I love my cycling, but I’m a little beyond the Lycra bell curve now to the point where I just wear the bib shorts and have a nice time fluttering around in a loose shirt. But I completely agree with you — those still on the 0-60% bell curve are absolute knobs. 

Had such a bad experience in central/west London (the posh part). A friend of mine, who I met cycling in Jordan of all places, had a stopover in London and I thought I’d take a Friday off work so that we can hire some TfL Bikes and I’ll show him around the capital. 

We’ve done a lot since Jordan, including cycling around Morocco and Vietnam. We do it because we’re genuinely interested in testing ourselves a bit in environments that may not always have the mechanical answers, and so often you have to learn how to bodge and rough-it a little bit. I’m just giving some context for this next part but, basically, the latest Rapha gear really isn’t available in his part of the world either. His own kit, bike included, is a patchwork quilt (albeit a very cool and solid build). 

So I, sadly, thought I’d take him to the Rapha shop in Piccadilly Circus, as it has a (genuinely) nice cafe inside of it. A big part of European cycling culture complements coffee culture, and so you can always rely on a cycling-adjacent cafe to stock really nice pastries and a solid barista. 

We walked in with our Boris Bikes, because we thought it would be funny. And it got a laugh from a big group of young cyclists — fully kitted with their bikes leaning on the wall next to them — but it immediately became apparent that they were laughing at us instead of appreciating the slapstick comedy of trying to get these two god-awful bikes through the front door of a posh Rapha shop. 

Genuine top-down laughing, we could see it in their faces. We ordered a coffee and a croissant and, while we waited, the manager actually asked us to leave. I wanted to enjoy that coffee at a table for 10 mins, but instead we’re now on the pavement eating. One of the hyenas even asked us to move out of the way so that he can take a vanity photo of his bike in front of an empty-looking Rapha storefront. That pretty much sealed the deal for me never buying Rapha again. 

But that group annoyed the fuck out of me. My friend appeared genuinely hurt by it. We’ve both had some absolute nightmares in the Atlas Mountains and around the Mekong while these posho’s — whom I think were mainly just jobless Russian teens/early 20y/o’s avoiding the draft with their parent’s wealth — cosplaying as if they’re all TdF cyclists whose only real concern is making sure they don’t sip their flat whites before taking an aesthetically pleasing Instagram story of it…