Scott Martin

It's springtime and you're a little out of shape. You start a climb you've done dozens of times.

"Ugh," you say to your riding buddy, "this hill got steeper over the winter." You both grin at the tired joke.

Well, guess what: It's no joke.

According to a recent slate.com article on common navigational mistakes, this feeling -- that hills appear steeper when we're unfit or tired -- is "an actual shift in our estimate of degrees of inclination." As far as our brain's concerned, that climb really is steeper.

Other common misperceptions :

- We associate northbound travel with goinng uphill and southbound travel with going downhill.

- We mentally lengthen short commutes and shorten long commutes.

- We tend to experience the inbound trip as shorter than the outbound trip.

Sneaky things, our perceptions. I'm confident that further study will confirm the truth of other beliefs I've long held :

- Rain is wetter and colder when you forgeet your rain jacket.

- On a loop ride on a windy day, you willl have a headwind 75% of the time, crosswinds 20% of the time, and a tailwind 5% of the time. Corollary 1 : On an out-and-back ride, you will have a headwind in both directions. Corollary 2 : The wind blows strongest when you are taking your pull.

- You will have 1 more flat than the numbeer of spare tubes you carry.

- The speed of a group ride is directly prroportional to the number of peachtinis you drank the night before.

This week Scott Martin writes his Spin about "sneaky things, our perceptions" when it comes to weird realities in cycling. Which made me think of 10 others for the list :

- Putting on a lower gear doesn't make hillls easier, it just makes them last longer.
- When riding a freshly cleaned and lubed bike, you'll encounter water on the road somewhere, somehow.
- Riding your rain bike guarantees that noot a drop will fall.
- Clipping into pedals is as easy as breaathing until you need to cross a busy road with traffic bearing down.
- When crossing a narrow bridge, there willl always be a vehicle passing you no matter how empty the road otherwise is. (When that vehicle is an 18-wheeler, this is known as the Law of Semiconductors.)
- When glancing at a cyclecomputer it alwways takes longer than one second for the next second to tick over.
- Handlebars are always straight until youu're actually riding.
- No matter how long a long ride is, it'lll be 5 miles too long.
- If something can break, it will break att the worst possible time.
- It's always the worst possible time.

Ed Pavelka
Editor, Publisher

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