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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@G'phant With the proviso that if it is a club ride or you are racing then you wear the appropriate kit.
Nothing fucks up the beauty of a smoothly rotating pace-line like one or two people in kit that doesn't match. Perhaps there should be an amendment to rule 17
Rule #17 // Team kit is for members of the team.
Wearing Pro team kit is also questionable if you're not paid to wear it. If you must fly the colors of Pro teams, all garments should match perfectly, i.e no Mapei jersey with Kelme shorts and Telekom socks.
If you are riding with or racing for your club, only club kit should be worn. As much care should be given to ensuring one is looking pro as when wearing V-Kit
@Chris
The builders of the training circuit had only seen pictures of a velodrome in a 1938 copy of Boy's Own.
The chief architect's only encounter with Belgian cycling had been during the Great War - mostly at night.
The picture is also noteworthy as a young Drew Peacock (who was later to grow a beard, NHS specs and feature in tricycle sidecar racing with his mother in the early 1970's) pictured on the left sporting his famous "Number 19" (he had an obsession with prime numbers and 19 was the highest then known in Rutland) had just invented the aero technique of tucking his trousers in to his socks.
This technique was controversial in British Cycling circles although few who saw it can forget the sight of the British Team's neatly tucked flannel trousers on the boards in Tokyo. From there it was only a short conceptual walk to Chris Boardman and Graeme O'Bree's efforts of the 80' and 90's.
@Chris
Like I said - If they don't look pro, then you shouldn't go.
Can I humbly propose this as a Rule? Or is it merely an observation?
@the Engine
You may well have stumbled upon the reason behind length of Wiggo's stockings, they're a either a throw back from days when you needed the length to secure your trousers or they herald a new development in aerotweed skins suits being worked by Brailsford's secret squirrel department to ensure continued domination over the Aussies.
@Chris
You can also see Peacock's prototype wool skinsuit to best advantage in this shot. You can tell its a prototype as his mother had not knitted either his team name or sponsor logo in to it.
Wiggo would likely cut half the sleeves off his.
I can remember my first road bike - bought with a premium bond win of 50 quid. A Rydal Sportsman, Weinmann centre pulls and 5 speed (suntour I think). That bike lasted me an eternity, and even was used on dirt when friends got into BMX... But more significantly, I do remember my first pair of Knicks, I tried them on in the local halfords, and decided to ride home in them, I remember getting on the bike and just thinking oh my god, why have I never worn these before - I felt 6" taller and so pro.
Great article brings back so many good memories, and it's all starting again, my 8 year old informed me he wanted a road bike for his birthday, not a BMX, not a mountain bike, "a proper road bike", and last week requested a "proper helmet like yours, not a kid's one". So proud.
I think that's a great commercial too. Although, honestly, the first couple of times I saw it I was pretty preoccupied in searching to see if the V-Flag made an appearance. Alas, no such luck!
@ten B
to all: this is golden, exactly right too!
When i had my last crash, I remember trying to explain, with my road rash all up my ass-end to the back of my head with a descent laceration, just how as a 'bike rider' this occurs...and being medical, I agree the ER docs just don't get it.
@roger
And it looks like its a mixed event. Light-years ahead of the current circuit.
from my point of view, my first kit was not so good. My taste has taken some time to come of age. My first was a 'Post' Assos jersey and shorts. It was good of course, but the sad part was I really didn't appreciate who Assos was, and it was simply a kit that was on sale, so i bought it being dirt poor and in college.
Now I know. and I never wear shorts, its bibs only.
And as for the kit, it has to be a meaningful kit to me, not on sale or just a 'whatever' kit
that being said, my next kit is 'Velomanti', saving my do-ra-me up for that baby
may even go bat-shit-crazy and sign in for a race or two under team 'Velomantus' or the 'keepers of the cog' team