Questions

Today we answer questions from noncyclists.  None of these questions were actually sent to the blog, but they are questions that I have been asked during my numerous personal appearances.  (I appear at my home, at the place I work, that sort of thing.)

What do you do when you’re out riding and it starts to rain?

How do you answer this question without sounding sarcastic?  You get wet.  I always want to ask people who ask me this question what other answer they think is possible.  Okay, during a really big storm I know some people who hid in a handy shed in a stranger’s yard or under a carport.  That does happen, but mostly you just get wet.  It would be interesting to speculate on what the owner of the shed or carport thinks if they happen to look out the window and see a bunch of wild cyclists hiding under their roof, but that one hasn’t come up yet.

Do you have to wear those clothes?

No.  So far as I know, there is no law requiring cycling clothes.  After seeing me in them, some people might want to pass a law against cyclng clothes, but that’s a different story entirely.  My first group rides I wore plain old shorts and a T-shirt.  I gradually moved up to a cycling jersey.  It took a lot longer to move up to cycling shorts, and I kind went back to a long T-shirt for a while to hide the shorts, but the kit is just too comfortable to pass up, and eventually you get used to it.  Some of the passersby may never get used to it, but you will.

What’s the longest you’ve ever ridden?

We’ll assume this means “in one day” and the answer is 200 miles.  Yes, I know that’s completely ridiculous.  I didn’t finish the ride strong, and I had a nice guy pacing me the last several miles to get me to the finish, and I didn’t really want to sit down for a few days after that, also, I didn’t want to taste anything sweet for about a month, but I did finish.

200 miles?  Are you crazy?

Yes.   It’s really the only explanation.

How much did your bike cost?

Now, in fact, I was at the bike shop watching my bike get tuned up one day, when a guy came in with his bike.  It was simply a bike, very old, rusted, beat up, but functional.  He took a look at my bike and asked how much it cost.  The mechanic looked at the guy’s bike and then lied and said “$200.00.”  The guy looked quite smug and told us that he’d only paid $20.00 for his.  He clearly thought I was a sucker for paying so much for a bike, and that he had gotten a great deal, and maybe he had.

So, why did you lie to him about the price?

Because, let’s face it, even a bottom end road bike is fairly pricey, and you get tired to people looking at you like you’re a moron for spending so much of your hard earned cash on a bicycle when you could go to the local “if they don’t sell it you don’t need it” megamart and a buy cheap bike there.  It’s just like musicians and their instruments.  You’d paid how much for that violin?  (Or accordion or bagpipes or didgeridoo or whatever you happen to play.)   To some people it’s worth it and to some it’s not.  You know who you are.

Not that this is a question, but I always figured that, rather than looking at the cost of your bike, figure out how much it cost you per mile.  That’s pretty steep in the beginning, but, if you ride enough you get it down to pennies.

So, what do you think about Lance Armstrong?

Again?  Really?  Okay, so I realize that Lance is probably the only professional cyclist that a lot of Americans have ever heard of, but there are one or two others out there.  Even If you want to limit yourself to American cyclists, let’s talk about Chris Horner or Tyler Farrar or Greg LeMond or let’s branch out into the rest of the world and talk about Jens Voigt or Andy Schleck.  Wait, I have an idea!  Let me tell you about this guy named Eddy Merckx…

But you didn’t answer the Lance Armstrong question.

Oh, enough about Lance.  Don’t you know anything else about pro cycling?

I know they all take drugs.

They do not all take drugs.

Of course they do.

Tell you what – go read Racing Through the Dark by David Millar and then we’ll talk.  Now, do you have any questions that don’t involve doping.

Do they still run that Tour de France thing?

What?  Of course they do.  Why would you ask that?

Well, since Lance Armstrong isn’t racing anymore—

Okay.  Do you have any questions that don’t involve doping or Lance Armstrong?

Um…no.

Great.  That’s all for today, folks.  See you next time.

Tour de France

Do you like what is, in your household, town, state or county an obscure sport which seems simple to you but which nobody around you seems to understand despite its apparent simplicity?

Is the sport you like less complicated than the previous sentence?

Congratulations, you must be a cycling fan. Cyclin' Missy got me thinking about the TdF.

During most of the year, of course, many of the people I know have absolutely no interest in cycling at all (unless it is to wonder why I am so crazy as to do it), but then the magical month of July arrives…and they still have no interest in cycling at all. Unless, of course, Lance Armstrong has come out of retirement.

On the face of it, the Tour de France seems pretty simple: the guy who gets from the starting line (where ever it may be on any given year) to the finish line in Paris in the shortest amount of time wins the yellow jersey. What could be easier to understand?

Unless, of course there are time bonuses (which there aren’t this year, but – you never know – there may be again next year). And why are there teams if only one person can win? And what’s with those other jerseys?

I happened to have the race on yesterday, and my Lovely Lovely took a look at the TV and had an important series question for me:

“Did you see that guy?! What he wearing polka-dots? Why is that guy wearing polka-dots?!”

Well, he’s ahead in the King of the Mountains competition.

“So he wears polka-dots? Does he know how silly he looks? Even his pants and his helmet have polka-dots on them!”

I think he thinks he looks great in those polka-dots. I think he’s pretty proud to be wearing them.

"Well, it looks silly."

If it seems that my Lovely Lovely is more interested in the clothes than in the actual race, that’s only because it’s true. She is the light of my life, and I love her dearly, but professional cycling bores her. She isn’t really all that interested in clothes, but it’s more interesting to her than the actual race is.

Now, as a public service, I am going to answer the questions I get asked most commonly about the Tour de France. (Please note than none of these answers should be considered authoritative, because I am just some guy with a keyboard and not an expert on cycling.)

Is Lance Armstrong going to win the Tour de France this year?

No.

Will Lance Armstrong be back to race the Tour de France next year?

He says he will. My magic 8-ball says he will. I haven’t called Tele-Psychic and asked them, though.

What’s with the controversy involving Lance Armstrong, Johann Bruyneel and Alexandre Vinokourov?

Okay, I just made that one up. None of the people who ask me about cycling have any idea who Johann Bruyneel and Alexandre Vinokourov are.

Is Lance Armstrong going to win the Tour de France this year?

You already asked me that. The answer is still no.

What’s that thing where all the guys on the same team ride together?

A team time trial.

Did Lance Armstrong win that?

Well, technically, the team wins or loses that, not just one guy.

Okay, so did Lance Armstrong’s team -

Yes. Yes they did. Yes.

How come so many guys in the race have unusual names? Why can’t they have simple and easy to pronounce names like –

Don’t say it. You seem to have something of a narrow focus here.

Speaking of which, Is Lance Armstrong going to win the Tour de France this year?

Oh, dear. Watch and see.

Did they even have a Tour de France last year?

Yes.

Did Lance Armstrong –

No, that was Carlos Sastre.

Oh. He beat Lance?

No, Lance wasn’t in it last year. They decided to have the race anyway.

Why?

I don’t know. You’ll have to ask them.

Can I ask one more question?

Is it about Lance Armstrong?

Um…yes…

Then, no. No you can’t.

I think I’ll go for a ride now.

Book Report

I really have to watch what I read. I’m reading waaaaaaay too much heavy stuff with a great deal of social significance. That’s fine, unless it gives me delusions of grandeur and makes me think I can write something with a great deal of social significant. That’s when we’ll all be in trouble. So I decided to read something else. I vacillated between anything by P.G. Wodehouse (always a safe bet if you’re looking for something funny) and a book about cycling. That’s when I went to the bookshelf and realized that I have waaaaaaay too many books on cycling.

(Sorry about that. I think the aaaaaaa key is stuck.)

So I have decided to tell you about some of them.

A Significant Other: Riding the Centenary Tour de France with Lance Armstrong by Matt Rendell.

This is a great book, if you only read every other chapter. (Try it. You probably can’t make yourself do it.) Basically, Matt Rendell followed Victor Hugo Peña around while he was riding in the Tour de France on the U.S. Postal cycling team with Lance Armstrong. (The way the media covered the team, that should have been their names: The U.S. Postal cycling team with Lance Armstrong.) (Oh, and I don’t suppose he literally followed Victor Hugo Peña around, although, for all I know, he did.) (Whew. That was informative.)

Just about every other chapter is what happened on various stages and Victor Hugo’s thoughts about it. These chapters are fascinating. The other chapters were written my Matt Rendell, and they include some of the densest prose I have ever attempted to wade though, and I have read quite a few scientific journal articles, so I have some experience with these things. Try it for yourself.

The Rider by Tim Krabbé. (I hope that Mr. Krabbé appreciates all the work I went to in order to figure out how to type that é).

This is my favorite cycling book of all time. If it isn’t yours, you probably haven’t read it yet. It is an account of the Tour de Mount Aigoul (which is a race I had never heard of) written by a rider who rode it (who I had also never heard of, but what do I know?) and it’s wonderful. I have heard it referred to as a true account and I have heard it referred to as a novel and I have read it described as “hovering ambiguously somewhere between memoir and fiction” which is a very fancy way of saying, “I don’t know.”

I suggest that you try the English translation, unless of course you can read Dutch, which, after all, many people are quite able to do.

Why, you may ask, am I telling you about books when I got up at 6:30 this morning ready to ride despite that fact that a Labrador Retriever tried to walk all over me during the night? Because the idea of riding in an electrical storm just didn’t appeal to me somehow, so I went back to bed instead of getting all those lovely miles I had been looking forward to.

Oh, well. Maybe tomorrow.

See you on the road.

Lance Redux

Not long ago I wrote a post about Lance Armstrong’s mental toughness. (Mind you, in this same post I commented on the mental toughness required to do paperwork all day and compared the blog to a bakery, so you should apparently take everything I say with a grain (or lump) {or glacier} of salt.) I waited eagerly for a comment from Mr. Armstrong, but he is obviously keeping his customary silence when it comes to the press, so I am forced to carry on without his help.

On that now long distant day I wrote:

In his heyday as a professional cyclist (and if “heyday” isn’t a strange word, I don’t know what is) Lance was renowned for his mental toughness and resilience. I guess we’ll see if taking a few years off from racing has done anything to reduce that mental toughness now.

So how is Lance doing in the mental toughness department?

Lance Armstrong returned to the open road on his bike yesterday in Austin, Texas, 10 days after he crashed and fractured his right collarbone in the Castilla y León stage race. The American had a successful operation (12 screws and a support plate) two days after the incident.

I "just went for a ride, on the road. If one of you 484,272 [followers] tells my doc then I'm in trouble. Keep it between us please," he posted in a lighthearted manner on Twitter.

Well, there you are. He’s up and going. Oh, and apparently lighthearted.

And what of his future plans?

The crash seemed to be a setback to his plans to race the Giro d'Italia from May 9-31. However, Armstrong now appears on track to line up with team Astana for the three-week stage race when it starts in Venice.

A broken collarbone typically requires four to six weeks for recovery. It will likely prohibit him from racing prior to the Giro.

Okay, so Lance is going to ride a three week Grand Tour without any actual racing ahead of time to get himself back in shape. Now, I don’t know about you, but I couldn’t race a Grand Tour if I had Eddy Merckx as my coach, a year to get in shape, and an operation to give me bionic legs, so Lance will, I’m sure, be happy to know that we here at the blog give him a hearty thumbs up for his mental toughness and resolution. You go, Mr. Armstrong.

(By the way, if you happen to not be a Lance fan, we salute you, too. We were going to put in a special feature so that you could substitute the name of your favorite ride in the above post so that it would be interesting reading for you, but, on the whole, we decided not to do so for a number of reasons. (Hey, two is a number.)

1. If you did put your favorite rider’s name in the above post, you would then be reading about your favorite rider having fallen and broken his collar bone, and we were afraid this news might upset you.

and, even more importantly:

2. We don’t know how.

I could sit here and hone my computer skills, I suppose, but, on the whole, I’d rather go for a ride.

See you on the road.

Lance Armstrong

Here at the blog we like to serve up fresh and tasty nuggets of nonsense, but today we are going to follow the plan used by bakeries worldwide and serve up one or two day old leftovers instead. (I would say that we were offering these leftovers at a reduced price, but since the blog is free, the only way I could reduce the price would be by paying you to read this stuff, and I’d rather not. You’ll have to take your chances without monetary compensation.)

Lance Armstrong crashed hard in Monday’s opening stage of the Vuelta a Castilla y León and was transported by ambulance to a hospital in nearby Palencia, Spain. Race organizers and the Astana team doctor confirmed that the seven-time Tour de France champion had broken his right collarbone after Armstrong underwent an X-ray at a hospital in the city of Valladolid.

“Lance suffered a fracture of the middle third of the right collarbone as well as some bruises on his right hip and arm,” said team doctor Pedro Celaya, who was with Armstrong at the hospital.

Armstrong left the hospital Monday evening and said he was "miserable." "It has never happened before, I feel very disappointed," he told reporters as he left the hospital. "I feel miserable right now so I have to relax a few days."

He nodded when asked if he would return to the United States, telling reporters his participation in the Giro d'Italia in May "will be very complicated."

Now, Lance Armstrong is, of course, a worldwide success story, an immensely wealthy man and someone who competed successfully at the highest levels of his sport. I am a guy sitting behind a keyboard pretty much because I can’t think of anything more entertaining to do, so when it comes to choosing between the two of us, your best bet is to go with Lance. Now, you would think that this would pretty much be a cue to me to end this post here, but, since I can’t take my own advice, I shall now type some more words.

Lots of people have been watching Lance’s comeback at the ripe old age of 37. (Since I am older than Lance, I get a bit depressed when I hear people talking about how old the poor fellow is, practically in his dotage and all that, but it does seem to be a point that a lot of people feel a need to comment on.)

In his heyday as a professional cyclist (and if “heyday” isn’t a strange word, I don’t know what is) Lance was renowned for his mental toughness and resilience. I guess we’ll see if taking a few years off from racing has done anything to reduce that mental toughness now.

And, speaking of mental toughness…

I have been doing paperwork all day. This requires a sort of physical endurance, I suppose, and it definitely requires some mental diligence and effort. What I really want to be doing is…riding my bike. Yes, we are all stunned by this revelation – the guy writing the cycling blog wishes he were out writing his bike. It’s very cold out today. The weather is going from frigid to quite temperate every few hours, apparently unable to make up its mind, but, cold or not, windy or not, I wish I was out there. (It is easy to say that you wish you were on the road in spite of the wind when you know you have no chance of getting out there, but in this particular case it happens to be true.)

Lance is having some enforced time off the bike. I’m having some enforced time off the bike (and there all similarities between us end.) I hope that you are managing to get some ride time. If you are, have fun.

See you on the road.

Comeback

It’s comeback time, ladies and gentlemen. (I hope you noticed the optimism in that statement – I said ladies and gentlemen implying a belief that I have at least four readers). Lance Armstrong has raced his first American race in several years. Floyd Landis has ridden his first stage race in two years. I am back riding the bike after my appendectomy.

One of these things is not like the others

One of these things just doesn’t belong

Can you tell which thing is not like the others

By the time I finish my song?

Now, I know that it might embarrass Lance and Floyd to be mentioned in the same paragraph as me, but since they’ll never read this, I don’t suppose it matters a whole lot. I suppose each one of them has a moment that, for him, will mark, in his own mind, that his comeback is real. There will be that moment when he’ll think, “Yes, I’m back.” I have that moment, too. Well, really, I have two of them.

The first one will be when I ride Bike Route 40 from…well, I can’t say from start to finish because it’s a circle, more or less, but you get the idea. I was originally only going to have one such mental landmark, and then I went on a ride with Jerry, and Jerry said, “I’m going to ride Bridge to Bridge this year,” and I found my mouth, without bothering to consult my brain first, saying, “I’ll ride it with you.”

Say what?

I rode Bridge to Bridge four years ago, in 2005 (thus proving I can do simple arithmetic) and the experience is still green in my memory. Some things, you don’t forget. I have this distressing feeling, though, that my memories are not accurate. I suspect that I’ve blocked out the real pain and suffering that were involved. Well, I guess I’ll find out this September.

Mind you, I’m a long way from Bridge to Bridge right now, in every conceivable way. Geographically it’s across the state. Chronologically there are many months to go. Physically…oysh. Physically I am in another state of being. I got up and rode a mere fifteen miles at sunrise the other day and I felt it that evening. Oh, well, from little seeds mighty acorns sprout and from short rides longer rides are born, or something like that.

So now I have two goals for my comeback…well, to have a comeback I suppose you have to have been somewhere in the first place, and I’m not certain that applies to me, but why be picky?

Right now I am looking at the picture of myself near the top of Grandfather mountain. Below that is the patch I got for completing the Bridge of Bridge ride. In that picture I look at ease and even happy. That picture is lying. I was suffering like a dog and wishing the ride was over. When the ride finally was over, I couldn’t get off my bike for a while because I couldn’t lift either leg high enough to get it over the top tube.

And this is the ride that I have chosen to do again…

Well, something tells me I’d better get riding. I have a lot of miles to ride before I reach the base of the mountain, right?

See you on the road.