The pack-rat is a parallel-play type of man. He likes to ride in a pack with other men. He is usually not rich, but he is rich enough to spend two thousand dollars on a bicycle. He is also rich enough to devote several hours a week to his “hobby,” while his partner toils at home.
The good: He is trying to take care of himself, which means he will probably want to take care of other people, too—at least when he isn’t riding.
The bad: He’s the type who really pisses off his wife. She wasn’t pissed at him at first, but now she is because they’re both getting older and their kids are teenagers and he’s out riding his fucking bike!
The Actual Bicycle Boy
This is a verifiable young person as opposed to a man who just acts like one. The actual bicycle boy may be shorter or smaller than you are, but he’s a lot tougher and a much better rider.
The good: He can do wheelies.
The bad: You might end up trying a wheelie yourself and land in the hospital with a broken coccyx.
The Bachelor Boy
This is the guy on a weekend date with someone he met on a matchmaking app. The bachelor boy has only ridden a bike maybe three times in his life. On the other hand, since this is a guy who has seen The Bachelor, The Bachelorette, and probably Bachelor in Paradise, he knows that in the dating world of today, good guys must do things like ride bikes around quaintish summer towns. It’s supposed to be fun but from the expression on his face, it clearly isn’t.
The good: A part of him really is looking for “the one.”
The bad: If you fall off your bike, he’ll quickly replace you.
* * *
So is it worth getting on a bike to try to meet a guy? I went to Central Park to find out.
It was filled with people on bikes. The problem was that they all rode like they were in the Tour de France. Forget stopping one much less hooking up with one. And while there were plenty of Citi Bike people to explore, I didn’t have the guts, the reflexes, or the stupidity to attempt to ride a two-wheeled vehicle in New York City traffic.
I decided to take the question out to the Village—and specifically to Tilda Tia.
Suddenly Samantha
Unlike me, Tilda Tia was open to any kind of dating experience. She’d been “good” for twelve years with her ex and was ready to be “bad” with her freedom.
Tilda Tia was Suddenly Samantha. She was also a maniac bike rider.
For the past week, she’d been texting about how she’d ridden fifteen, eighteen, and then twenty-one miles in under three hours and how we should aim to ride twenty-four miles in the same time or less. For some reason, I agreed. Even if we didn’t meet anyone, at least we’d get exercise.
/> When I picked her up, Tilda Tia was wearing a peasant-style flowered dress and silver sandals like we were going to a beach party instead of on a twenty-mile bike ride. She had just had her hair done and refused to wear a helmet. Instead she stuck earbuds in her ears, as if these were going to save her.
I, on the other hand, was dressed for safety. I was wearing padded bike shorts and the neon-green safety vest Sassy had given me, along with a large helmet painted to resemble half a watermelon. My ride was an orange mountain bike that at one time had elicited admiring glances on the dirt tracks Angie and I used to ride in Connecticut.
It was exactly the wrong kind of bicycle to ride anywhere else. It was great for going over curbs and cutting across grass but too heavy to go very fast. At least not as fast as Tilda Tia.
I was fine until we reached the edge of the Village and hit the bike path. The first obstacle was a bridge. I’d crossed this bridge plenty of times in my car, never having realized how steep it was. Or how narrow the lane between the cars and the bikes was.
I made it halfway up before I wobbled and sensibly got off. I walked my bike over the crest to find Tilda Tia waiting impatiently on the other side. “You got off your bike?” she said. “We haven’t even gone up one real hill.”
“I’m afraid of heights,” I said. I got back on the bike. At first, I pedaled furiously behind her, trying to keep up. When I realized I couldn’t, I slowed down and decided to do some research by taking note of my fellow riders.
You’d think biking would be a young person’s hobby, but it’s not. I quickly realized this as we passed one middle-aged person after another.
Like me, most were in okay shape. Meaning they were healthy enough to bike a few miles but not obsessed enough to hold the French fries later. Many were couples who, I assumed, had decided to get more exercise and were doing it together. In any case, they looked happy. Actually, that’s kind of a lie. Sometimes either one or the other looked annoyed, like they couldn’t believe their spouse had convinced them to do this and it had better be good for the marriage. But they were friendly. As I passed by, we’d exchange a little nod or wave in the style of old-fashioned boat etiquette.
Then there were the hard chargers. Also middle-aged men and women, they wore the latest gear and were mounted on road bikes with skinny tires and aerodynamic frames. They seemed to belong to some kind of club—a “super middle” one, as I would later discover—and they only acknowledged those who were just like them. As far as they were concerned, everyone else was just roadkill.
Finally, there were the friend pods. Mixed groups of men and women out for some bonding time. I could imagine the conversation that led to this event:
“Hey, let’s get together.”