In the roughly six months since launching the Velominati, we have gradually moved from covering races, rumors, and doping to pouring over the very essence of what makes ours such a special sport – its history, culture, legends, traditions, races, and its physical and cultural challenges – and how those threads fit into cycling’s colorful fabric. It binds us and penetrates us, much like the Force, but for bike weenies.
This is what has, over time, become the Velominati’s raison d’être. Brett gave it a name in September when he wrote about the dilemma of handlebar/saddle color selection in a post entitled with the phrase that would become the most important term in the Velominati lexicon. Since then, we have been informally maintaining the canon of cycling’s sacred text: The Rules.
This document has finally reached a stage where it presents a foundation upon which to build and we, the Keepers, have decided the time has come to make it public. This is a living document and will grow and evolve as our sport does. Read it often. Consult it often. Consume it. Worship it. We are the Velominati, the Keepers of the Cog, and it is within our trust that we keep this sacred text. And also to be awesome.
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About the leg shaving - I took the plunge last season but I was wondering, where do you stop? I've been stopping mid-thigh but should I be going full Brazilian or what?
@Cyclops
I've been shaving since I was thirteen, so these things don't seem ambiguous to me - at least not on the surface.
However, my eyes were opened when Marko took the plunge earlier this year and sent me a text message to the effect of, "How high up do you shave?"
My phone made the "new message" sound and I asked Michelle to check my phone as I was driving at the time. She sighed deeply and said, "Well, that figures prominently on the list of messages a girl doesn't want to see on her man's phone."
So, in the words of Nigel Tufnel, I think it's best we leave this one "unsolved", really.
@frank @cyclops
I'll man-up and answer this one. I think I started shaving at 14, as I said to my mum, "because the PROs do", it was all about style, even back then. Anyway, the reason to shave is so that your team's soigneur didn't knacker his/her hands while doing the post-race massages. So if you follow that then your whole leg needs massaging, so you shave all the way up.
Personally I tended to consider how I might look in various items of clothing and shaved appropriately. Perhaps consider your choice of underwear and swimming attire.
@Jarvis
I seem to recall that one of the early scenes in "Sunday in Hell" spends a bit of time showing (I think) RdV shaving his legs. From memory he shaves quite a way up, and an explanation is provided that this is a necessary part of preparing for massage. I recall this not only because of the discomfort I experienced, while watcjhing it, at the prospect of my wife walking in and wondering why I was watching another chap shave his legs, but also because (i) he uses an electric razor and (ii) he apparently only shaves for the purpose of massage prior to a race - which says something not very flattering about we anal retentives who ensure pristine smoothness throughout the year with obsessive use of scrape razors several times a week...
The rules now live in Davis.
Cripes...BUMP
@harminator
Jeeezhus! What a time warp! It's like seeing that Far Side of a young Carl Sagan pointing at the night sky and saying, "There must be hundreds of them!"
Ha, awesome dredge! Never seen this article before...
Front.
Rear.
@Oli
Again, perfect.