Everyone’s got one, the perfect post ride beer. That mouth watering frothy malt beverage that consumes your thoughts towards the end of a great bike ride. It temps your mind invoking a horse to the barn feeling even after the longest and hardest of rides. The perfect post ride beer or PPRB, is something that is not only sought after but heavily debated amongst many cycling circles.

For some it might be what ever is the coldest thing in the fridge or cooler. My personal experience form the circles that I have run in, is that it generally comes down to two beers that are the most prevalent at the end of a ride, PBR a.k.a Pabst Blue Ribbon and Tecate. Now I don’t know at what point PBR became the new beer of the cool kids. Many baby boomers consider PBR to be the bottom of the barrel much like Old Milwaukee is today. But every where you go in Flagstaff it is the cheep beer of choice. Now Tecate is an obvious one, especially with a lime, its the most refreshing Mexican beer, that Mexicans actually drink. What more could you ask for.

If had my personal choice of post ride, cheep beers, it would be my old school go-to, Coors Banquet beer. Umm yummy, I love me a cold yellow belly, reminds me of high school. Not that I condone underage drinking.

There are two other camps that need to be considered besides just the go-to cheap beer. We have the European lager/pilsner crowd and the U.S. small brewery crowd. Now the European lager/pilsner crowd is a simple one, they get done with a ride, sometimes a road ride, and crack open a cold Heineken, Amstel light, Spatan or the like. A little skunky but always refreshing.

Then we have the much deeper, wider ranged, small brewery crowd. I have lumped this into one category but honestly this could be sliced up many different ways. I know guys that will only drink New Belgium Fat Tire after a ride, its either that or nothing, a committed fan boy for sure. There’s Anchor Steam, Dog Fish, Deschutes, Full Sail, the list goes on and on, as does the varieties and styles. Many of these riders are tied to their brand and probably brought a couple of bottles already chilled in the cooler before the ride even starts.

If your really lucky and part of an elite circle of friends or employees of Gore you’ll have the honor of being treated to a post ride beer brewed up by Flagstaff’s own Handlebar Sandwich. Here’s a guy that can not only ride a bike but can brew great beer as well, I wonder if he can brew beer while riding a bike, hmm. Check out this story, its a bring a whole lot of beer with ya kinda thing. Or for smaller groups have a look at this suspended bike trailer pony keg hauling wonder.

So I’ve open the flood doors, chime in, tell us whats your favorite post ride beer is and why.

We have all seen it, a cyclist riding down a one way street going the wrong direction, blowing a stop sign, or just not obeying the rules of the road and riding all over the place with out any where with all, acting as if because they are on two wheels the have the right to ride how and where ever they want. These acts seemingly small are at the heart of bike/motorist interaction, bicycle advocacy and how bikes are seen in the US in general.

In general there is a feeling among the majority of motorists that cyclists should not be on the road and that for the most part they just get in the way of auto traffic. This has created some strong animosity between drivers and cyclist, sometimes ending very unfortunately for both parties. I have seen the trends my self, motorists see a small number of cyclist breaking what they consider equal road laws that both cars and cyclist are required to follow and become disgruntled towards such cyclist. But Americans love their stereotypes and cyclist are just as susceptible. Motorists seeing a deviant cyclist then assume all cyclist share the same deviance and the assumption that they can do what ever they want turns into an unfortunate and dangerous assumption.

But on the flip side, cyclist are forced to abide to laws that were written by motorist, I wonder how many cycling laws in this country were written by someone who rode their bike to work that morning. Were cycling laws truly written with the idea of integrating cyclist into American transportation and for safety, or were they written with the approach of keeping cyclist out of the way of motorist as much as possible? Is it right to apply the same laws that govern a solid metal mass weighing a half ton or more, to a small non-motorized entity that moves and behaves under a completely different set of physics? Most cars require tens of feet to suddenly stop traveling at reasonable speed, most cyclist traveling at a reasonable speed can stop in six inches or so. The type of cyclomcy that cyclist use when riding has greater implications then we realize.

America is a driving culture, this is not the Netherlands or Denmark and it never will be, it is part of our society to travel long distances by auto, the great American road trip is an inherent part of our culture and most of our towns and urban structures are designed solely with auto transportation in mind. But as gas prices rise and environmental awareness grows, more and more people are turning to their bikes for transportation and fun. Is it the increase in the numbers of recreational cyclist and cyclist commuters on the roads that will force a revaluation of cycling legislature or will a change in legislature promote more people to take to using their bikes, feeling that the transportation environment is now safer. It could almost be a chicken or egg argument. When there are 100 cars and 5 cyclist it is easy to disregard the cyclist presence, but if there are 100 cars and 50 cycles things might be very different.

The future of cycling in the U.S. is bound to continue to be a controversial one, more and more people are riding everyday and motorist certainly aren’t going any where anytime soon. I hope that the future holds greater understanding and patience on both sides. Motorists need to realize that most cyclist are law abiding citizens that are at an extreme and very dangerous disadvantage, just remember, it is someones son, mother, father, or daughter on that bike that you feel is in your way. And cyclist although the laws we adhere to were not written with our best interests in-mind, we still have an obligation to lesson the animosity between us and motorist and to increase our legislative presence. I know it is not fair out there and we usually get the short end of the stick, but disregard and spite has never accomplished anything.