I’m compliant with Rule #74: no Garmin, no cyclometer, just an uncluttered cockpit. I’m not anti-data, if I could generate some awesome data I’d like to know about it. If I was racing I would train with data. I just got bored with looking at the numbers and not doing anything about them. When my…
Month: October 2013
Merckx famously professed that after a night of sinning, the body must be cleansed. He obviously meant this figuratively, not literally, because those mud guards on his bike aren’t going to take a big bite out of whatever that lorry has to offer him by way of a Flandrian facial. Winter is a tough time…
Yvon Chounard may not be Homer but he is a worthy modern day wise man, he admonished, don’t be a sports nazi. His meaning was, don’t do one sport to the exclusion of all others. It’s tempting not to pursue other sports when cycling demands so much time and leaves one with a body that is…
My first bicycle opened a new world to me, one where range was measured by will and pedal revolutions, not steps; the only objective was seeing how far out I could push my range. First, to the border of our community, then to the nearest gas station, and on it went. It was a big…
A Velominatus maintains their machine with meticulous care, doting over it daily. A bicycle is a tool, but it is also a work of art, and serves us loyally in pursuit of our craft. We love them as though they were alive; as we grow together, the cracks and lines formed upon both our skins…
We interrupt our usual programming to announce that we have quietly been building and testing an upgraded photo upload tool, which now supports mobile devices and tablets, as well as adding captions to album photos. There is also beta support for pasting photos into the post editor, although in our testing this has been a…
Legends are central to any culture, ours perhaps more than most. The Ventoux is a French legend, rising 1912m above the rolling hills of Provence. The road is thick with the paint of Tours past and the names of giants. The grade is 7%, on average, though 10, 11, and 12% are routine throughout the…
It wasn’t so long ago that the majority of bicycles were made by hand, from raw materials, in places that aren’t China or Taiwan. While some of these artisans are still around, their wares are increasingly harder to come by, and to procure an example of their work means an outlay of time and money…
I envy my dog. There is nothing in her life that can not be immediately obtained that she bothers herself with; she is a perfect example of the happiness to be found through living in the moment, unclouded by dreams or goals. This is the embodiment of one aspect of what I seek from Cycling:…
Every other Tuesday night, I put on my tweed jacket with the leather elbow patches, fill a Thermos with Earl Grey and drive the Rover 3500 to the designated home of one of my fellow members of our esteemed Book Group. As a big fan of the brilliant British television show of the same name, I was hoping that…
My trouble isn’t with being a good descender; it is with cornering and stopping – and sometimes both. Or, as G’rilla puts it, “Descending is like sex; how good I am at it has nothing to do with how much I enjoy it.” Descending is demanding and requires great skill. It is not a time…
Growing up, I imagine my dad did his fair share of worrying about me getting into trouble with chemicals and girls. Like with most problems in life, the solution lay in Cycling; training encouraged healthy behavior and once my dad convinced me to shave my legs, no one needed to worry about the girls anymore….
Five is an important number. Assuming nothing has gone amuck in our development or our usage of cutlery, we each boast five digits on both our hands and both our feet. Most of us have five senses. Most miraculously, any number multiplied by five and then divided by five gives you the same number you…
Disregarding my Schwinn Typhoon, I started keeping score with my 1976 Peugeot PX 10 LE. It came with a Stronglight 52 x 45 and a 14 x 21 five speed freewheel. I always thought this Peugeot was set up for the pavé of northern France with those gears and wire-wrapped and soldered 3x tubular wheels….