Why are you here?

[boomcie]

I was just wondering. Most of the people on these boards don't actually sound like total lowlifes who have nothing better to do than linger around on a cycling forum all day.

This got me wondering. Why do you guys hang out around here so much, where do you find the time? This question is especially aimed toward the regular heavy posters of course.

I myself just have a pretty boring job and tend to doze of into cycling land during the day. I guess that's as good an excuse as any.

For me, this forum is just the best place to waste my time, because everyone likes cycling around here as much as I do.

 

[Zam_Olyas]

I work from home, so i am online around 15 hrs a day lol

 

[Parrulo]

well lately i only hang around here btw 7pm and like 2 am because thats when i am at home the rest of the day i have other stuff to do. tonight for example i am going out with my friends

 

[Anonymous]

I thought this post would be much more esoteric when I read the title of the thread, but you were just talking about the forum.

I am here because I am in school, and I am always working on a computer because I keep all notes etc on my computer, so hitting the little Firefox icon is easy to do, and provides a nice break from studying. I am ADD so I need my diversions.

 

[boomcie]

I thought this post would be much more esoteric when I read the title of the thread, but you were just talking about the forum.

That's just a technique to get people interested. I'm such a mastermind.

 

[Alpe d'Huez]

Originally? Love cycling. Got roped into being a mod, then an admin.

I work at a computer all day, get personal work done on a computer all day, etc.

 

[Spare Tyre]

Think I must be one of those low-lifes you referred to, actually.

 

[boomcie]

Think I must be one of those low-lifes you referred to, actually.

Awesome. Gotta love those.

Edit: God damn it, why do the mods keep censoring my posts.
It's like I'm persona non grata all of a sudden.

 

[The Hitch]

lol unlike me all of you actually had an excuse.

Me i have none. This is all my free time.

I feel a bit sad now

It gets sadder yet, during the Giro and TDF my entire life is based around the ****ing forum.

Wake up 1pm.
Put on computer turn on Eurosport.
Read about what has happened so far on forum. Make a few comments.
Watch the race + read comment on forum till 5pm.
Comment on forum till 7pm with tv switched on.
Go play tennis till 11pm.
Read + comment on forum 11pm - 4am.
4am go to sleep with eyes feeling like theyve been staring at the sun for 14 hours. Repeat proccess.

I think i got through 300 posts one day once.

Outside of the Tour and Giro i comment a lot less but its still a lot.

So why do I do it.

________


First of all I am a student but I study history and have a grand total of 8 hours a week. That becomes 5 or 6 once you factor the classes I dont bother turning up for.

So even minus sleep thats like 14 free hours a day of nothing. Even when you factor in a lot of other activities theres still plenty of free hours. Why not discuss cycling with the good posters of cnf.

2 I like to write. I think its something that i can be good at it and I see this as practise in a way.

3 I used to read hours and hours every day about politics. But it was really deppressing and frustrating the whole political system and the same cheap tactics and bias and all. So i stopped doing that and eventually cycling freed the void. None of this stress that comes from reading politics. This sense of powerlessness. Here I watch heroes climb mountains. People i like and appreciate, who have very hard jobs for little reward. So cycling has filled the void. Instead of hours on politics, Hours on cycling. . Its replaced the politics.

a lot better for the heart pardon the pun.

4 It enhances my enjoyment of cycling, the sport i have chosen. I always loved sport but the sports i always watched have alienated me a bit due to money and fame and attention given to them. So i have taken up cycling as the one sport I devote 99% of my attention too.

Funnily most of my friends spend as much time on Premier League football as i do on cycling. They watch every match on tv, buy tabloids every day to read transfer gossip 10 times over, go on forums, talk about **** else but football when they meet up.

Instead of buying the sun, i go on Cn forums.

5 It is enjoyable. I am actually afraid of falling into what John Stewart Mill called Lower pleasures, where you do something you think you like but actually dont. More an addiction. I experienced this a lot especially when i was younger with computer and games. Id play them but dont think really enjoy them.

So i ask myself, am i really enjoying this forum.

And most of the time the answer is yes.

6 Its another world. I spend 90% of my time in the real world with real people. Sometimes i just want to think and talk about something else. Something none of my friends or people i know know **** about. Cycling. This is the place to do so.

A few reasons anyway.

 

[AngusW]

Short answer: love cycling and have a boring job with internet access

Not so short answer:

I've been aware of this site since 2000 and since then it has been my main source of, er, Cycling News on an almost daily basis. One of the features of the site I really liked was the letters page as there was a wide range of opinions about matters cycling and I enjoyed reading those letters. Subsequently, I was somewhat miffed when the letters page was dropped and this forum was started and once those (in my opinion, anyway) irritating spoilers were added to the main page I went into a sulk for three or four months and stopped visiting this site altogether until well after the Tour de France 2009.

Eventually, I stopped sulking and started to visit this site again. And despite my misgivings the forum proved to contain postings at least as interesting as the offering from the letters page, although with less editing. After a year or so of reading the forums, I felt motivated enough to register as a forum user and start making some contributions.

 

[ElChingon]

I have taken the oath to maintain the bandwidth at work and home to an all time high so they don't reduce it due to non-use, which providers do or bosses. Its a thankless job but someone has to do it. Its also a good way to test if the internet is working and also to alert the masses if its down. Due to that I must have at least three different browsers open at the same time and have some form of streaming music/video/data at all times

Unless some bone head in Arizona pulls the power

 

[Quixote]

To tell the truth, I was searching for a place to dialog about pro cycling. I tend to bore my friends and family to tears whenever I try to discuss the latest involving the sport. Even my riding friends aren't really into the pro drama. When I registered and started checking out the pro cycling discussions, I immediately discovered that the discussions were way over my head or too team-fan oriented. In the general threads, however, I found plenty of fruit ripe for the picking.
Where I get the time to fit it in? I budget wisely: I take 30 minutes from Dancing with the Stars, 15 minutes from the Daily Show, and dropped As the World Turns completely.

 

[hrotha]

I was an occasional unregistered lurker at the Clinic, which I read when something interesting happened, but I hadn't visited in ages. I had lost a bit of interest in cycling because I had classes and then work in the afternoons and I couldn't follow it properly, so by 2009-early 2010 I wasn't aware of much of what was happening. In fact, I didn't watch a single stage of the 2010 Giro (I had been away on a trip to Hamburg and Edinburgh). But then... FLOYD LANDIS!

I had heard about the Landis Cali shellbomb and I remembered the Clinic would be a good place to read about it. Problem is, the default posts-per-page settings are horrible, so I registered solely so that reading about the Landis situation became easier. And since I had registered, I started posting. I had just left my job, so I didn't have much to do with my time, and I started watching Dauphiné and Suisse for the first time in many, many years. I was hooked again, I made up for the lost time and now I follow cycling much more closely than I ever did.

So yet another reason for me to thank Floyd.

 

[Timmy-loves-Rabo]

Essentially, I joined a cycling forum because I watched it online, loved it but not a single person I knew cared or knew a thing about cycling. Other then my father that is. I therefore joined a forum with occasional chatter. I become a lot more frequent here.

I tend to mainly post and lurk here at work and uni (at uni now, have an exam soon, but I'm at the point where studying becomes redundant), but am certainly not restricted to that.

If I am at home, I might occasionally jump on the pc and quickly skim and post. maybe 20 minutes here, 20 there.

Other then that, I will come on If I am watching cycling at home, which is generally in the late hours. I usually get roped into discussion for a while after a race finishes also.. tends to be like 12ish-2. I'm a bit of a night owl so this is no issue. But I don't always come on when I watch.

And that is it.

 

[pedaling squares]

Why am I here? Well I've always liked the CN site and I suppose that joining the conversation seemed like a natural extension of visiting the site. I never post from work, I don't watch TV unless it involves a stick and a puck (and the occasional national newscast), and I guess I like to have something outside of family to keep me occupied. I think I'm under 3 posts per day, but I do tend to visit a few times per day for a few minutes at a time. Lots of good stuff on here and of course lots of crap too!

Wake up 1pm.
Put on computer turn on Eurosport.
Read about what has happened so far on forum. Make a few comments.
Watch the race + read comment on forum till 5pm.
Comment on forum till 7pm with tv switched on.
Go play tennis till 11pm.
Read + comment on forum 11pm - 4am.
4am go to sleep with eyes feeling like theyve been staring at the sun for 14 hours. Repeat proccess.

I think i got through 300 posts one day once.

My God Hitch!!

Amazing that you are still pretty positive. If I ever tried 300 posts in a day I fear I would, having become devoid of anything of interest to offer, become irritating and destructive by about post 75.

<That left me wide open so, "Insert comment here">

 

[RedheadDane]

I love cycling. That's why I'm here.

As for what I do, well... I'm a student. It's is possible to go check various places this ain't the only forum I'm active on... during class...

 

[craig1985]

I work in a factory so it's impossible for me to be on the internet at work. Why am I here? I like cycling and I like reading about and learning about it, and without being on here I wouldn't have learnt about Heano and a lot of races and riders, and nor learnt a lot about Lance Armstrong as I was a closet fanboy (I had an open mind wrt to doping), but reading a lot more about him and what was really going on, I changed my mind even though I detested how he treated Simeoni.

I wasn't going to sign up to the forums, but I was in Vietnam at the time and I was sitting on the computer in my hotel as it was very humid outside and I was tired of every **** trying to sell me something (nothing illegal BTW) or wanting if I wanted to go on a motorbike ride etc., I decided 'what the hell' and signed up and posted occasionally, but towards the latter part of the '09 Giro I started to post more. Now I still come on here to post and read cycling, but to muck around with posters like Parrulo and veedeebee, who I'm sure I would get on fine if I knew them in real life

And outside of cycling, I've learnt a lot when it comes to languages, especially from Libertine.

 

[L'arriviste]

For me, the CN forum is an antidote to government work. It's like the Hotel California: you go to the CN website looking for race reports and interesting stuff and then you sort of fall inexorably into the dissipation of the forum.

I know that I won't always be around on here, but it really fits where I'm at in life at the moment. Thanks to everyone for being here too.

 

[Ferminal]

Essentially, I joined a cycling forum because I watched it online, loved it but not a single person I knew cared or knew a thing about cycling. Other then my father that is. I therefore joined a forum with occasional chatter. I become a lot more frequent here.

I tend to mainly post and lurk here at work and uni (at uni now, have an exam soon, but I'm at the point where studying becomes redundant), but am certainly not restricted to that.

If I am at home, I might occasionally jump on the pc and quickly skim and post. maybe 20 minutes here, 20 there.

Other then that, I will come on If I am watching cycling at home, which is generally in the late hours. I usually get roped into discussion for a while after a race finishes also.. tends to be like 12ish-2. I'm a bit of a night owl so this is no issue. But I don't always come on when I watch.

And that is it.

I hate that After big races I seem to hang around for another 2 hours before I call it a night.

 

[Luke Schmid]

I like cycling, follow cycling and want to learn more.
Why do I like cycling?
Why do I like anything?
Why does anyone like any particular thing?

 

[Michielveedeebee]

Now I still come on here to post and read cycling, but to muck around with posters like Parrulo and veedeebee, who I'm sure I would get on fine if I knew them in real life

We should do RvV next year I could teach Parrulo a thing or 2 about cobbles

First discovered this site when I got fed up with how little Sporza was reporting on international news and smaller races. After a month or so I discovered the forum and saw it as a good chance to improve my knowledge about the pro cycling scene and bike gear
Got totally hooked since then, also, I have a ****load of free time

 

[rhubroma]

It is a means to focus my thoughts and a diversion, so in that sense it's not a waste of time.

Being in a period of my life where I have some free time, I enjoy contributing and reading the posts of honestly lots of very intelligent people on this thread. The quality of many thinkers in this forum is really quite extraordinary. This is why I bother.

I like to be stimulated and perhaps stimulate if I can.

That is all.

 

[Bavarianrider]

I am ugly nobody likes me and i have no friends

 

[Anonymous]

I was lurking back in 2009 and could not believe what was being written about LA in the Clinic. My first posts were getting into an argument with Eva Maria (Race Radio), Thoughtforfood, Bianchigirl and a few others.

I read some of the posted links... particularly the Ashenden interview and suddenly realized how much I had been spun by Team Lance and have been basically hooked ever since.

I like to learn and I like to argue, so this place fits pretty well.

 

[krebs303]

Yeah what Scott said. He left out one little part. He came for the cycling but stayed for the Babes and Beer

I have nothing else to do