there is a bloke who rides audax…name of don black. bit of a legend.
this bloke rides distances of up to 1400k.
rides in normal clothes, i,e black work shoes, normal black trousers, t shirts, jumpers.
uses a plastic pop bottle for drinks, rides a old type normal bog standard tourer.
a proper tough old bu5ger, he just get's on his bike and rides.
do you know anyone like this.
and not ss niche mongers with beards, or xc wippets….cos that is all fashion led stuff.
i mean a proper can ride a bike in any clobber type of bloke.

I work with a bloke who cycles to work every day. No concession to cycling clothes, showers or personal hygiene…he just gets off his bike and sits down and starts working. Sometimes, he sprays Lynx over the clothes he has ridden in.

It's not always a good thing.

I went on a long memorial ride for a friend in nottinghamshire…proper fit roadie crowd, with a few of us trying hard on mtb's with slicks… there was one young lad who was on his sisters really old bike, sis gears and rusty chain, must have been 15 years old and cheap…He was mega fit and even dropped a lot of us after about 50 miles and rode up front the last 10 miles home… shows the bike doesnt matter

I was coming back from a ride on the carbon, full-on bling road bike once. Done about 50 miles, so starting to feel it, but still thought I was whipping along at a reasonable pace.

Then I was passed with a cheery 'hello' by some guy who must have been 70 if he was a day, riding a bike that looked like he'd ridden it every day for most of those 70 years, wearing shoes, trousers and a jacket, complete with shirt and tie. He even had cycle clips on FFS…

Consoled myself with the fact he'd probably only come a mile or so, until I bumped into him again a mile or so down the road where he'd stopped at a set of traffic lights and he told me he'd done 70 miles and still had another couple to go to get to his sisters!

Oh the shame!

Then there is this guy 😯
http://www.bikechina.com/ct-heinzstucke1z.html

There used to be a old bloke, Mr Henderson I think, who refereed University soccer matches when i was at Durham. He always turned up on his pushbike, wearing proper clothes over the top of his referee's kit (including boots), with his lino's flags tied onto his crossbar with a couple of bits of twine. His bike was a racer but was of a vintage that it may have been an original TdF machine. Even though i wasn't a cyclist then, the thing that amazed me was his cadence – if you can call doing about 20rpm a cadence. He seemed to always be riding far too big a gear and it wasn't bravado, 'cos he was barely going walking pace.

He'd always arrive about 10 mins before the game and leave straight after once he had his £5 match fee paid. Never ever stayed for a beer. Just put his clothes back on and rode off again.

When i was captain in the third year, one job I had to organise was getting refs for games, so i had the book with all their names and addresses in. Turns out he used to do about 15 miles each way from one of the mining villages into Durham and then back again, up a big hill to get home, where I bet his wife had his roast dinner ready and the fiver went into the pot on the mantlepiece to pay for a week in Skegness in the summer or something.

proper old bloke, mr henderson, and not a bad ref either. It was 20 years ago and he must've been 60 then, I suspect he's R-i-P now but i hope he enjoyed doing it and spending his fivers.

There used to be this feller ride past my house in the 80's when I was a kid, just outside Newark on the A17, this guy would ride past most days in a flat cap and tweed jacket on an old upright tourer, I think it had rod brakes, he used to ride to the coast and back most days to Skeg, it's 60 odd miles there!

You'd be on a day trip with the family on some back lane near Wisbeach or something and you'd take over him as he nodded, he's probably still out there now. Ledge!

15 years ago I used to be part of a small group that rode mtbs regularly in the Dales, but none of us knew anything about mtb beyond our little group. None of us ever read mtb mags or cared about the bikes we rode other than it didn't break down. We didn't know about skills, tyres, bling parts, riding kit, bike terminology. We didn't visit the local LBS unless the bikes needed repairing, we didn't ever much talk about bikes and bike bits, we had no idea that things like Downhill or trials existed (maybe it didn't then). I think we weren't mountain bikers, we were just using it as an alternative to going out walking (walking in the Dales being for old folks and ladies in our view).
It was much more simple then, but now there's no going back, unfortunately.
One of the guys is still the same, doesn't know or care anything about the 'scene', but goes out regularly on his bike, I'm pretty sure he wouldn't have a clue if I mentioned 7 stanes et al..