Funny how we humans tend to get so hung up on such little things. Sure they seem so huge once inflated inside our own minds, but really they remain tiny in the grand scheme of things. With the ever segmenting clicks of our modern world making our worlds even smaller, we tend to obsess over even sillier and sillier things. The little world I tend to be in is the world of bikes and bike racing. Fat bikes, mountain bikes, bike packing bikes and all their various appendages spend a lot of time inside my thoughts.

I overthink the benefits or detriments of tire width, rim width, dynamo hubs vs batteries, rigid vs suspension, weight vs comfort, singlespeed vs gears, 2x vs 1x, oh lord it ever seems to end. I weigh everything and can often tell you months later what a #$*& is in grams. I leave piles of good quality gear on the floor, unpacked at the start of many a bike packing race cause I refuse to carry the extra weight.

The past few weeks have been chock full of bikes, cyclists and bike racing. At both fat bike races and mountain bike races; I saw all kinds of bikes and riders, from ultra clean super fast racer types on whittled down race machines, to costumed drunken peeps just having so much damn fun. I got passed in gracious amazing ways and was told to get out of the way cause “we” are still competitive.

What I am getting to is that some of us get our undies in a bunch over how many grams our tires weigh, or that our anodizing matches or that we got out spent and someone else has more blingy and glittery bike part magic. All the while, some just show up on a borrowed bike and seem to have more fun than anyone else.

So, what is more important. Winning? Well most of us know only a handful of folks truly have that in them on any given day. Looking the coolest? Well that is in the eye of the beholder as the blinged out racer boy looks like a fucking geek to anyone other than another racer boy, and the party kids are just a side show for the racer types.  Or is it about having fun? Going fast is fun, drinking beer is fun, hanging out with your friends is fun and being outside is often deep down soul fun.

After the past few weeks of all this bikes, racing and beer too, I have to say that we all need to take a chill pill and relax. All the obsessing I did in preparation for all these events made me crazy, I spent way way too much money and wasted a lot of time better spent riding, stretching or just being outside. Basically I could have used my energy much much more efficiently than worrying about senseless micro details that could and would make no difference. Sure racing is fun and winning a race is fun too, but just being alive, healthy, and happy is fun too, and a lot less stress.