Singletrack
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Singletrack

jackfried
20.09.2017 Views

86

Many people who meet Keith for the first time find him to be quiet but intense, and it’s easy to mistake his introverted personality for standoffishness. Get to know him, though, and you uncover a dry sense of humour and a wicked wit to match the flash of his gold tooth. Keith has never been one to waste resources or to buy new products for the sake of them. He used to do all of his shopping in the Santa Cruz charity shops, until the used clothes market discovered just how many quality items were being dropped off by spring-cleaning dot-commers and started funnelling them to more upmarket locations. I’ve still never, ever, seen Keith in anything resembling a suit. His home cooking and his kitchen garden are rightly famous. And if you ever get the chance of a meal, or a chat about recipes, you should take it. You must have made a fair amount of cash over the years. What have you done with it all? This scruffy gardener look and modest house isn’t fooling anyone… You’ve found me out. The garden and farmhouse are obviously just a facade. I have a very nice villa in Monaco, several massive offshore accounts, a yacht in the harbour and three vintage Porsches in a garage around the corner. I will not release my tax returns either so don’t bother asking… I’ve been very lucky. I work for a great company and have been paid generously enough to put three daughters through college, to help fund Julie’s prosthetics and rehabilitation, and to have a place for us to live in the most amazing town in California. I hope to have enough left over in my golden years to keep this going. I live the way I want to live. I prefer to make or grow or find the things I need, rather than buying them. I like to invent things and to improve things so I have a workshop. I like doing things for myself and others, to share whatever I can whenever I can. I like to work hard every day and to stay healthy. I am not fond of [phone and computer] screens and have very little interest in keeping up with pop culture. It’s a pretty simple life. It doesn’t take a lot of cash. Carbon frames aren’t really that recyclable, are they? What happens in a few years when our carbon frames either wear out or, more likely, just aren’t on-trend any more? At least old steel and alloy frames had the good grace to break, or get turned into town bikes if not... Can mountain bikers take any credit for saving the earth? Or are we just as bad as everyone else? On average we’re just as bad as everyone else and always have been. There is nothing inherently green or earth friendly about riding mountain bikes. I suppose you could say it’s better than riding an off-road motorcycle, but that’s a straw man. The sport started off with greenish spirit and there are still hippies among us. But that was an artefact of the NorCal culture that started things and was never very serious. Transport and commuting are the green(er) side of cycling. Bike frames and parts made from CFRP (carbon fibre reinforced polymer) are hard to recycle at the moment, though it is possible. That will change soon though. Car and aircraft manufacturers are using a lot more composites and are working out ways to recycle the materials they are using. As far as I know carmakers in the EU are required to make cars out of materials that can be (largely) recycled. Eventually that will make it easier for everyone to dispose of a carbon part without it ending up in a landfill. On the other hand, I don’t think carbon bikes are leading to an environmental catastrophe at this point. They last a long time (mechanically speaking), so it will take a lot longer to wear one out. A significant, and forgotten, aspect of conservation is to make good, durable things that last a long time and don’t require recycling. Carbon stuff is expensive too so there aren’t that many of them in use yet. The bikes that fall out of fashion but are still rideable are sold on to poverty-stricken 20 year olds, right? Also, I am not sure “having the good grace to break” is an advantage of things made with aluminium or steel. I’ve been fortunate and have managed to wobble to a stop when I was blessed with a broken (but recyclable!) bike. Not everyone has been. 87

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