Bruce Wahl
bruce wahl
The Ride, Issue 122
"My mom was by the other day, and we were in the basement and she said, 'My god, how many bikes do you need?'" reported Boston area commuter Bruce Wahl. "I looked around and said, 'I guess six, yeah six, maybe seven.'" His stable includes an Ellsworth Isis full-suspension mountain bike, a Specialized Stumpjumper set up for single-speed off-road epics, and an S&M dirt bike set up for street and park riding. The skinny tire set is represented by a Bianchi Pista fixed gear, a Specialized road bike, and an old Hercules with an 'S' bend in the downtube that Wahl rescued from the trash and rebuilt. After fifteen years of commuting, Wahl has spent nearly half his life on wheels. "I've been riding ever since I was six or seven, when my dad came home with a second-hand blue 20" bike for me," he said. "He and my mom taught me to ride it. I loved that thing; but I killed it after two years of constant abuse." "I used to jump it and go big. Well - bigger than the other kids." Now 34, Wahl started racing BMX in fifth grade, eventually upgrading to a Mongoose frame. Trying a friend's road bike one day, this northern Conn. - western Mass. native loved the speed and soon acquired a Cannondale road bike. "I must have put a million miles on that bike. It got stolen when I was in college in Atlanta. Man, was I bummed," he related. "To cheer me up some friends loaned me a mountain bike and took me out into the woods. I bought a red Trek 850 on the way home and have been mountain biking ever since." The Trek became a street bike and courier rig for his post-college years in New Orleans, then migrated up the East Coast with its owner before being handed down to a friend as a commuter bike. Wahl's own commuter bike is his Pista, a track-style bike stripped to the bones. His daily commute grew from ten to 30 miles daily after a recent move; Wahl now rides from Randolph, a suburb of Boston, to work at Longwood Medical Center on the Boston-Brookline line. If he feels the need to coast on lazy mornings, he'll set off on his road bike, and he's considering acquiring a bike with disc breaks for upcoming wintry weather. "I've had a lot of good days on the bike," sighed Wahl. "There are rides where I'm just one with it, hopping logs perfectly, making a big drop with no effort, not hitting the lip after a big air on a ramp, the painful euphoria of cycle-cross, but my favorite would have to be down town on a fixie in mad traffic and you're just flowing, moving as one with the cars and people and you're faster then all of them." But he added, "I always wear a helmet when I ride. I've crashed enough to realize that I need a good bounce that it gives me. I've split something like ten helmets over the years." Despite some alarming crashes over the years in a variety of conditions, Wahl names one beast that he fears the most: suburban drivers. "In the city most drivers know the exact size of their car and they know where it will fit. In the suburbs they have more space so they don't have to know," he contended. "I feel safer [downtown] at 5 pm then I do on my own street at 7 pm." Wahl, a photographer by trade, suggests that more of the auto-driving population read Jane Holtz Kay's book "Asphalt Nation" to understand the damage done by cars to our communities. Seeing gas prices go as high as $5 a gallon or forcing drivers to go without their cars for a period of time are the only other options Wahl sees to convince more people to commute by bike. "But that's not going to happen. People are too lazy. Jeez, they drive to a gym to ride a stationary bike. For more Americans, bikes are seen as toys, like golf clubs or a catcher's mitt. Most people don't realize you can earn a living with a bike." But mainstream culture's resistance to cycling rolls right off Wahl's back. He and his riding buddies have embraced the insults hurled at them by non-cyclists. "We call ourselves the "Wheeled Locusts" because that's what an angry hiker called us one day." | more supercommuters » Planet Bike honors the silent hero of the Revolution: the bicycle commuter. A supercommuter rides through every season, in all types of weather, day and night. Choosing the simplicity, health and pleasure of bicycling, a supercommuter isn't necessarily against automobiles. They simply prefer to ride a bike to the grocery store, to work, to a concert or the cafe. nominate a supercommuter » |
