Strack to Lead New V-Studies Initiative at McMaster University
La Vie Velominatus is set to become the subject of intense scholarly analysis next week, as Frank Strack will receive an honorary PhV from McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario (chapeau to @ten B for the PhV). It’s been a heady week for the cycling types around these parts; Strack will close out festivities that included the Bike Snob and Mario Cipollini. Too fat and slow to overlap with and give Super Mario the reach around, Strack will settle for regaling an audience on the Rules, Lexicon, and the finer details of la Vie Velominatus as the second speaker in the McMaster Rolling Seminar: La Vie Vélo.
On Thursday, October 4, he will sit down with Herr Professor Doktor Steampunk for a conversational interview in front of an enthralled public audience in the lofty and musty confines of McMaster University’s University Club (bow ties & elbow patches are a part of the dress code and polysyllabic pedantry is the language of choice””word is Strack will be sporting an orange ascot). This is a big moment for the Velominati community; as you all know, recognition from within the ivory tower (in all its cloistered wisdom) is the quintessential symbol of success in some cultures. Of course, now that the Velominati are under the intellectual microscope, they will be scrutinized, deconstructed, and proven to be nothing more than some post-modern, fictitious expression of postcolonial angst that doesn’t really exist. Tant pis.
In addition, Strack will also spend an evening at Café Domestique to imbibe fine beers and share his wisdom with the locals in what should be a rip-roaring good time. Come one; come all. This is, in effect, an intellectual Cogal of the mind. Sort of. Not really. But it should be great.
The details:
Seminar Session (open to the public)
When: Thursday, October 4 @ 2:30pm
Where: University Club’s West Room, McMaster University
Soirée @ Café Domestique (Millers Lane, Dundas)
When: Thursday, October 4 @ 8pm
Both events are free and open to the public, and everyone is encouraged to attend. The series is sponsored by the Petro-Canada Young Innovator Award. Further inquiries can be sent to egan(at)mcmaster(dot)ca.
I really wish I were independently wealthy so I could jet around to all the Velominati stuff. I hate being out in no-mans land. The only cool thing about living in Idaho is that I went for a 100k ride Saturday morning and only go passed by about ten cars.
PhV? Awesome!! Congrats Frank. Welcome to Canada, eh? Look forward to meeting you Thursday.
@Steampunk
Cipo and earnest North American academics, what a combo.
@Steampunk
I’m a bit relieved to hear that Cipo news. We were getting uncomfortably close to relevance and greatness.
@The Pressure
See? At least one person is showing up. And if @The Pressure manages to stay awake, that’ll be one more than most of my lectures.
Frank, for someone so fastidious about appearance, does the text on the invite/flyer not grate on your senses? I’m certainly not the one to do it, but someone should explain the finer points of typography. Hyphenation & widows everywhere.
Oh, please!
@Jamin
No husbands were killed in the making of the flyer. I was adamant on that point.
@Steampunk
whew,okay, what little respect I had for you still stands. Was worried that you had shelled out a big chunk of your grant money to fly him over.
@Buck Rogers
But somehow flying Frank across the continent means I’m still aces in your books?
Second event poster (no hyphens or widows were hurt in the making of said poster). Advertising the café event. Krys @ Café Domestique assures me that there will be an abundance of frites in the house. And some of the most excellent Cheval Blanc’s Belgian offerings on tap.
@Steampunk Can’t wait! And if Frank loses his voice you can fill in with 5 minutes of Canadian history or tales of the BFG’s!
@Steampunk Correction: You have all three. Your ride:impeccable taste. Your bowtie: diffinitely imaginative!!
Holy fucking hockeystick this is awesome.
Best post and subsequent discussion thread in ages. Suggested re-titles of the lecture include:
– Strack On Liberty, by V
– Rule V: A new social contract
– The V of Nations
– The V Manifesto
@James Well played. To which I add:
The V-public
Principia V-matica
Velosophical Investigations
The Open Road and its Enemies
@Steampunk
If only there were a little more time, I’m sure there would have been money in the budget to fly in carefully selected members of the forum. For instance, @Marcus & @minion, although they’ve been far too busy ignoring one another lately.
You’re all forgetting On the Origin of The V by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Grand Tours in the Struggle for the Vie Velominatus
shit!!!!! where my passport?!
3 hours and 2 missed rides later, i find my passport. i have a nasty habit of hiding important shit, apparently too well. snowboard season sees me across the canadian border so i hid it under an insole of my burtons. yes, im that dumb.
@Steampunk
Well, you know, one has to have some standards..
With @Frank, @roger, & Krys Hines of Café Domestique prepping The Rules for screen consumption for tomorrow eve. Ample beer has been consumed.
@Steampunk
Beers in the bidon on stage tomorrow. Do it.
Steamy, an thinking of you for today and so sorry that Rule #5 has to be applied to life, which means I can not make it up for the scintillating, scatological, skizophrenic and skevilly brilliant “Frahnk”talk. If you can not get video at least an audio that the minions here could listen to as they fall asleep?
What I really feel I am missing is time at Cafe Domestique, (I try to get my local to step up to this level of conjoined bike+esspresso but they just don’t get it) and the hang out time with you all – have a great time and keep the Fronkster on a tight leash… Oh ya good luck on that!
Congrats to Frank on receiving a PhV.
@Steampunk, happy to hear the project is working out. Do you have a guess on how long the café event will go? I can’t make the seminar at McMaster this afternoon, but am entertaining the possibility and debating the feasibility of a train to Aldershot, to be followed by judicious application of night-time Rule #5 on the road to Café Domestique
That said, If I ride down York Road at 8:30PM, what are the odds of getting pasted by a large vehicle piloted by someone not paying attention and desperate to get home?
There’s a bike lane on York Road.
Excellent. Now should I show up to the cafe in spandex or tweed? I can’t really make up my mind, save that I don’t have any classy tweed cycling gear or a fendered three speed running 26×1 3/8.
Proper report to follow, but the littlest Steampunk misses “Thingy.” Also, too: @roger broke Rule #87 for a noontime ride””I had to wake him at 12:30…
@Steampunk What happened?? Did Frank make it through Customs? Did he eat poutine? Need details!
@The Pressure
It’s the wonder of the internet: you contact a perfect stranger over e-mail, invite them to submit their personal details, and then you fleece them. Attentive community members might have noticed a familiar-looking R3 for sale on ebay last week (the family will eat well this Thanksgiving). I think Frank knew something was up after I took him down to the café after hours, didn’t turn on the lights (“couldn’t find the switch”), and then disrobed. But he took it like a trooper.
Rides went well. Heavy, damp mist on Wednesday morning meant we revised our loop a bit””put in ~90k with some of the local more interesting hills, even though we could see little more than the tarmac in front of us. Group of six diminished to four. Back to Café Domestique for lunch and then a quick drive up the 2003 UCI World Championship Road Race hill and pub drink. Thursday’s ride included community members @Mikel_Pearce and @roger (the former drove down from Toronto; the latter up from Boston). Beautiful sunshine, which let me show off some of my favourite local roads.
Lunch on campus and then the talk, which went very well. I’ll follow up with the computing lab tech who did the filming and get an eta on when the talk might be posted. Frank hit the perfect balance of interesting, clever, witty, dynamic, charismatic. Good conversation flowed from it. Then to the café for a good evening with a pretty full house, Belgian-style frites were on offer, beer was consumed. Frank and I talked briefly, but it was more of a social occasion, with an impressive array of strong cyclists, many of whom (including a former two-time Olympian) came from quite some distance. In keeping with most internet scams, I left Frank there. I’m also a bit nervous; when I turned down a beer from the owner, his retort was to tell me: “Rule 5.” This could get expensive.
Frank left early the next morning. I assume no news means he got home in one piece. @roger stuck around another day, and was late starting a group ride at midday on Friday. But, thanks to Frank, Dundas and McMaster University will never be the same. The littlest Steampunk just came to look over my shoulder, saw a pic of JENS in one of the articles listed at the bottom of these pages and asked: “hey! Is that Thingy?” Um, no. Most certainly not. But she does miss him…
Thanks again, Frank, for coming. In all seriousness, Frank was excellent and very much in keeping with what we want to do with the series. Good buzz and response and interest in all things Velominati, which is also likely due at least a bit to the good people who regularly frequent these pages, too.
Update on V-Studies. Frank’s YouTube visit to McMaster is available for public consumption:
@Steampunk
What the hell is that “thing” protruding into the picture bottom right? Surely not rule compliant? Frank is looking very casually deliberate by the way. Any guesses/suggestions as to what he may be describing? The minimum height one’s addle should be from the ground?
Ontario version of Sasquatch!
Hmm. Not sure why only half the screen showed up. Just me? Is it because Velominati’s page is working in imperial measurements (which would be a rule violation)? Full link here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFKnHavJGHg
@Steampunk Watching the video on my TV, top marks on quality. I am really enjoying it.
@Steampunk
I think the embed function was trying to protect you from being connected to those god awful things you’re using as footwear…
@Steampunk
Yeah, me too. This is a lot of fun to watch. How many in attendance?
I do think that folks are misattributing the appearance of your feet to banned footwear, whereas my training tells me this is an acute case of leprosy.
There are pills for that.
@Steampunk
Steamy. I’m still kicking myself for missing Frank’s visit. But come on! Yeti shoes? Although your attempts at looking casually deliberate are admirable, the world already thinks we are running around wearing loin cloth and chucking spears. (By the way Oli, it’s beaver season!).Now you have them thinking we have webbed feet! For shame,eh?
@RedRanger
Credit to Colin @ the Humanities Computing and Media Lab. He’s a real perfectionist with audio and visual. He spent a lot of time complaining about the sound and picture available to him (YouTube made a mess of the quality work he did).
@xyxa
Counting Frank and me, at least three. I may have leprosy, but you seem to have lost an X.
@Mikael Liddy & @The Pressure:
Don’t be hating. Most comfortable footwear ever. Function, function, function. Also, it irked Frank no end.
@Steampunk
It’s what happens when you get older. Wait until you’re Steampun.
Good stuff. It made me nod my head in appreciation of this place.
I say nothing about the question of profoundly disturbing footwear. (This is the rhetorical trope known as “preterition,” a word that also refers to an unlucky soul’s predestination to eternal damnation.)
@Steampunk
Wearing nothing but boxers is comfortable, but as a gentleman I do it as one should wear those shoes: privately when no one is looking.
@xyxax
Better a bad pun than a bad joke?
@G’rilla
You don’t have tenure, do you?
@Steampunk Looking forward to viewing this over the holidays.
@Steampunk
Well played.
@Nate
Kidding aside, I thought Frank was terrific. Some good stuff here…
@Steampunk I don’t doubt it. I’ll be looking out for comic deprecation too, however.
@Steampunk @frank
Really nice job guys. Was a great way to pass an hour and half at work. Summed up a lot of why I come here.
I was just promoting some of the events to come in the series next semester (Rising from the Ashes in January, Michael Barry in March, etc.) when I got this tweet from a twitterer who calls himself a triathlete:
It took all my professionalism not to blast back: “Them’s strong words coming from a triathlete.”
@Steampunk
Ugh. Invite him for a ride and show him what’s what.