Ride Your Bike

I follow How to Avoid the Bummer Life, and they recently posted the image below, which was snagged from a postcard sent out by Swarm! LA.

Lately I've been riding to the group ride starting points, so I'm already taking Bike Swarm's advice. Riding to the group ride start is just a small part of Eddy Mercxx's beautiful piece of advice. Here are my corollaries to Mercxx's Law, all of which I've had to tell myself during my first 2.5 years of cycling:

• When you think that spending your bonus check on new gear will make you faster, RIDE YOUR BIKE.
• When you want to sleep late in the morning instead of riding to meet your team, RIDE YOUR BIKE.
• When the temperature starts dropping, put on your cold weather gear and RIDE YOUR BIKE.
• When you pass near your house during the group ride, RIDE YOUR BIKE past your house and do a few more miles.
• When you want to buy another bike, get out the one you have and RIDE YOUR BIKE.
• In the heart of winter, put your bike on the trainer and RIDE YOUR BIKE.
• If you're traveling out of town and taking your truck, make the extra effort to take your bike so that when you get to your destination you can RIDE YOUR BIKE.
• When you and your spouse agree to have nights out alone so that you can remain sane parents, use your time to RIDE YOUR BIKE.
• If your derailleur is out of adjustment and you can't tweak the barrel adjustment to fix it while riding, ignore the chatter and RIDE YOUR BIKE using the gear groups that work.
• During the summer, when you get home from work at 5:30p and it's 100F+ outside, put an extra water bottle in your jersey pocket and RIDE YOUR BIKE.
• If you're trying to bridge up to the next skill group, join up with them and continue to RIDE YOUR BIKE even when you get dropped.

Taking his advice and riding my bike obviously won't make me equivlaent to Mercxx, but it made me a better cyclist, and that's more than good enough.