As children, none of us were given an allowance. Instead, we were taught from a young age that if we wanted to buy something, we had to earn the money in order to do so. To facilitate the model, and possibly to avoid child-labor law infringement, we were paid to do chores around the house in exchange for a cash payment directly proportional but not necessarily related to the amount of time it took us to execute the task. The hourly wage, at it turned out, was at the discretion of the one doing the overseeing and commissioning of the task at hand.
In my view, it worked out very well for us. Coming from a family that was neither wealthy nor poor, it taught us a number of important lessons about life, money, and the important ways the two are separated. It’s one of the fundamental things I’m very glad about regarding my upbringing.
My grandmother, by choice or otherwise, was in on this scheme of leveraging our desire to earn money as a means to achieve her end of having her dog tended to regularly. As grandmothers are wont to do, however, she found ways to be knowingly complicit in circumventing the intended lesson by overpaying us for our labor; she was perhaps too fond of her dog, and I was perhaps too willing to walk it repeatedly and unnecessarily in order to earn my wage.
I don’t remember how old I was, but I was still riding my old Raleigh made of Reynolds 531 tubing and clad in a Weinmann grouppo which I now wish I’d kept; I could have been no more than 10 years old. Nevertheless, I had already made the determination, by studying the pros in the races I watched on scratchy old VHS cassettes, that if I was going to amount to any kind of cyclist, I would require proper cycling kit.
I needed cycling shorts and I needed a cycling jersey; t-shirts and an old pair of lederhosen simply wouldn’t fit the bill. And cycling shorts and cycling jerseys would cost serious money. So off I was, walking my grandmother’s dog fourteen times a day – collecting payment every time – and before very long, I had saved up the money I needed.
I don’t remember the name of the shop, but I do remember on which rack and in which corner of the store it hung. It resembled Laurent Fignon’s System U kit, though I felt a tinge of guilt that it wasn’t as fluorescent as LeMond’s ADR strip. It was nothing compared, however, to the unexpressed guilt I’d felt all year at secretly having hoped Fignon would win the Tour against my countryman.
Riding my trusty Raleigh, I spent the summer of 1989 riding with my left hand on the tops of my handlebars and my right hand on the hoods. I’d spotted a photo in Winning Magazine wherein Laurent Fignon was leading the Giro d’Italia riding in just this position; I summarily emulated him in this regard.
The fact that this was just a moment captured in time as Fignon changed hand position was lost on me; the fact held neither relevance nor value to my view of the world. Fignon rode like this, and so would I. This single photo fueled my desire to ride a bicycle for an entire summer. Up and down the streets I went, imagining myself making history as I left both Fignon and LeMond in my dust and I took off up the road – one hand on the tops, one on the hoods – with Phil Liggett’s voice in my ears as he commended the ferocity of my attacks.
I found daily motivation in riding like Fignon. In rain, in shine; I rode the way the photo I saw showed him riding. Every time I climbed aboard my bike, I wanted to be a better cyclist; I wanted to be more like Fignon. I was nevertheless bound to eventually discover that Fignon didn’t really ride like that; it had been a trick of the camera. By the time I discovered the truth of that photo, I had ridden like that for so long that it felt lop-sided to go back to riding sensibly, with both hands level.
I felt awkward then, riding with both hands in the drops, as I chased my sister down a mountain during a family vacation in New York State. She was in front on her Raleigh with pink handlebars, and I was frantic at the notion that she was ahead of me. There was no alternative but to beat her through the series of sharp corners coming up ahead on the road we had dubbed “Alpe d’Huez” for its steepness and numerous twists and turns.
There was, of course, a very real alternative to beating her through those corners.
As I laid in the emergency room with the doctor scrubbing furiously at my wounds, he posed several theories that might explain the flawed decision tree that placed me in his care. The prominent thought suffocating my mind was that my cherished kit had been torn apart firstly by the crash and secondly by the doctor – and that neither seemed to hold the garments in the same esteem I did. It was destroyed; a summer of over-paid dog-walking lost.
As a matter of comparison, this commercial, aired during this year’s Tour de France, is exactly how I rode as a kid. In fact, I still do today.
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"The radiance ... is the scholastic quidditas, the whatness of a thing. This supreme quality is felt by the artist when the esthetic image is first conceived in his imagination. ??? I love it!
I messed up the transfer of text after "...those moments can change our lives."
@Jamie
Wow, that is fucking awesome! Very cool story & wonderful that you happened to meet such a person who turned you onto the good stuff, in a good way! Nice.
@frank Can you chop out the last bit of jumbled text after "lives." ?
I'm always really impressed and blown away by how long many of you have been cyclists and Followers and enthusiasts. It's awesome.
I hope I can stick with it as long as some of you have, and reap the rewards for so many years...
Oli - GREAT photos. I've really liked my visits to NZed but never done any cycling there. Seeing your photos has me wondering what life was like on a bike in the early 1980s in your part of the world. Very cool!
My first kit was my Central Ontario Racing Cycle Club kit. It was white, turquoise and maroon. That's me inhaling wasps on the left beside Super TT specialist Dave S. Strange combo but sure stood out. I missed the whole wool shorts period, but had proper chamois that always got a bit stiff after washing. I would always have to flex it about to soften it up prior to putting it them on to avoid the sensation of sitting on bent cardboard.
thanks for bringing back some fond memories... I too remember my first kit (black shorts and a La Vie Claire) jersey...
My first jersey was a LeCoqSportif wool in blue with a white band around the chest. I've hung onto it and 1 each of most of my old team jerseys. Also kept my first Sidi's. Leather sole, cleat plate nailed on. Size 36 I think. Also the Hinault autographed edition Turbo saddle that shaped me as much as I shaped it as a junior. My kid wore an old hairnet around the house a little and decided his own helmet is way more comfortable than dads' old one. He'll never have to wear a V1 Pro! That Specialized commercial was the best part of the Tour this year for me. I grew up on the same roads where the footage of the kid was filmed. Great post Frank, thanks for stirring up more memories.
@frank
Love that photo. Bartoli knows that Il Grillo is his bitch. What he doesn't know is that Il Grillo will go on to eclipse him.
I loved the Briko stingers - red mirrored frames. I would argue that they looked even more awesome on cross country skiers/biathletes than on the bike. Mine were superseded by some Mapei edition Rudy Project Tayos for when I was pretending to be Andrea Tafi winning Roubaix in the Italian national champions jersey after moving to the UK in 1999. They are still in the shed - they now get used as safety glasses.
My first jersey was from ZG Mobili, as modelled here http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://www.dewielersite.net/db2/wielersite/beeldbank2011/1307130595AndreaFerrigato.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.cyclingarchives.com/beeldfiche.php%3Fbeeldid%3D98003&usg=__ZxPk1_JKVWcvZY4HGBssjhBfBFg=&h=582&w=450&sz=170&hl=en&start=14&zoom=1&tbnid=afw_MXPBXjd6OM:&tbnh=134&tbnw=104&ei=bDEiUNumC4jXsgbWxoDoBw&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dandrea%2Bferrigato%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DX%26rls%3Dcom.microsoft:en-US%26tbm%3Disch&itbs=1 by Andrea Ferrigato. I wore this mountain biking. With a pair of neoprene, Rip Curl board shorts (it was Australia). And a pair of purple Nike Air huaraches (I think). And an enormous red Bell helmet. I still remember the first time I went out to Helensburgh for a weekend ride with the crew who rode out there and being informed - politely - that perhaps I should get some proper tyres, the semi slicks that had come on my Avanti Barracuda not really being up to the job. It was all downhill (figuratively) from there. Ritchey Z Max, SPDs, then the inevitable frame and shock upgrade, the wheel upgrade - 18 years later and I have more bikes than limbs. And I still don't ride as much as I'd like.
@Nof Landrien
On looking at the picture more I couldn't help but notice that Bartoli is wearing what I could only describe as an "extemporised gilet" fabricated by ripping the sleeves off a jersey. Is this pro? Is there a rule to cover this? Did Sansone the dog rip it off perhaps?