I hesitate to file this in the Guest Article category. It would be better filed under fellow un-rewarded pirate cycling-site writer, if we had such a file. @winnipegcyclechick does all of her site’s writing, her graphics are usually hers and much too funny. Frankly, she makes me sick. And, AND, she can make the jokes…
Month: August 2014
Cyclists love socks. I know I do. I’d make a point of collecting as many pairs as I could from every race, event, shop or rep that I ever happened upon. Some were so good that I still have them, others, well, let’s just say they were “re-homed” long before they got the chance to…
Most great ideas in life are accompanied by an unforeseen consequence of equal or greater magnitude. For instance, no one predicted that the Industrial Revolution would pollute our air and set off climate change on a global scale. Similarly, no one realized that when placing unfathomable computing power in the palm of our hands in…
After a night of sinning, the body must be cleansed. -The Prophet, Eddy Merckx After a week away in Atlanta for business, I feel thick and heavy. These trips away are killers; the shift in time zones means the already-too long work day is extended by a further three hours. I try my best to watch my…
Jens Voigt is set to retire as we speak, having one final crack at a long break in some race in the Cycling backwater of the USA. Is it fair or fitting that he should go out like this, slipping out the back door with little fanfare, while others have been doing a farewell tour of…
The future is dark, which is the best thing the future can be, I think.– Virginia Woolf Our actions lie on the horizon of the present, in that swirling cloud where fantasy turns into reality. To plan is to cast a shadow into the future, to attempt to lay shape to the unknown. As the…
I have met @chris on the original Keepers Tour. He seemed like a reasonable person at the time. Then again, @rob passes himself off as a rational person yet he signed up for the Too Much on 100 ride and completed it. People sign up for these crazy rides because it forces them to get…
Choice, or the perception of it, is one of the most powerful forces on Earth. The great secret lies in the locus of control, which suggests that if given the perception of a choice we will be more willing to endure hardship or suffering. We’ll suffer even for the promise of a future intangible reward so long as we feel…
I bought a Road ID the day I learned of Jon Lennard’s death on August 12, 2013. Someone in the posts of the original announcement of his passing (below) mentioned he was identified by his Road ID. Of course he had a Road ID. What I knew of him made that perfect. So responsible and…
Never forget your roots, they say… OK, I’m a child of the 70’s, and back then bicycles were as big a part of my life as they are today. We’d always be out riding, building tracks and jumps, and tinkering with our Dragsters, stripping them down to emulate our motocross heroes, with varying results. All these memories came…
If @steampunk can’t take much credit here I guess we can’t take any. We can take pleasure is seeing someone’s kid hauling ass on a bike, a Velominatus spawn, even better. We all came to cycling by different paths, seemingly few by our parents. It is impossible to outguess one’s children; they are clever little bastards….
July 13 2014 marked the 35th anniversary of the seminal ‘cycling film’ Breaking Away. 35 years. Nothing stays popular for that long, right? Things get dated, lose their edge (if there was edge in the first place) and eventually become irrelevant (I’m looking at you, Rolling Stones). Yes, even legends get stale if left out too…
Brett’s fine Nick Cave article got me thinking about music and cycling. We spend lots of time alone on our bikes. The bike is on autopilot, it stays upright from second to second, freeing up our brains to consider anything or nothing. Music might be the only riding companion we have but it has to be…
After Stage V there was Stage 9, where the World TT champion earned the dotty jumper. In case you missed it, Stage 9 was a trip into the Vosges mountains, 170km with six categorized climbs. This was a stage for a breakaway to stay away. A large group did escape and with 152km remaining to…