shirts at yesterday's YD200, quite a significant minority. I think it was Burty who said "I thought I'd be the only one wearing one!"
I did get the comment at the pub/cafe in Clapham - "Ride, Eat, Sleep, Repeat - sounds good to me!"
Better weight than wisdom, a traveller cannot carry
The creation of this thread has a great potential to be one of those barmy university studies ( does toast always land butter side down ), but instead “ do you have greater philosophical thoughts while pointing your house up a ladder ? “
Ha, unfortunately my, errr, 'physique', beard, tats, facial scarring and general grumpy demeanour is much more likely to get me mistaken for a 1%er than a bikepacker...
)
