Certified hardman and aesthete, the Swiss rider Hugo Koblet.

There are those who are challenged to find the value of aesthetics in a sport which requires eating 11T cogs buttered with chain oil for breakfast and drinking kegs of Rule 5 at dinner. Ye of the Congoscenti, I present you with the following photos of some of the quintessential hardmen of our sport who rode during an era when merely climbing aboard a bicycle – let alone to race one – was an act of stony hardness which, by comparison, casts modern riders into the realm of the indolent.

Indeed, these were men who rode over the same mountain passes that we ride today, but did so on unpaved roads aboard bicycles weighing 20 kilos.  They turned massive gears out of necessity, and rode races that were many times longer than those we see today.  These were men who wore motorcycle goggles for a lack of any cycling-specific eye wear; who wore their spare tires in a figure-eight pattern looped over their shoulders. These were the hardest men imaginable.

Most of them also rode with a comb in their pocket to ensure they always looked their best the moment they stopped pedaling their machines.  These men were Giants who understood that the finer things in life and in this sport are what make it worthwhile to suffer so.

So next time you pack your energy gels and inner tube into your jersey pocket, make sure you leave room for a comb.

A bunch of men, those.

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Schleck suffers a dramatic mechanical and the loss of his Yellow Jersey: Photo Bettini Photo

Of all people, a Velominatus knows that our sport is a civilized one; it is steeped in tradition and etiquette and rife with unwritten rules. High on the list of unwritten rules are those that outline acceptable behavior when various hardships befall the leader of a Grand Tour. One of the reasons such rules exist is due to the brutally difficult nature of our sport; in the context of stage races where crashes and mechanical incidents are a part of daily life and can have a major impact on the competitive landscape, such conventions and agreements form a foundation in the quest to find the winner of the events through athletic, tactical, and strategic superiority while minimizing the impact that misfortune may have on the final outcome. The Golden Rule in this case is that riders are never to attack the race leader when they suffer a crash or mechanical incident.

At the Giro d’Italia, on Stage 7 over the Strada Bianchi, the race leader Vincenzo Nibali crashed and was left to struggle behind.  The question was raised then, why did the leaders not wait for Nibali, the fallen Maglia Rosa, to rejoin before continuing to race? One reason might be that Nibali wasn’t considered a legitimate threat to take the final win.  Another reason was that the race was on in full force and as such there were too many riders already attacking at the moment of the crash.  Justified or not, the sportsmanlike thing to do would be to wait. They didn’t, and in the end it had little impact on the result (the winner, Ivan Basso, was also held up in the crash), but a small bit of our accepted etiquette died with the decision to continue on.

Today at the Tour de France, we saw a similar situation where the Brother Grimpeur the Younger distanced rival Alberto Contador before a mechanical eventually saw him lose his Yellow Jersey.  Schleck had to stop to right his dropped chain, and while he did so, Contodor came by him and pushed his advantage home, all the way to the finish.  In the end, Schleck lies a few seconds behind Bertie, and in truth the 30 second lead he had before the incident was likely not enough to win the Tour. Indeed, little has changed in the reality we face in the coming days: Andy must attack Contador if he is to win this year’s Tour.

One thing that has changed, however, is that Contador has proven something I have long suspected: he is a rider whose ambition to win is greater than his sense of sportsmanship.  Marko has written in these archives about the A.C. Enigma and his ambivalence towards this rider.  Bertie has given us little reason to love him, aside from his blistering accelerations up the steepest grades in the mountains.  He has also given us little reason to hate him, for we know little about him. For me, the greatest riders are those who perhaps do not win often, but they lose with class and dignity, and they fight. Riders who display dignity and respect for the sport and fellow athletes in the midst of dishing out huge helpings of Rule 5 is what endears a rider to this particular heart. Jan Ullrich is the prime example of this; his sportsmanship on the slopes of Luz Ardiden in the face of an opportunity to win the 2003 Tour is unmatched.   Even after spending year after year being beaten by Armstrong into second place; he still had the overriding sense of sportsmanship to wait and resist pushing home the advantage when Armstrong crashed.

In our sport, a champion is one who holds the unwritten rules of conduct in higher regard than a trophy.  These are the athletes who understand that the very manner in which they set about achieving their results will be woven into the fabric of their career and weigh more heavily than the golden trophies of their victories.

At the end of the day, little has been decided in the outcome of the Tour.  The one thing that has been determined is that Alberto Contodor is not a true champion, for he would rather win another Tour de France than show his fellow colleagues (not to mention the fans of this sport) the opportunity to discover who is the strongest through head-to-head competition. Alberto Contodor has shown his true colors as a great rider for whom winning is more important than sportsmanship.

Tomorrow will dawn with a renewed opportunity for Andy Schleck to also show his true colors.  Will he protect his second place and race conservatively into Paris, or will he rise up to fight and try to win the Tour despite today’s setback?  I have a feeling that we are about to be treated to the latter.  I certainly hope so.

Alberto Contador did not need to wait today.  But he should have, for ours is a civilized sport, and we, fellow cyclists, are not animals.

Question: What would Jens Do? Answer: HTFU.

I thought I was the only one.  It was a truth I admitted to myself only in the darkest hours of the night, when you lie awake and are faced by those haunting thoughts that are otherwise whisked away before they float to the surface.

But now, I can say it: I am afraid of crashing. Especially of equipment failure.  I never climb aboard my bike without having made a cursory check of all important parts: inflate the tires, check the headset, check the brake pads, bolts and cables, check the quick-releases.  (There is something in the name “Quick-Release” that unnerves me and forces me to harbor a doubt that they will release suddenly and unexpectedly.)

I’ve been particularly nervous about it the last week or so.  This year, I’ve noted that I’m descending and cornering faster; my confidence in my bike handling skills having skyrocketed since picking up mountain biking again. In the last week, I switched to a new pair of shoe (the White Ladies, passed on to me by John), and since doing so I’ve occasionally been clipping out of my inside pedal when leaning into a turn. It turns out that having your foot attached to your pedal contributes considerably towards staying upright.  (On a side note, I wonder what the connection is there?)

Crashing is part of cycling and, like most of us, I’ve spent my time on the tarmac.   Sometimes bad, sometimes not so bad.  Like the time when I borrowed an English friend’s bike and pulled on the front break instead of the rear.  And the time I overshot a corner racing my sister down a mountain in New York.  Sometimes you pick yourself up and ride home, other times you head to the hospital.

The risks increase when racing, of course, and the scariest of all my crashes was the first time I went down in a bunch during a race.  (I’d like to take this moment to thank the guy who thought he’d win the race by going through a non-existent gap from the middle of the field in the middle of the race.)  The first time you find yourself suddenly laying on the road being hit and fallen on by other cyclists is a moment that is occupied not by any realization of what is happening but instead by trying to assemble the fragments of information being sent to your brain.  You first become aware of what happened after you stop moving and continue to hear the wheels whizzing by your head as the rest of the riders (hopefully) avoid the carnage.  The feeling of helplessness is particularly acute as the desire to remove yourself from the road washes over you.

But watching the Pros, they seem to take it in stride.  I long held the view that after crashing so often, they have grown accustomed to it and generally don’t mind hitting the deck.  They are hardened by the reality of their occupation and get on with their job.  But I was happy to read a piece in the New York Times that said otherwise.  Jens Voigt, cycling legend, hardman extraordinaire, and Velominati hero, is also afraid of crashing, as it turns out.  Not only that, but so are the other Pros.

No matter how long you’ve been in this sport, there’s always that fear of crashing in the back of your mind, especially in the rain.

Crashing, as we are all aware of, is not a very pleasant experience. Everybody is scared of it, no matter who they are.

Not a very pleasant experience?  There’s an understatement.  I would say that crashing ranges anywhere from “Sucking” to “Fucking Terrifying” on the “Bad Things That Happen” scale.

That that in mind, take this spectator video of Boonen’s crash in the Tour of California.  The riders yelling just before the fall, and the distance they slide is rattling.  The callousness of the fan who scampers over to pick up Boonen’s bike with no interest in the rider’s well being before yelling at his friend to photograph him “quick” like it’s some sort of trophy is staggering.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Obviously not a cyclist, that one, because cyclists cringe and relive their own crashes any time they see a fellow Velominatus go down.

Class 5 Rule Breaker

As enthusiasm for The Rules has been growing, we’ve been having a lot of fun watching the conversation take shape and go in directions we didn’t necessarily expect it to. You have the Geof’s and the Jarvis’s who defend them honorably and even compare cycling to a religion. Fittingly, you then also have the Opus Dei-like loyalists like SGW who find purity in only one Rule, which is – tastefully – Rule 5. And, naturally, some posit that we might be idiots, and I can’t blame them; in fact, they probably have a point.

There is, however, another Rule which will never grace the list but which is critically important for our humble sport to continue to grow and garner further public support, in particular from motorists with whom we share the road. I’m talking, of course, about obeying the laws of traffic and being a Good Ambassador for our sport.

I find that much of the time when I’m put into a dangerous situation by someone driving another vehicle, it’s due to their ignorance of what it’s like to be on a bicycle in traffic. Other times, it’s because we present the impression to the driver of the vehicle that we’re somehow hindering them in their ability to also use the road or get to the bar. Whatever the cause, it’s rather inconvenient to be struck by said vehicle and as a cyclist it’s in our best interest to ride defensively and keep out of danger. (If conventional wisdom is to be believed, it would appear that in a bus/truck/car/motorcycle-bicycle collision, the bicyclist generally tends to be the worse off – at least from a physical point of view.)

Part of riding defensively, I feel, is to demonstrate that while we expect to be treated with the same respect and rights as the other vehicles on the road, we also hold ourselves to the same laws and order of traffic; don’t run red lights (unless there is a compelling reason to do so, such as a malfunctioning weight sensor), ride near the side of the road, and follow the conventions for “right of way” at intersections.

Many cyclists seem to have the expectation that they are to be respected by traffic, but that the laws of traffic do not apply to them. This double-standard does nothing to aide cyclists in winning the PR war with other traffic on the road – including pedestrians. Seeing a cyclist dodge through stop signs and red lights conveys a message of entitlement and recklessness; something I think we can agree none of us need.

Take the cyclist pictured above. As we were riding out to start our training ride on Saturday, we passed this douchebag as he was teetering down Greenwood Ave with his handlebars nearly touching his nose. We greeted him nevertheless as we rolled by, only to have him sprint onto Michelle’s back wheel (which is an annoying habit of these types of competitive twatwaffles who would shit themselves seven times before leaving the neutralized zone in an actual bike race). We ignored him and continued our leisurely roll down towards Fremont and the first bits of real riding on the route. On the way down Fremont Hill, he came careening past us, dodging pedestrians who were mid-crosswalk, flicking off cars, and running lights along the way.

We caught up to him at a traffic light which he had no alternative but to observe, and as we waited for the light to turn, I reflected on his general mentality and what his behavior communicates to the rest of traffic, of which the result is this article.

To make matters worse, he not only disobeys sensibility and law, he also offended me in his egregious Rule-Breaking. Class 5, in my estimation.

The Eurotrash Hublot Teammachine SLT01

If you’ve been paying close attention to my posts on other Keeper articles lately perhaps you’ve noticed my stable has been in a state of flux.  It all started when Frank texted me a pic of a pair of used demo 404′s at his LBS for sale.  Well no, that’s not true.  It really started 10 years ago when I lived in Bellingham, WA. and laid my eyes on the first Kona Jake the Snake I’d ever seen.  From then on I wanted a cyclocross bike.

The Kona is a distant memory, so fast forward to last spring.  My significant other and I were shopping for a new bike for her at a shop Frank and I used to work near.  The salesman working with us was a guy named Bob who actually used to work with Frank and me down the street.  Bob was an old friend who knows me as a gear junkie.  He’s also a damn good salesman.  As Sheri and I were paying for her new steed, Bob wheels out an ALAN Cross Carbon Excell from the back that had been special ordered and never picked up.  It’s a rare steed.  ALAN’s aren’t very common at all in the States but are very well known in cyclocross circles, especially European cyclocross circles.  It’s full carbon frame and fork with curvy lines immediately gave me carbone.  It’s also a large frame so it wouldn’t fit many people.  Being 6’2″ as I am, with a 34″ inseam, Bob thought I’d be just the guy for this beauty.  He was right. $2700 and an hour later I walked out of the shop with twice the cross bike I’d lusted over 10 years prior.  Last year I was so enamored with the ride quality of the ALAN I slapped road tires on it and used it as my sole machine.

Enter the the Zipps at Frank’s LBS.   They were to be used on the ALAN this year.  They would have worked well too but I never got the opportunity to try the combo out thanks to CompetitiveCyclist‘s rippin’ good deal on last year’s BMC SLT01 frameset, perfect for the Zipps.  The Team Machine is also the pro-level frame and fork I’ve wanted for quite some time.  I pulled the trigger.

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Anyway, to make a long story short, I’ve gotten my stable in order and am in compliance with Rule 12.  What’s more, I was able to live up to Rule 11 without a ruckus whatsoever.  Where’s the third you may be asking?  It’s around but I will not speak its name nor post a photo here for fear of losing my newly granted Keeper status.

Gilbert Duclos-Lassalle showing his Zed colors.

Getting each new copy of Rouleur is almost a religious experience. It is printed on heavy paper, and has a particular smell about it; the pages are printed with a mat finish, so the heavy, rough pages feel a certain way in your hands as you turn them. There is no other periodical that I’m aware of that has the same feel to it; reading each issue is an experience unto itself.

Issue 16 came yesterday, and it has some incredible features, including a retrospective on Team Z – one of the coolest teams ever – and a history of Shimano – one of the most iconic component manufacturers in cycling.

As I thumbed the pages through my first pass of the content, I took some photos in an effort to share the experience.

Of course, you’ll have to order one for yourself for the full effect.

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The illustrated Man. Photo: Graham Watson

This will be the last of my Cipo photos in a post for a while and only because I’m employing self-control.

To me he exemplifies “Italian Cyclist” and if I weren’t so lazy I would try to find his quote about cycling being representative of all that is beautiful in life.

Watch this silly video of Mario getting punked. The set up is the guy in the little car tells Mario some of Mario’s bike have been stolen and seconds later a camper goes by with some of Cipo’s bike on the back.

Italian hilarity ensues.

One has to come away with a few things from this fine bit of TV: Italian TV looks better than US TV, at least concerning the dress code for the hostesses. Cipo is so cool. I believe he does all this with his cycling shoes on. And his sleeveless jersey with world champion stripes still visible, oh I’m more than impressed. Unfortunately us non-Italian speakers are missing a lot of excellent Italian cursing and taunting here too. Enjoy.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Hands up, who'd like a white coat?

His latest routine is a corker, and had them rolling in the aisles.

After he took the leader’s jersey (a form of yellow referred to as ‘golden’, yet just looks like a Maillot Jaune that hasn’t been washed for three weeks) he lost his rag on the next stage at Robert Gesink, who he claimed chopped him off in the sprint for third place bonus seconds (which, of course, he lost).  After first allegedly headbutting, then lambasting Gesink and labelling him an “idiot” to the press, he eventually apologised a few days later.  Who looked like the idiot now?

Then, a couple of stages later, the punchline.  Last climb of the day.  The heat is on at the front. He gets a flat.  It happens to everyone at some time. But it’s only Cadel who gets treated like shit.  Allegedly.  First he blamed the Shimano Neutral Service for giving him a wrong wheel (turns out it was right).  Then his own team director inexplicably stopped him to swap bikes, because they thought he’d gotten the wrong wheel too (nope).  By this time the media, team cars and public had conspired to block the road for poor Cadel.  More time lost, Vuelta over.  Yep, bad luck, to be sure, but how to react?

What would Lance do?  Get on the Twitter and vent from behind the safety of technology.

With a tirade that would make Serena Williams proud, Cadel let fly.   “After the BS I have been through just to get to this race, I am not so sure I deserved that. “A puncture in a crucial moment of the Vuelta I can handle. Useless neutral assistance and media blocking the road I really don’t deserve.  ”I don’t deserve this.  I do everything right in the fucking sport and I don’t deserve this shit.”

What do you deserve, Cadel?  A few weeks relaxing in a nice ‘holiday resort’, I think.  Do some reading. Maybe play golf.  Yeah, golf is a nice, gentle sport.  You might even find you’re good at it.

Who is your team sponsor?  Oh right, Silence (it’s golden, even if you’re jersey isn’t).  Could be a not-so-subliminal message right there.

I am a nod snob.  The fact is, I’m a bit of a cycling snob all-around.  I am not a “biker” and I do not “like to bike”.  I am a cyclist and I like to ride.  What’s more, as I outlined before, there are very loosely defined parameters under which I will bestow a “nod” upon another rider.  For example, you have to look cool.  Like you care how you look.  This doesn’t mean you have to be riding a glitzy carbon ride or some nostalgic steel classic, but you have to demonstrate that you understand Cycling Couture, ambiguously defined as it may be.

For those riders who receive said nod, there are a few unwritten rules about reciprocation.  First, you have to decide whether to acknowledge the nod.  Second, you should never acknowledge the nod too enthusiastically; always keep your cool and never get too excited.

The “Nod Acknowledgment” is almost more complicated than the “Nod”.  First, you have to decide if you’re willing to accept the nod, ignore it, or reprimand them for even trying.  More often than not, you ignore.  But, if you acknowledge, Nod Snob terms dictate that you must never, under any circumstances show more enthusiasm than the original nod given.  Let me give you an example of a flubbed Nod Reciprocation.

Michelle and I were riding home from a long ride out at Cougar Mountain near Seattle.  It was a hot day, and we were tired after the more than 150km we’d logged already as we left Bellevue and headed back to Seattle.  A rider – worthy of a nod – came by in the opposite direction and gave me a quick nod.  A few moments later,  Michelle pulled up alongside me with a horrified look in her eyes.  “I saw him nod at you, and then he nodded at me.  I completely lost my nerve, and, *sigh*, took my hand off the bar, smiled broadly and waved.”

Classic example of reciprocating with more enthusiasm than the original nod.  Very uncool.

The other day, Michelle and I were coming home from our after-work spin, enjoying the hum of our wheels on the pavement and basking in the mellow satisfaction you find after a good ride.  Coming the other direction was a dad riding a mountain bike with his young son in-tow on a Trail-a-Bike.  The son seemed absolutely overjoyed at the scenario, and we could feel his delight before we could even see him.  There was a sense of triumph about him.  I’m not exactly sure why he felt so good about himself because he obviously didn’t meet any of the qualities of being a cyclist.  I mean, when was the last time you saw a pro on a Trail-a-Bike?  Besides, pro’s don’t wear jeans, and they don’t wear white helmets that look like hollowed-out bowling balls.

As we rolled into his view, he cheerily hollered, “HI BIKERS!”

My instinct was to correct him and say, “Bikers use motors, asshole.  We’re cyclists.”

Instead, Michelle and I replied in chorus, “Hi!”  I still feel a little guilty about that.

I love every kind of bike, from the tricked-out fixies all over Seattle (hello – hilly-ass town!  Unless your fixie is a 39-27, you are not making a sensible choice!), to the awesome Dutch Bikes, to the phenomenal racers around town, I love them all.

I am, however, a bitch when it comes to bike noise.  Some noises can be forgiven, while others can not. My good friends at Speedy Reedy in Seattle know this all too well, I think, based on a recent comment the head mechanic made, “I don’t doubt it makes noise, I just don’t know if it’s the spoke tension…”  The point is, if it’s making a sound, that’s kinetic energy not focused in making me go forward even though it’s caused by energy I’m putting into the bicycle.  And that’s bad.  There’s also a certain mechanical challenge in making a bike run silently, one that I enjoy when it’s not pissing me off: working through the possible sources of the noise in a process of elimination and the thrill of having silenced it.

There is only one noise that I accept on a bike, and that is drive train noise.  That is, if you’re running Shimano or SRAM.  Campy, I have found, runs almost silently.  My bike – aside from the dull pop I’m currently hearing in my saddle when my fat-ass runs over a big enough bump – is virtually silent these days.  All I hear is the hum of my wheels, and that is a sound worth buying wheels for.  That said, Shimano and SRAM are simply noisy.  The chain or the pulleys in the derailleur or something but they simply make noise.  And, while it’s still a loss in kinetic energy, that’s OK.

But a squeaky chain?  Unforgivable.  I don’t care who you are, but if you own a bicycle, you can buy a can of WD-40 and make it stop-the-fuck squeaking.   Or Tri-Flow.   Or, better yet, something your local bike shop mechanic recommends.  Topic closed.

My point is, I am not a bike snob.  I am, however, a nod snob.  Some cyclist will nod at anyone riding another bike.  Others will nod at anyone who nods at them.  Paradoxically, many of them will not nod at a female cyclist, unless they didn’t realize she was a female.

I, on the other hand, am very judicious when it comes to nodding at a cyclist.  The cyclist’s nod is an acknowledgment of a kindred spirit, of souls suffering towards a similar goal.  It implies a similar level of devotion to the sport, a willingness to betray accepted social norms for the life of a cyclist.  This is a vaguely-defined set of criteria more accurately measured by stating those qualities which will result in me not nodding at a fellow cyclist.

Those qualities are as follows, in no particular order:

• Your chain is squeaking.
• Your helmet is missing or is on backwards.  Obvious exceptions to this rule are if you’re wearing a hair-net or a cycling cap (backwards) and are riding an Italian or Belgian steel road bike, preferably with your brake cables springing up from your brake hoods directly to your frame, or if your name is Charley Mottet.
• You are wearing tights on a day that knickers will do, or shorts on a day when you should wear knickers or tights.
• You are riding a recumbent.
• You come blowing  by me on a climb and your legs are not shaved.  There are exceptions to this rule, but I have to know you personally in order to issue exceptions.
• You are hammering needlessly.
• You don’t look cool.  This makes me sound like a jerk, but lets face it, this is an important part of cycling: once you reach a certain level of familiarity with your bicycle, you almost automatically will look cool.
• You annoy me in some other way that is not outlined here.  This could be anything from falling into my gaze when I’m tired or otherwise cranky, to motoring by me on the Lighthouse on your fixie.

I think that covers it.