Friki de Bici (Bike Geek): Pushing Back Against Car Culture

Built on doubt, stubbornness, and the belief that cities should be for people, not cars.

A day early…

Welcome to Friki de Bici (Bike Geek).

I’m not here to reinvent anything. I’m just doing something I enjoy that makes sense to me.

I kept thinking as I rode my bike around Valencia, and eventually decided that I had to start.

This is where Friki de Bici comes from.

If you follow Never Retire, you already know a little.

If not—or if you want to learn how to follow and support the project—here’s what Friki de Bici is about, why I’m doing it, and where it might go if it works.

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The way I see it, Friki de Bici is about—

• Showing bike culture for what it really is—not just a hobby, but a part of a real, active and fun life.

• Pushing back against car culture—and showing that cities where people, bikes, and public transportation come first actually exist, even if it feels impossible coming from the United States.

• Reminding people (and myself) that better ways to live exist—you just have to expand your horizons beyond your nose.

• Learning, connecting, screwing up, and figuring it out as I go. Fighting against the anxious perfectionist that sometimes slows me down and holds me back.

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My larger goals with this project are—

• To promote the bicycle as transportation and promote, detail and discuss how the built environment can help facilitate cycling.

• To highlight the people in Valencia and—maybe—elsewhere in Spain, Europe and—who knows—the world who play small and not-so-small roles in their local bike cultures. Along the way, I hope this endeavor will help me learn Spanish and better connect with people during this refreshingly challenging time in my life.

To achieve these goals—

• I will feature a cool bike around once per week. There are tons of super cool bikes around Valencia. I like to take pictures of them. Now I will post them and say a few things about them.

• I will interview people who are part of bike culture. People like Fernando (the Social Distortion fan I bought my bike from!), who own bike shops. While he’s Spanish, lots of the people who own and run bike shops here are from Argentina. So, we’ll get various perspectives.

• I will ride my bike. And take videos as I do it throughout this city, which is wonderfully set up for urban cycling. This is why I am asking you to sign up for my YouTube channel, where I will post the videos. If you sign up, I can hopefully make a few pennies over there and keep my bicycle Substack free forever. There’s a video embedded below that works as a companion to today’s Friki de Bici Substack post.

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In the shell of a nut, I am hard on myself, especially when I start something new. In my mind, it’s never developed enough, never far enough along, never quite good enough. So, I just need to hit publish—and let things grow and build from there.

To illustrate this mindset, here’s how it shows up across the pieces of Friki de Bici:

• I’m excited—with high expectations—but also unsure, even a little hesitant.

• If you operate at all like I do, you probably catch my drift.

• You believe in something but still struggle to believe it will actually succeed.

Maybe that’s why I’m still so amazed by how life in Spain has exceeded our very real expectations. It’s because of how much I like it here that I decided to launch Friki de Bici.

This city got me back on a bike after years of barely riding, worn down by the dangerous car culture of Los Angeles. Before that, I rode daily in San Francisco—where it’s only marginally better—but eventually threw my hands up. It just wasn’t sustainable.

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The Friki de Bici YouTube channel is a chronicle of another settling-in process:

• Learning not to always be on the aggressive offensive when you ride.

• Adjusting to an environment where car drivers actually yield.

• Basically, it’s just me riding my bike—as I did almost every day between 2000 and 2018—and talking to myself.

Actually, it’s me talking to you about the things I used to say only to myself.

When I walk or ride alone, there's always a dialogue happening—in my head, sometimes out loud. I talk about what I see, what it means, and what I think of it. I even interview myself sometimes about my surroundings, what I’m doing, and what I want to do next.

I'm inspired, in part, by Noel Phillips, who I imagine—as an aviation geek—can relate to my seemingly odd behavior.

Whether there’s an audience for this style remains to be seen.

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The Friki de Bici website includes a merch store and a section for featured bikes:

• Will people want to buy the merch?

• Will they find the bikes I find interesting, interesting?

• Will they send in their own bikes—or bikes they spot—to expand the selection across different cities and styles?

All valid questions.

The content resonates with me. Like the YouTube channel, all I can do is launch it, promote it, and see if it connects with others. All I know is that in Valencia, I see cool bikes and people wearing shirts with bicis on them all the time. It feels like Friki de Bici could be hitting at the right time.

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The Friki de Bici Substack is a free newsletter that goes out frequently.

Each featured bike and YouTube video will have a companion post, where I’ll share more thoughts and background.

There’ll also be separate posts about urban cycling and city planning—because, like society and politics, those things are connected.

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Living in Spain—and riding a bike in Valencia—resets my brain. It reshapes what I think is possible, both in cities and in life.

I didn’t move here planning to start Friki de Bici. This city generated the idea.

When I move through Valencia—by bike or on foot—I don’t need to be on guard the way I was in Los Angeles. I don't have to treat cars like the enemy or constantly look over my shoulder.

Car culture—and the degraded public life it creates in the U.S.—isn’t normal.

With any luck, Friki de Bici can illustrate this in words, pictures, and video—slowly but surely, one bike and one ride at a time.