The only people I would care to be with now are artists and people who have suffered: those who know what beauty is, and those who know what sorrow is: nobody else interests me. – Oscar Wilde I have a theory that every living being is designed to cope with a certain level of stress…
Month: September 2013
Think back to the early days of mountain biking. A bunch of friends, getting to the top of the hill any way they could, not needing to ride up at any great pace, saving themselves for the real buzz, the ride back down. It didn’t matter who got tot the top first, as long as…
I’m fluent in three languages: Dutch, English, and Hyperbole. The third is an acquired talent developed by creative and narcissistic tendencies; the narcissism feeds a belief that normal words can’t properly describe the magnitude of my experiences, and the creativity struggles to cope with restrictive paradigms like “facts” and “reality”. I have also been diagnosed…
The home ground of Manchester United Football Club, Old Trafford, is colloquially known around the world as the Theatre of Dreams. It holds a revered place in the hearts of the club’s supporters, and even those of other teams; it’s an icon of football, and sport in general. Millions have gone there to watch their…
Flies and dogs, two things that we don’t need on a climb. I had descended down this street many times, but I had never before ridden up it. I even said hello to the two excited pitbulls on the other side of the driveway gate. I like dogs. I like them until one of them…
An ancient Velominati legend states that when the The Prophet created the common fly, he gave it a maximum air speed of exactly 12 kilometers per hour. When he created the common Cyclist, on the other hand, he gave us a maximum climbing speed of 11.9 kilometers per hour. The worst flies on the planet…
They don’t call it the race of truth for nothing, and Ferdi ain’t no liar. There’s no hiding when your specialist chrono machine is also your specialist road racing machine, and aero headwear is achieved through flipping your leather cap around to face the Jeep loaded with drunk French truffle hunters that’s been tailing you for…
Who is Charly Wegelius? His name would float to the surface in races usually when the road went up. The Phil and Paul show never seemed to go further than, ‘and there goes Charly Wegelius’. In the pre-Sky days, there were not that many English racers in the Giro yet he seemed shunned by the…
No words survive here, only echoes. Echoes of our hopes, of our plans, of our failures. What we thought we might do when we came here is little more than a shadow; it flickers on the walls for a moment and when we turn to look, it is gone. Doubts swell up and bounce off…
Sometime this spring I got an email from @xyverz suggesting a second annual bay area cogal, along with some route suggestions. Before long, plans coalesced around a ride starting near Palo Alto, going over the mountains, down the coast to Santa Cruz, and back over a bigger part of the mountains to Los Gatos and…
Pineapple Bob? @cyclops goes deep with this reference. Pineapple Bob was a mystical figure in American cycling. He was not known as a racer, more a California bike guru of unknown qualifications and ethnic origins. Bridgestone was a unique brand also of unknown ethnic origins, at least to me. It was not European, it didn’t sound…
It’s funny what goes through your head at 3am when you’re woken by a cat. Especially if that cat’s name is Lars, and he was named after the Metallica drummer (not by me, he’s my VMH’s cat). I prefer to call him Jan though, as Jan has always been my favourite Ullrich. So last night Lars…
It is so deeply entangled at this point, I can no longer tell the threads from one another. The strands once ran cleanly from one bicycle to the next, linking a discrete sequence of events, considerations, wants, and desires. But then, 15 years ago, a strong force entered my life and I was forced to…