Daragh talks openly about his struggle with his addiction to shimano

I love the weekends. The opportunity to spend that extra hour in bed. The fact that you can take a full hour to eat your breakfast and have two cups of coffee instead of one, sets me up for the day. Then there is the opportunity to get your leg over – The bike I mean. So last weekend was a long one, which made it all the better, except for one problem; whether to put on the SPD’s or leave on the flat pedals.

It’s the age old problem that all mountain bikers face. The tear between the head and the heart. Your head tells you that you can’t afford to fall on that left arm again but the heart tells you that you need that extra control (so you can go for it!). I was getting the bike ready to put into the van and decided to put an extra bottle cage on because the weather was hot last weekend. I gave it a check over and was just about to put the tools away when my eye caught them. Those big black ugly flat pedals, laughing at me. I might as well have had stabilizers on the bike. I was ashamed.

What would the neighbours say? ‘There he goes’, they would think. ‘The big fat wus’. Even the trees would laugh at me I thought, and I had been on the receiving end of them before.

So off I went and dug out the clippies. I swore I wouldn’t use them again, but I just couldn’t help myself. The bike smiled at me, as I wound the tasty shimano’s onto the cranks. The other things were thrown into the toolbox with contempt. A warm feeling came over me. Once again I felt like a man. For this day I would be the Hoff. If only they made leather jackets for mountain bikers, I thought. The hairs on my chest curled as I sat on the saddle. To the mountain…

The bike and I were One that day. The japanese pedals had an air of zen about them. Perhaps they were purified in the shimano factory. Was this enlightenment? Was I buddha? Who was asking that question? Was the question being asked at all? As I wound my way around the trail I encountered many past lives. I could see myself in previous crashes, lying face down in gorse bush, feet still attached to the pedals. Crash after crash came to my all seeing eye feet and pedals welded together in each one. Could shimano be the cause of all suffering and endless rounds of birth and rebirth?

This must be the significance of non attachment, I thought. I was enlightened. This is what the buddha meant. To allow oneself to become attached by pedal or any other means would result in endless rounds of rebirth.

So be warned…