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Archive for the ‘Folklore’ Category

The Weight of a Moniker

by frank / Apr 26 2013 / 40 posts

Young riders rise through the ranks with such promise. We all know the story; the rider who borrows a bicycle and enters a local race and wins. He decides he might be good at going batshit fast on a bike. Mom and Dad buy him a klunker for his birthday and he takes out a license. He starts winning most races he enters locally and rises to the region...

Look Pro: The Hunchbacks of Notre V

by frank / Dec 3 2012 / 114 posts

The flat back position is perhaps the greatest lie ever told in sport, provided you ignore any of the racing we’ve seen in the last decade or two.It is possible, I suppose, that when we talk about a flat back, what we really mean is that on an elementary level, all curves are really just a series of straight segments connected at an angle; wh...

Guest Article: Evanescent Riders of the 1890s: The 25th Infantry Bicycle Corps

by Joshua / Nov 16 2012 / 33 posts

Joshua – of Beer in the Bidon fame – returns from the depths of doing something scholarly in Montana. I hadn’t realized that Montana even had schools, but apparently they have loads of them. And, based on the fact that they awarded him a Ph.D., they are apparently prone to poor judgement.Josh deposited this little gem in the queue...

La Vie Velominatus: Ritual

by frank / Oct 1 2012 / 75 posts

Along the lines of what Bruce Dickinson famously decreed while espousing the medical benefits of cowbell in the remedy of rare types of influenza, I put my shoes on one at a time – just like you. But after I’ve got my shoes on, I ooze Fluidly Harmonic Articulation.As Cyclists, we wield the mighty power of The V, yet lay victim to the na...

The Eternal Seconds: Heroes or Villians?

by frank / Sep 26 2012 / 56 posts

Joop Zoetemelk was a hard man, a tough nut to crack. He specialized in getting second place, a talent he developed under the doctrine of Eddy Merckx and mastered via the harsh tutelage of Bernard Hinault. It’s very seductive to lean back in our armchairs and draw the conclusion that our sport’s Eternal Seconds, as they’re called,...

La Bicyclette, Part II: Scars

by frank / Jul 4 2012 / 45 posts

We meticulously care for our bicycle, stopping only just short of pampering it. Through ages spend coveting, building, and riding it, we become attached to it and its beautiful finishing details – the luster of the frame’s finish, the angle and sweep of the bars, the gleaming white tape, the tires, the wheels – all perfectly curat...

Imprecise Precision: L’Heure

by frank / Jun 1 2012 / 126 posts

Why would any sane person choose to suffer? The answer to this question is a primal one and of particular relevance to society in the current age: control. With chaos and uncertainty creeping from every corner of life, cycling provides us with control over physical suffering; to suffer at our own will provides us the control we viscerally crave. Th...

Keepers Tour 2012 Update, Part 2: The Lion Rides Today

by brett / Apr 17 2012 / 82 posts

With Keepers Tour: Cobbled Classics 2012 stitched up and in the history books, the challenge of documenting the trip became immediately obvious; how do you take the myriad impressions, experiences, and perspectives and put them down in a meaningful way – let alone in a way that can somehow be digested. Surely, to document even just the Keeper...

Guest Article: The Most Beautiful Race in the World

by il ciclista medio / Apr 6 2012 / 114 posts

Finally we can speak to this Paris-Roubaix mythology. The Keepers Tour group rode twenty-one sectors at something much slower than race speed. After the first sector we regrouped and we were all stunned by how bad it was. Twenty more sectors of that? That was horrendously tough.The first sectors are the easy ones. The hard ones start with the famou...

In Flanders Fields

by frank / Apr 1 2012 / 58 posts

You don’t have to be in Flanders very long before you start to breathe in the history of the area. Horrible things have happened in the fields across Northern France and Belgium, like the Battle of Waterloo and the Battle of the Bulge. These are the kinds of things that hang in the air for centuries; they seep into your blood.There is a famou...
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