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There are two ways you can get exercise out of a bicycle: you can “overhaul” it, or you can ride it. On the whole, I am not sure that a man who takes his pleasu

There are two ways you can get exercise out of a bicycle: you can “overhaul” it, or you can ride it. On the whole, I am not sure that a man who takes his pleasure overhauling does not have the best of the bargain. He is independent of the weather and the wind; the state of the roads troubles him not. Give him a screw-hammer, a bundle of rags, an oil-can, and something to sit down upon, and he is happy for the day. He has to put up with certain disadvantages, of course; there is no joy without alloy. He himself always looks like a tinker, and his machine always suggests the idea that, having stolen it, he has tried to disguise it; but as he rarely gets beyond the first milestone with it, this, perhaps, does not much matter. The mistake some people make is in thinking they can get both forms of sport out of the same machine. This is impossible; no machine will stand the double strain. You must make up your mind whether you are going to be an “overhauler” or a rider. Personally, I prefer to ride, therefore I take care to have near me nothing that can tempt me to overhaul. When anything happens to my machine I wheel it to the nearest repairing shop. If I am too far from the town or village to walk, I sit by the roadside and wait till a cart comes along. My chief danger, I always find, is from the wandering overhauler. The sight of a broken-down machine is to the overhauler as a wayside corpse to a crow; he swoops down upon it with a friendly yell of triumph. At first I used to try politeness. I would say: “It is nothing; don’t you trouble. You ride on, and enjoy yourself, I beg it of you as a favour; please go away.” Experience has taught me, however, that courtesy is of no use in such an extremity. Now I say: “You go away and leave the thing alone, or I will knock your silly head off.” “three men on the bummel”, 1914

gensym 4y ago
This is exactly why I switched my sport of choice from cycling to running. In cycling, I kept getting pulled into the gear and tinkering. (It didn't help that I raced cyclocross, so during race season, every Monday was spent cleaning and repairing the result of the previous day's races). TBH, it was fun, but if I spent as much time training as I did tinkering, maybe I would have had some decent race results. With running, it's harder to believe that the gear is what's holding me back from performance. Get a rotation of shoes, and that's pretty much it. My shorts and tops probably need to be replaced at this point before their growing transparency scandalizes the neighborhood, but as long as they're light and sweat-wicking, it doesn't matter too much what I replace them with. But then I made the mistake of getting into rock climbing...
- taude 4y ago
  Haa...cyclocross is definitely gear intensive. I always enjoyed running becasue I could be ready in like 2 minutes vs going for a bike ride that involved at a minimum kitting up, pumping the tires, and more often than that for the type of riding I like (cross/mtb) I'd also have to drive to a destination. Now I can't run due to injury/surgery, so I have a bike on the trainer now and that's my tv time. minimizes the bike futzing.
- sushisource 4y ago
  That's part of the reason I love running too. A minimum of fuss. It's funny that you mention rock climbing, because it's the same reason I love bouldering. You only need shoes. Climbing has something for everyone - trad for the gear heads, bouldering for the people who can't be bothered with planning, sport for people somewhere in the middle.
- dehrmann 4y ago
  > With running, it's harder to believe that the gear is what's holding me back from performance. Running reminds me of strength training. No one thinks a new barbell is going to add 10% to their one-rep max.
  - NegativeLatency 4y ago
    I do some triathlons a couple to times a year, and I find it enjoyable to beat people on a steel frame bike with lower quality / older gear. Also riding a recumbent really gives you perspective on what a fast bike is. No amount of carbon fiber can beat the more streamlined and comfortable position.
    - pbmonster 4y ago
      > Also riding a recumbent really gives you perspective on what a fast bike is. No amount of carbon fiber can beat the more streamlined and comfortable position. Until the uphill starts...
  - andreareina 4y ago
readthenotes1 4y ago
1900? It is a very funny book that also predicted the rise of Hitler. There is an accident that happens early on in the book that my dad replicated over 100 years later in exactly the same way.
- hprotagonist 4y ago
  did he also crush his testes in between the lobes of a nose-less kidney saddle?
c22 4y ago
This is why I own more than one bicycle.
- hprotagonist 4y ago
  the n+1 problem is pernicious! but i too have this “solution”
mjb 4y ago
Great quote, thank you. I enjoyed Three Men in a Boat, but never read this one. It may be time to revisit Jerome.
- gumby 4y ago
  You can't possibly be old enough to have met him in person, so I consider you impertinent in using the author's given name. Have a bit of respect and use his last name!
  - addled 4y ago
    Perhaps they're the time traveller in https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Say_Nothing_of_the_Dog https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Say_Nothing_of_the_Dog?
    - gumby 4y ago
      Had not considered that possibility, perhaps because I don't remember a traveler to that period, thinking only of plague era.
freetime2 4y ago
I have been roasted before on the internet for suggesting that bleeding disc brakes was inconvenient. I think this distinction between riders and overhaulers actually explains a lot!
mongol 4y ago
I thought it was older. Wikipedia says 1900.
kashyapc 4y ago
Beautiful! Thanks for sharing this. The word "bummel" (a German word for "stroll") is described wonderfully in the last paragraph of the book, it is quoted here[1]. A modern day example of the above "overhauler" way (a theme familiar to HN): we see many variants of "Look! I've setup the perfect static website!" Then the person goes on to write a single, lonely post on "how to setup a perfect static site", and then ... go silent for 5 years, or forever. They've burnt too much energy in "configuring". [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Men_on_the_Bummel#The_word_'Bummel' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Men_on_the_Bummel#The_wo...
rramadass 4y ago
Ha, Ha, Ha! Jerome Klapka Jerome (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerome_K._Jerome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerome_K._Jerome) is one of my favourite authors. For those folks unfamiliar with his works Project Gutenberg is a great resource https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/173 https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/173 Start with "Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow" and go from there. Just make sure that you are not eating/drinking while reading his books and have somebody monitoring you in case you collapse from pure laughter :-)
- pjc50 4y ago
  > Klapka I've known of "Three Men In A Boat" since childhood and it never occurred to me to ask what his middle name was, or that it might be this surprising.
  - hprotagonist 4y ago
    I’d half thought that the K stood for K!
  - rramadass 4y ago
    For me it was the other way around; We had the episode "Uncle Podger Hangs a Picture" from Three Men in a Boat as a chapter in our English textbook and i remember our Teacher explicitly mentioning his middle name as "Klapka" since it was such an odd name. If you like old genteel British Humour, you should also checkout Stephen Potter's (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Potter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Potter) series of books on Gamesmanship. Unfortunately Project Gutenberg doesn't seem to carry them and so you might have to get a hard copy. The classic movie School for Scoundrels (1960) based on these books is available on Internet Archive at https://archive.org/details/SchoolForScoundrels1959 https://archive.org/details/SchoolForScoundrels1959
JackMorgan 4y ago
Mmm this right here is why for the last two years I've been using Jetbrains IDE and Obsidian as my daily drivers, because my Emacs config isn't _quite_ right and if only I could have a shortcut to tile the buffers according to the golden ratio... but first why isn't the font-face-mode applying to magit... Hey wait, this elisp to convert org-mode to markdown is failing but only in this directory...

gensym 4y ago

This is exactly why I switched my sport of choice from cycling to running. In cycling, I kept getting pulled into the gear and tinkering. (It didn't help that I raced cyclocross, so during race season, every Monday was spent cleaning and repairing the result of the previous day's races). TBH, it was fun, but if I spent as much time training as I did tinkering, maybe I would have had some decent race results. With running, it's harder to believe that the gear is what's holding me back from performance. Get a rotation of shoes, and that's pretty much it. My shorts and tops probably need to be replaced at this point before their growing transparency scandalizes the neighborhood, but as long as they're light and sweat-wicking, it doesn't matter too much what I replace them with. But then I made the mistake of getting into rock climbing...

taude 4y ago
Haa...cyclocross is definitely gear intensive. I always enjoyed running becasue I could be ready in like 2 minutes vs going for a bike ride that involved at a minimum kitting up, pumping the tires, and more often than that for the type of riding I like (cross/mtb) I'd also have to drive to a destination. Now I can't run due to injury/surgery, so I have a bike on the trainer now and that's my tv time. minimizes the bike futzing.
sushisource 4y ago
That's part of the reason I love running too. A minimum of fuss. It's funny that you mention rock climbing, because it's the same reason I love bouldering. You only need shoes. Climbing has something for everyone - trad for the gear heads, bouldering for the people who can't be bothered with planning, sport for people somewhere in the middle.
dehrmann 4y ago
> With running, it's harder to believe that the gear is what's holding me back from performance. Running reminds me of strength training. No one thinks a new barbell is going to add 10% to their one-rep max.
- NegativeLatency 4y ago
  I do some triathlons a couple to times a year, and I find it enjoyable to beat people on a steel frame bike with lower quality / older gear. Also riding a recumbent really gives you perspective on what a fast bike is. No amount of carbon fiber can beat the more streamlined and comfortable position.
  - pbmonster 4y ago
    > Also riding a recumbent really gives you perspective on what a fast bike is. No amount of carbon fiber can beat the more streamlined and comfortable position. Until the uphill starts...
- andreareina 4y ago

readthenotes1 4y ago

1900? It is a very funny book that also predicted the rise of Hitler. There is an accident that happens early on in the book that my dad replicated over 100 years later in exactly the same way.

hprotagonist 4y ago
did he also crush his testes in between the lobes of a nose-less kidney saddle?

c22 4y ago

This is why I own more than one bicycle.

hprotagonist 4y ago
the n+1 problem is pernicious! but i too have this “solution”

mjb 4y ago

Great quote, thank you. I enjoyed Three Men in a Boat, but never read this one. It may be time to revisit Jerome.

gumby 4y ago
You can't possibly be old enough to have met him in person, so I consider you impertinent in using the author's given name. Have a bit of respect and use his last name!
- addled 4y ago
  Perhaps they're the time traveller in https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Say_Nothing_of_the_Dog https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Say_Nothing_of_the_Dog?
  - gumby 4y ago
    Had not considered that possibility, perhaps because I don't remember a traveler to that period, thinking only of plague era.

freetime2 4y ago

I have been roasted before on the internet for suggesting that bleeding disc brakes was inconvenient. I think this distinction between riders and overhaulers actually explains a lot!

mongol 4y ago

I thought it was older. Wikipedia says 1900.

kashyapc 4y ago

Beautiful! Thanks for sharing this. The word "bummel" (a German word for "stroll") is described wonderfully in the last paragraph of the book, it is quoted here[1]. A modern day example of the above "overhauler" way (a theme familiar to HN): we see many variants of "Look! I've setup the perfect static website!" Then the person goes on to write a single, lonely post on "how to setup a perfect static site", and then ... go silent for 5 years, or forever. They've burnt too much energy in "configuring". [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Men_on_the_Bummel#The_word_'Bummel' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Men_on_the_Bummel#The_wo...

rramadass 4y ago

Ha, Ha, Ha! Jerome Klapka Jerome (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerome_K._Jerome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerome_K._Jerome) is one of my favourite authors. For those folks unfamiliar with his works Project Gutenberg is a great resource https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/173 https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/173 Start with "Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow" and go from there. Just make sure that you are not eating/drinking while reading his books and have somebody monitoring you in case you collapse from pure laughter :-)

pjc50 4y ago
> Klapka I've known of "Three Men In A Boat" since childhood and it never occurred to me to ask what his middle name was, or that it might be this surprising.
- hprotagonist 4y ago
  I’d half thought that the K stood for K!
- rramadass 4y ago
  For me it was the other way around; We had the episode "Uncle Podger Hangs a Picture" from Three Men in a Boat as a chapter in our English textbook and i remember our Teacher explicitly mentioning his middle name as "Klapka" since it was such an odd name. If you like old genteel British Humour, you should also checkout Stephen Potter's (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Potter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Potter) series of books on Gamesmanship. Unfortunately Project Gutenberg doesn't seem to carry them and so you might have to get a hard copy. The classic movie School for Scoundrels (1960) based on these books is available on Internet Archive at https://archive.org/details/SchoolForScoundrels1959 https://archive.org/details/SchoolForScoundrels1959

JackMorgan 4y ago

Mmm this right here is why for the last two years I've been using Jetbrains IDE and Obsidian as my daily drivers, because my Emacs config isn't _quite_ right and if only I could have a shortcut to tile the buffers according to the golden ratio... but first why isn't the font-face-mode applying to magit... Hey wait, this elisp to convert org-mode to markdown is failing but only in this directory...