It's Not About The Bike

A few months ago, while riding home from Lipa in Batangas, I met an old man wearing a faded “Marlboro Tour” jersey weaving through heavy traffic in the late afternoon rush hour of Calamba. I caught up with him after much reckless zigzagging between fuming jeepneys and hissing trucks, all inching their way across each other’s path in their vain attempt to get ahead. I pulled up alongside the old man’s bike with thighs burning and my chest just about ready to split apart as a result of the gargantuan effort it took to catch up. I said hello but the old man just gave me an appraising look of disdain, the same expression he would undoubtedly have when he gets a flat tire. I carried on with my furious pedaling and he cruised on effortlessly in silence, until he broke the mechanical reverie of our turning chains and sprockets. He asked me where I’ve been riding that day? I answered “I went to Lipa in Batangas,” proudly. He flicks an imaginary piece of dirt from his handle bar and nods his head approvingly, like a teacher who finally gets his student to figure out a simple lesson. “That’s good” he says, increasing the pace a little as the traffic opens up ahead of us. I struggle to keep pace, shifting to a heavier gear to compensate for his thin road tires, clicking the shifter lever as fluidly as I could trying to keep my changing gears from embarrassing me. My gears shift quietly, except that the old man knows it and glances over as if he already knew I was going to do it. With the hierarchy between the two of us concretely established, we got to talking about other things. I commented on the fact that he was riding with a steel frame and that I had a steel frame as well on my other bike. To which, he simply answered that the frame didn’t matter and that only the rider is what really counts. We delved into it a little more in between bursts of sprinting on his part and huffing and puffing on mine. He paced back down after a while and we continued our conversation. “Do you want to know a secret?” he asks, “Sure. Absolutely!” I shout back, my voice barely bridging the gap between his bike and mine amid the noise of traffic zipping past us. “The next time you find yourself in a race” he began, “keep in mind that none of the other riders will know the difference as long as they’re all behind you.” His words hung heavily in the air like a smog of truth as he looked across at me to see if I got the message. We rode on until we got to San Pedro where my route would leave the old national highway. “Where are you headed, anyway?” I ask him just before the corner I had to turn, “Pangasinan!” he shoots back, and with a wave of his hand he gets up from the saddle and quickly accelerates forward. From the distance I couldn’t tell what bike he was riding, only that the rider was the only one who really made a difference.