Its hard to say precisely where the line lays, but I’m certain I’m well on the wrong side of it. I never notice lines as I pass over them but I can usually tell after I have because it feels suddenly liberating to leave reason, sensibility, and convention behind. I find them very restrictive –…
Category: Technology
The modern cyclist, as they enter the sport, will find themselves purchasing a set of shoes which contain a cleat that clips into the pedals on their bike. It should come as no surprise, then, that the term we use for the action of engaging shoe to pedal is “clip in”. Obviously, this style of…
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…
We gather here today to pay our respects to one of the most exciting developments the Cycling world has ever witnessed: the funny bike. For seventy years, the evolution of the bicycle was marked by incremental change; improvements to brakes, more gears, and better shifting followed one another as the sport grudgingly continued its slow journey towards…
Keeper Jim and I came across Meg Fisher during an icy-rain Rule #9 training ride on Mercer Island in March. The first thing that struck us was that there was a good rider up the road, one of the few braving those cold, wet, early morning hours. It wasn’t until we caught up to her that…
Museeuw rockin’ the bands riding with Cipo decked out in yellow as he twists one up. There are only two things cooler than this and both of them are impossible to get. One is Led Zeppelin playing at your shitty graduation party in the late 70’s and the other is one of those awesome Coca…
As Keepers Tour crossed from dream to reality and routes over the cobblestones of Northern Europe were sketched out, with it came the familiar tingling in my fingertips and uneasy sensation at the base of my spine as my mind starts its irrevocable journey towards categorizing as mandatory an unnecessary indulgence. I was going to need a wheelset and…
Building a frame has been, since childhood, a dream which always seemed a little bit out of reach. Aside from not being sure how not to do it wrong, I’ve always assumed that, in addition to nunchuck and computer-hacking skills, my lacking of welding skills would render any would-be frame unridable at best and lethal at…
By now you’ve probably figured out that our Reverence series is not about reviewing gear in the classic review sense. The very word “reverence” connotes that the author of the article holds a certain affinity for the product whereas reviews are meant to be “objective” analyses. Nor is the point of the series necessarily to…
Suspense. It defines the thrill of watching a bike race. Johan Van Summeren, his deflated rear tire clanging over the last secteurs of cobblestones in Paris-Roubaix with Fabian Cancellara breathing down his back; Laurent Fignon snatching seconds from Greg LeMond on each mountaintop finish, as LeMond snatches those same seconds back in the time trials….
If you’ve ever sold bikes for a living, (or even just ridden them), you’ll know that the biggest fear of the newbie, or the moderately experienced cyclist is clipping in. It can strike the Fear of Merckx into the brawniest of men and reduce them to a quivering mess, saying things like “I don’t want…
Although we find our way to the bicycle by different path, we all share the fact that at some point, this simple and elegant machine captured our imaginations. It became something more than simply a means to travel about, get exercise, or compete – it became something central to our lives. Somehow and by different…
Simplicity. There is little in this world that I find more exciting than a complicated problem solved by a simple, elegant solution. Focusing on simplicity is particularly useful when weighing intricate competing facts because it allows you to say, “None of those complicated factors are likely to work out in my favor, so I'll ignore them and…
It's been an interesting week in the Velominati Archives of Awesomeness, after a freak discovery of boxes containing “photographs”. After conducting some research, we've come to understand that “photographs” are like pictures, except they are stored neither on the Geekbox nor on the Interwebs, but instead reside on a special kind of shiny paper that…
Training Properly clearly isn’t everyone’s bag, baby. Heart rate, power, cadence; it’s all bollocks if you are being told to hold back, or are put into a place where you don’t want/aren’t supposed to be. If it hurts, and you’re flying, it’s working. If it hurts, and you’re crawling, it’s not working. No amount of…
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…
It is dark now when I rise. It is dark when I return home from the office. Leaves crunch under the soles of my shoes as I walk in the city. The rides that once occupied a devoted period of each day have now become stolen indulgences of either serendipity or careful planning. The rain…
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,…
While we generally try to space out our guest pieces by a few weeks at least, we simply couldn’t resist the temptation to chuck this one up right on the heels of Oli Brooke-White’s post on Spinaci’s. After all, this is probably the second time in the Velominati’s history that a direct reference has been…
Robots. Automatons. Modern professional cyclists. I am tempted to say these three terms are interchangeable, but I know that’s not right because a “robot” endeavors to convey the impression that it acts of it’s own intent, whereas automatons and professional cyclists are merely self-operating machines. It is difficult for a Velominatus to look at old cycling…