Friday Follies ~~ Mojo

People put all kinds of things on their bicycles.  I’d say these things can be grouped into three categories:  1) Functional accessories.  2) Cargo.  3) Decoration.  Sometimes the lines blur a bit.

In that decoration category, we could include things like streamers, event cards in the spokes, ribbons wrapped through the spokes, the fake fur top tube cover, and “mojo.”

The word “mojo” is interesting.  It has a lot of meanings, mostly informal.  In cycling, a mojo is a decorative, attached to the bike, usually on the bars, stem, or top tube.  It is a lucky charm, carried to ward off bad luck, bring good luck, or just for the good feeling and fun it brings.

I like mojo.  I don’t remember exactly when I started attaching mojo to my bike.  I know it was before I’d ever heard the term.  For me, mojo is always either a found object, or a gift from a friend.  It has to please me in some way.  Usually, it connects to some theme in my life.

Way back in the stone age, when I was did cycle racing regularly, I attached a tiki head to my bike.  It was a small piece; carve from mahogany, and ugly little pseudo Polynesian mask type thing.  It was about an inch and a quarter long, and maybe three quarters of an inch wide.  A girl gave it to me.  (Oddly she departed my life well before I got into bicycle racing.)

That little Tiki was my good luck charm.  I didn’t always win with it, but I always had it on my racing bike.  I still have it.  It doesn’t go on any bike now.  I don’t race any more; it wouldn’t be right to have that on a tourist or commuting bike.  Don’t ask me why.  I don’t know.

I’m not particularly superstitious.  I’m a rationalist.  I believe in a rational world.  But I will not live in a world that doesn’t include room for whimsy and a bit of self-parody.

Back to the Tiki.  The scene was a race.  An official spotted my mojo and told me I had to remove it, “for safety reasons.”  I hated that, but I complied.  I crashed out.  It was a fairly bad crash.  The next race I had my mojo back on the bike.

Now note this, I had crashed before.  I’d crashed in races while I had the Tiki-mojo on the bike.  I didn’t really connect the crash to the removal of the Tiki.  I still think it was coincidence.  But, several months later, at another race, the same official spotted my mojo again, and again told me I had to remove it.  I refused, and simply withdrew from the race.  I felt that, if they were going to be that picky, I didn’t want to play their games.

By that time in my “racing career,” I was beginning to figure out that I was not going to be the “next big thing.”  I was a fairly average Cat 3, and would probably always be one.  (Turned out I was right about that.)

Tiki-mojo and I switched to crit races.  No official ever said anything about it.  Some of the other racers did.  Some laughed.  Occasionally someone made a derogatory remark.  I mostly wrote those detractors off as ignorant, and did my level best to beat them, or at least make them work harder.  Incidentally, Tiki-mojo and I crashed in crit races too.  And we didn’t win all that many of them.  When I stopped racing, I retired Tiki to a place of honor in my treasures box.

I still ride with mojo.  Not on all my bikes.  Not all the same mojo.  All of it has meaning.  All of it makes me happy.  And you know what?  Sometimes, someone remarks on one of these charms, and then looks real funny when I reply,  “That’s my mojo.  I like it.”  They don’t get it.  Too bad.