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,…
Category: Etiquette
It’s funny how malleable our definition of “local” becomes when emotion gets involved. Seattle is a fiercely independent town where “local” is meant to imply your immediate neighborhood and we struggle to consider people who inhabit a community less than a kilometer away to be little less than an étranger. On the other hand, I have yet to meet a cyclist in…
Performance-enhancing methods. This is a term we hear so often in cycling; it refers to the practice of using products or processes that elevate your performance beyond what you could naturally do. It is a terribly complicated matter for the fans, and I can only speculate as to how complicated it is for the professionals…
There are those who are challenged to find the value of aesthetics in a sport which requires eating 11T cogs buttered with chain oil for breakfast and drinking kegs of Rule #5 at dinner. Ye of the Congoscenti, I present you with the following photos of some of the quintessential hardmen of our sport who…
Of all people, a Velominatus knows that our sport is a civilized one; it is steeped in tradition and etiquette and rife with unwritten rules. High on the list of unwritten rules are those that outline acceptable behavior when various hardships befall the leader of a Grand Tour. One of the reasons such rules exist is…
I thought I was the only one. It was a truth I admitted to myself only in the darkest hours of the night, when you lie awake and are faced by those haunting thoughts that are otherwise whisked away before they float to the surface. But now, I can say it: I am afraid of crashing. Especially…
As enthusiasm for The Rules has been growing, we’ve been having a lot of fun watching the conversation take shape and go in directions we didn’t necessarily expect it to. You have the Geof’s and the Jarvis’s who defend them honorably and even compare cycling to a religion. Fittingly, you then also have the Opus…
If you've been paying close attention to my posts on other Keeper articles lately perhaps you've noticed my stable has been in a state of flux. It all started when Frank texted me a pic of a pair of used demo 404's at his LBS for sale. Well no, that's not true. It really started 10…
Getting each new copy of Rouleur is almost a religious experience. It is printed on heavy paper, and has a particular smell about it; the pages are printed with a mat finish, so the heavy, rough pages feel a certain way in your hands as you turn them. There is no other periodical that I'm…
What’s going on in Cadel’s head? Maybe the intense heat of Spain has melted his synapses, which were already near breaking point, or perhaps it’s just the realisation that he is never going to win a Grand Tour of any kind, not even the third-tier race he’s currently gracing with his comedic ramblings. His latest routine…
I am a nod snob. The fact is, I’m a bit of a cycling snob all-around. I am not a “biker” and I do not “like to bike”. I am a cyclist and I like to ride. What’s more, as I outlined before, there are very loosely defined parameters under which I will bestow a…
I love every kind of bike, from the tricked-out fixies all over Seattle (hello – hilly-ass town! Unless your fixie is a 39-27, you are not making a sensible choice!), to the awesome Dutch Bikes, to the phenomenal racers around town, I love them all. I am, however, a bitch when it comes to bike…