If you are going to collect and ride vintage bicycles, it is important that you learn to properly denigrate other people's bikes. As any seasoned rider and collector will tell you, you cannot fully participate in the vintage bike hobby until you know how to quickly and properly insult another person's vintage bike. Anyone can learn to repair and ride an old bike, but only the full-developed hobbyist knows how to do those things while effectively diminishing the other person's bike in the eyes of the public.
Bicycle Shaped Object: Use to insult any bike that was at least one rung below yours on the price ladder.
Big Box Store Bike: A bike that isn't made by a custom frame builder.
Bike Butcher: Any person who has more than once sold a bike part online.
Bike Shop: A business devoted to reminding prole/pleb cyclists that their bicycles qualify for the "boat anchor", "big box store", "gas pipe", "plumbing pipe", or "water pipe" categories.
Boat Anchor: A bike weighing more than 20 pounds.
Cager: A person who drives a car more than 5 miles in a week.
Cheap Bike: A bike that was less expensive than your own.
Downgrade: Any part on a bike not made by Campagnolo.
Drillium: A material lightened through the use of a cordless drill, bastard file, or sandpaper in one's basement.
Eroica: A type of road race where middle-aged and elderly retrogrouches conspire to keep the prole/pleb cyclists in their place and occasionally suffer hernias.
Friction Shifting: A type of shifting used by the retrogrouch. The better friction shifters can only be properly manipulated using psychic forces or telekinesis.
Indexed Shifting: A type of bicycle transmission used by a prole/pleb cyclist.
Gas Pipe Frame: A bike with a frame that isn't made of NASA grade tubing.
Hair Net: A type of leather bike helmet stuff with horse hair and self-satisfaction, worn as a style statement. The retrogrouch's naturally thick skull makes it so that this kind of "helmet" is sufficient.
Helmet Nanny: A rider who uses a helmet or gives an indication of caring about his/her own safety.
Newbie/Newb/Noob: Any person who has been fixing or riding old bicycles for fewer than 30 years.
Prole/Pleb Cyclist: A cyclist who rides five or more minutes fewer than you per week.
Plumbing Pipe Frame: A bike frame weighing more than 7 pounds.
Redneck: A cager who drives a pickup truck. Alternatively, a prole/pleb cyclist who rides in a rural area.
Retrogrouch: The only kind of real cyclist in existence. Anyone who falls outside this category is only a casual hobbyist.
Serious Cyclist: A retrogrouch who rides on any public roadway.
Tubular Tire/Glue-on Tire: A type of tough garden hose glued to the rim of a bike using library paste. A rider in the distant past won the Tour de France on this kind of tire, and so retrogrouches prefer this kind of tire three-to-one over the alternatives.
Upgrade: Any part attached to the bike frame costing more than the rest of the bike.
Water Pipe Frame: A bike with a frame that isn't made of aviation grade tubing.
Yard Art: Any bike that isn't kept in a computer-monitored, climate and humidity-controlled archival environment.
[Afterword: This page is one of my bike-related humor pages. It is intended solely as humor, and not with any degree of seriousness. Sometimes the old bike hobby gets hung up too much on prestige and some hobbyists become way too prone to denigrate another person's bike. This page is solely for laughs and meant to lampoon that kind of attitude.]
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