Let me open this by stating that I firmly believe that Animals should be treated with dignity and respect, and should be given the right to live a wholesome and fulfilling life. Chickens should be allowed to preen and pluck proudly; cows the right to socialize as amicably as cows can, and pigs should be allowed to…
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.
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…
Today is a pretty important day in the Netherlands (and Belgium). It’s the day we pull rank on those who only celebrate Christmas. While the rest of the world awaits December 25th for Santa to deliver a new bike, for the Dutch December 5th is the eve of Sinterklaas, or “Loot Day”, as I like…
I can’t decide if Tony Rominger was an Evanescent Rider or not. After all, his wins range from 1988 all the way to 1996, which technically means the word “evanescent” doesn’t seem to fit. That said, after a successful streak in the Vuelta, he suddenly discovered a “cure” for his allergies which previously kept him…
The mind’s influence over the athlete is considerable; particularly in a sport as difficult as cycling. A strong mind can push its body well past its limitations and into the realm of the supernatural; forcing the legs to continue giving more despite each of the million muscle fibers screaming in unified agony. You could say the…
We’ve been busy little bees over here at Velominati. While you may not have been seeing much “evidence” of actual “activity” on our end, we’ve been hard at work adding a few new features that the community has been asking for: The Works and The Bikes. The Works is a place where we’ll be organizing…
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…
If ever there was a photo that illustrated why anyone would be given the monicker, “The Canibal”, this is it. I devoted a full seventeen seconds to ‘finding out the history’ of this picture, and came up empty. G’Phant sent this my way with a short but clear note, “This photo looks like it was taken…
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,…
One of the great pleasures that comes from not belonging to the Press or any other credible or otherwise trustworthy source of information is that we have the privilege of being little more than fans or enthusiasts, along with all the biases and prejudices that come with that. We leave being fair and balanced to those who actually do…
The question has been raised a number of times and the answer has always been vague: do the pros set The Rules, do they Obey them, or are they beyond them? As with everything philosophical, the answer is open to interpretation and difficult to identify. The Rules are about history, culture, etiquette, class, and style. That necessarily…
Aesthetics have always played a major role in my quest to become a better athlete. On the surface, this may seem a ridiculously vain assertion, but for me, the reality is that looking like a pro makes me feel like a pro, and when I feel like a pro, I’m motivated to ride like a…
I posted this picture as a joke in yesterday’s Anatomy of a Photo piece, but I find myself going back to it over and over, captivated by the way the light gleams off the peloton as they race by. Gleaming metal bits – hubs, cranks, spokes, handlebars, stems, frames, toe clips, all reflecting light from a thousand…
Don’t be distracted by the sweatband or the lame Bolle sunglasses; this man is a stud. He came from a different time, a time when suffering was a more visceral experience than it is these days. It permeated everything a professional rider did. The bike were heavier, the equipment less efficient, the travel to races more grueling,…
The Velominati are proud to present the following guest article by our community member Cyclops. As if we needed more convincing, Cyclops has once again proven that a Velominatus has a tendency to be a bit out of dish when it comes to making budgeting decisions. In this particular tale, Cyclops takes us through the…
As described in Bar-o-Phelia, my bar obsession festered and grew over a period of a few years, and then was spurred into action by a combination of me straight-lining it right past the zone psychologists refer to as “self-control”, and not having any adult supervisors present who would normally have sounded the “voice of reason”. (My Velomihottie…
As cyclists, our legs bristle with anticipation at the sight of a hairpin turn. Stitch a series of them together in close succession, and we lose the ability to speak in complete sentences. Show us a road that resembles a goat path, and we start to wonder aloud in fragmented sentences what it might be…
It starts with a casual observation. You hardly even noticed when it happened, but something shifted in your mind. A bit later the same observation is made again, this time in a slightly different context. It happens again and again and the observations layer atop one another like sheets of tracing paper that, when flattened…
As we grow older, humility takes it’s chilling hold. The little nagging questions like, “Will this next activity kill me?” start to weigh heavier on our minds. It’s not that these questions weren’t asked when we gripped our youth like a toddler grips his penis; it’s just that they didn’t mean as much to us…
We recently trod into territory we simultaneously avoid and willingly dive headlong into: doping and the intrinsic hypocrisy therein. While on the subject I figured the timing could never be worse to talk about one of my favorite riders: Tricky Dickie, the ponciest lad in the peloton. On the bike, he was a simple man; there was never…