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Archive for the ‘Etiquette’ Category

Don’t Be An Ass: Just Say No To Bad Lycra

by frank / Feb 17 2011 / 81 posts

I didn’t think this article would ever need to become reality. I thought we could safely file this one in the “Obviously Not Allowed, Fucktards” bin alongside the Rules for reflectors, kickstands, and recumbents.But I stand corrected.…...

Spectating 101

by brett / Jan 28 2011 / 14 posts

You think the riders in the Tour of Wellington are doing it tough? Spare a thought for us, the poor spectators, forced to sit in a car for hours, sun blazing through sunroof onto bald pates, made to cut Camembaert with a Swiss Army knife, compelled to drink Trappist tripel from a wine glass. It’s hell, I tells ya.But we shirk not our responsi...

On Rule 2: Cycling Sensei

by Marko / Jan 24 2011 / 58 posts

My buddy Chris wants to buy a road bike.  His primary reason for this is to improve his fitness after splitting his patella in half on a rock while skiing a couple weeks ago.   He believes that riding a bicycle, after his arduous healing process is complete, will be easy on his knees and provide him with a fun way to stay fit.  To that I say, o...

Defining Moments: Alexi Grewal-1984 Olympic Road Race

by Gianni / Dec 17 2010 / 68 posts

I just came across Alexi Grewal’s website; presently he is a timber framer, does not own a car (no money), hauls tools behind his bike in a trailer and is now training up to revive his racing career. That is a heavy lift, reviving that career. That is a twenty year holiday from riding and racing but I never discount an elite athlete’s w...

Look Pro, Part II: Casually Deliberate

by frank / Dec 7 2010 / 143 posts

Looking Pro is a delicate art rife with paradox and enigma. Aesthetics in a sport as difficult as cycling is itself a contradiction; surely anything wrought with such suffering should be driven by function and function alone. Yet cyclists are both some of the hardest people in sport and the most vain. For a cyclist knows better than perhaps any oth...

Breaking the Rules: Graeme Obree

by frank / Nov 20 2010 / 67 posts

I’m going to let you in on a little secret. Innovation is ugly, inelegant. By it’s very definition, it is carried out with almost a kind of contempt for The Rules. With no regard for aesthetics, it is a domain ventured into by the casually courageous and mentally frail. It comes in fits and starts, and success is punctuated by devastati...

Six Days of the Worlds – Reverence: The Rainbow Jersey

by Gianni / Sep 29 2010 / 10 posts

We would all love to have a rainbow jersey to wear.  Maybe wool, maybe long sleeve.  It is white and beautiful, without argument the most handsome jersey going, yet we as Velominati will never own one.  Well, I won’t and if you have any respect for the Rules neither will you.  If you do own one you never dare wear it unless in your baseme...

Universal Message: Metal Horns = Awesome!

by frank / Sep 19 2010 / 46 posts

It’s funny how malleable our definition of “local” becomes when emotion gets involved.  Seattle is a fiercely independent town where “local” is meant to imply your immediate neighborhood and we struggle to consider people who inhabit a community less than a kilometer away to be little less than an étranger. On...

Doping: The Acceptability of a Method

by frank / Aug 12 2010 / 60 posts

Performance-enhancing methods. This is a term we hear so often in cycling; it refers to the practice of using products or processes that elevate your performance beyond what you could naturally do. It is a terribly complicated matter for the fans, and I can only speculate as to how complicated it is for the professionals who do or do not participat...

The Cycling Aesthete

by frank / Jul 20 2010 / 32 posts

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 aboa...
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