In Cycling, Why the Dollar Is Stronger Than the Euro
Posted on October 27, 2007 by Andrew
By: Andrew
So, we’re really busy at the studio right now and I have to try and squeeze in rides wherever I can. Thus it was that I found myself battling traffic out on loop 360 early one morning last week. Also, I was very excited, this being my first ride on my brand new Giano carbon bike, built by none other than B+P teammate, Beto Boggiano. There I was, on the gradual climb up 360 just before the arboretum, getting after it a little because I had a shoot to get to. The lovely, silky sound of tires on asphalt as my companion, somehow drowning out the nasty noise of the car-people driving to work (but getting nowhere fast). Then - all of a sudden - I hear the sound we all hate: the sickening, unmistakable explosion of air that comes from a gutted tire.
Shit! I stop, pull the wheel, remove the tire and witness the horror: I’ve picked up a roofing nail and it has cut the tire almost in half and - to add insult to injury - ended up embedded in my almost-new Mavic Ksyrium rim. Shit, again. So, I pull the nail, but now I have a hole in my rim, right where the rim strip would go, as well as the cut tire. Time to resort to age-old cyclist trick of “booting” the tire. For the uninitiated this means getting a reasonably strong piece of paper (like a dollar bill), a candy bar wrapper or whatever will stay between the inner tube and the cut part of the tire and stop the tube from ballooning out from the cut and exploding.
I reach into my wallet and look for a Dollar bill. I see a few, but nestled amongst them is a 5 Euro bill - a leftover from my recent trip to Spain. So, I’m thinking, my wheels are French, and I have a Euro here. Why not put the two together in harmony (detente?) and see if it all works out? I assemble the “boot”, put in half a CO2 cartridge worth of air, and start pedaling. I glance down and witness that my Euro-French rig is working beautifully. I keep pedaling for a couple more miles, but soon I start hearing a repetitive rubbing noise from the back wheel. I dismount and immediately find the problem: The cheap paper that the Euro is made from has not withstood the pressure from within and is ballooning out from the cut in the tire so much that it is rubbing my chainstay with every revolution.
Clearly the time has come to resort to the most stable currency in the world: The one that has stood the test of time, in markets and tires all over the world… Viola! Out of the wallet comes a Dollar bill (a single, no less). Into the tire it goes. In goes the remaining half of the CO2. Off I pedal. And home I arrive twenty minutes later, tire intact and fully functional.
The moral of the story? The Dollar may be devalued and unfashionable right now - the frumpy housewife of currency, the aging domestique in the peloton of payment. The Euro - on the other hand - is the trendy, hip new way-to-pay—exciting, bold, avant garde—the money all the other money wants to be, the exciting young Spanish climber on the strongest team…. But, like those Flock-of-Seagulls haircuts we once sported, the Euro is a flash in the pan, I tell you! Stay with good old Uncle Sam and his American money. It has stood the test of time and will serve you well. That’s all.
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