There are lots of things to like about Vroomie Froomie, like his willingness to accept the fact that people are inclined to question his performances. Aside from me resenting him for leading a Tour which everyday becomes a little less exciting, he seems quite a likable guy; he is polite, respectful of the sport, wears team-issue…
Author: frank
The founder of Velominati and curator of The Rules, Frank was born in the Dutch colonies of Minnesota. His boundless physical talents are carefully canceled out by his equally boundless enthusiasm for drinking. Coffee, beer, wine, if it’s in a container, he will enjoy it, a lot of it. He currently lives in Seattle. He loves riding in the rain and scheduling visits with the Man with the Hammer just to be reminded of the privilege it is to feel completely depleted. He holds down a technology job the description of which no-one really understands and his interests outside of Cycling and drinking are Cycling and drinking.
As devoted aesthete, the only thing more important to him than riding a bike well is looking good doing it.
Frank is co-author along with the other Keepers of the Cog of the popular book, The Rules, The Way of the Cycling Disciple and also writes a monthly column for the magazine, Cyclist. He is also currently working on the first follow-up to The Rules, tentatively entitled The Hardmen.
Email him directly at rouleur@velominati.com.
I’m not too proud to admit to having multiple phobias against various things. That’s phobia multiplicity. Having a phobia against something is very simliar to having a normal phobia, except that in addition to being irrationally scared of something, you also harbor a stifling grudge against it. Also possibly irrationally. For example, I have been diagnosed with…
There are many paths to learning lessons, many of which have their merits. Reading a book, for instance, is a popular way of learning something. Or having a teacher or mentor describe to you why things are the way they are or aren’t the way they aren’t. Then there is my favorite method, that of…
Three things can send me from a deep sleep to sitting bolt upright in bed, gasping in terror. First is the most obvious, which is any dream involving visions of spiders. Second is dreaming of being dragged off or otherwise being aware of impending doom and opening my mouth to scream but having no sound…
Any return from time off the bike is always met with a peculiar mixture of anticipation and apprehension. I will be excited to return to the bike, but on some level I’ve become accustomed to not getting on my bike every day. Not riding is easy, and we are creatures of inertia – once the rhythm of the…
The Theory of Special Relativity states that time for a moving object passes more quickly than for a stationary object. Einstein, in deriving this theory, demonstrated great insight and creative power for which he is considered perhaps the greatest mind in human history. If he had owned a set of rollers, however, he’d be considered a…
This photo is perhaps the greatest of all time; it shows The Prophet riding in the 1969 Ronde van Vlaanderen, kit and machine perfect. Rule #9 conditions in abundance. He’s gone off the front with some 80km left to race, which predictably sent his directeur into a rage. Ordered to return to the bunch, Merckx calmly suggested…
I find it interesting to observe the chasm between parties engaged in a conversation, particularly in response to questions being asked. I’m thinking, at present, of the question, “How many bikes do you have?” My feelings in response are nothing short of complex and maybe a bit confused; reservation that I feel I should have a…
It’s not a secret around these parts that William Fotheringham is my favorite Cycling journalist. Growing up as a budding Velominatus in the isolated island known as North America, I could count on one hand the publications that even mentioned Cycling, let alone provided reliable coverage. Winning Magazine and Velonews were my source for race…
Update: You can watch the live stream (assuming it works from the velodrome) on the Velominati channel at USTREAM. When you log in, you’ll first see my little test video of my puppy eating grass. Please disregard me yelling at it. That never happened. I have always considered myself to have a good imagination, something…
Every once in a while, you stumble across a quote that changes your outlook on how you approach life. Of course, this requires that one does a good deal of “reading”, which is a problem for me, as reading anything that isn’t Cycling-related feels the same as doing “work”. I do the odd bit of…
We have the kind of poor judgement that allows us to have a puppy. She’s half pit, half something, and half something else and boasts a lilliputian-sized head. As her Life Coach, I’ve instructed her to focus on growing her head because, as her Uncle Gianni says, no one gets anywhere in this world with a tiny head….
In most situations, silence is an ominous thing that signals impending doom. Having never been in any danger myself, I base this largely on my experience watching box-office movies. As a general rule, I use Hollywood as the principal source of information on all subjects as they relate to doom and politics, principally because I’m loath to do any…
We close out the 6 Days of the Giro with our sixth and final installment. A body at rest, stays at rest. A body in motion, stays in motion. Things get a bit more ambiguous when it comes to a body on a bicycle tearing down a twisty mountain descent at speed, particularly in the…
We continue our Six Days of the Giro series with a look at the troubled bond between Marco Pantani and the Giro. Some were meant to be tormented, as though it were preordained that their brilliance should be balanced with fatal flaws. These are tortured souls, whose dramatic highs are equalled only by the devastating depths of their…
Change creeps in slowly, it has a way of taking the seemingly immutable and eroding it over time. It’s inevitable; if the great canyons were carved from the solid rock of Mount Velomis by such a soft thing as water, then it should come as no surprise that the Velominati V-Kit would also change with time….
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…
There are always at least two ways to accomplish any task: properly and improperly. Drinking beer from a glass, not the bottle; carrying a full umbrella instead of a miniature fold-up; stirring your gin martinis, not shaking them; wearing french cuffs with a suit, not button cuffs. The Velominatus, of course, is drawn towards doing…
I hadn’t planned to ride them every day. In fact, I had planned to only ride them once and let other people ride them. But, genius that I am, I forgot my ceramic brake pads and had to source some new ones which was a maddeningly difficult process given that Europe observes something in the…
While the Northern Hemisphere Velominati were busy arguing about who injected what in the old races they’d been using to distract themselves during their indoor torture sessions, down South a bunch of like minded strangers from the internet decided that coffee, hills, sunshine & beer seemed like a great excuse to meet up for a ride…the reflections…