Five is an important number. Assuming nothing has gone amuck in our development or our usage of cutlery, we each boast five digits on both our hands and both our feet. Most of us have five senses. Most miraculously, any number multiplied by five and then divided by five gives you the same number you started with and yields no remainder.
The Babalonians considered the Pentagram to refer to the five directions (forward, backward, left, right, and up – they had no appetite for down, apparently) and these represented their five known planets. For the Greeks, or more specifically the Pythagoreans, it represented mathematical perfection and – when turned upside down with two legs pointing up, it represented the womb wherein the cosmos were born. Ancient Chinese teachings (Wu Xing) tell of the five basic elements: water, tree (wood), fire, earth, and metal. The Hebrew Torah refers to five books: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. Christianity uses the pentagram to identify the five senses; the Old Testament considers five to be the number of divine perfection.
Five is all over the place in Hinduism; the figure of Anjaneya has five faces, the great Yogi Sri Vinayaka transcended the five senses. The god Vishnu is identified by the five-pointed star and has five aspects of himself. There are five qualities of Supreme Being: truth (satyam), knowledge (jnanam), infinity (anantam), bliss (anandam) and purity (amalatvam). There are five means to know, do, and experience. There are five sacred fires, types of devotion, types of worship. The calendar is based on five parts. They have five times as many holidays as we do.
Then we have the occult, satanism, and just about every made-up, imagined, or real secret society. We don’t do much “Math” or “Research” around these parts, but five also plays an important part in the golden ratio, which – I’m given to understand – is what makes stuff stop sucking.
All these groups missed the fundamental importance of five; the Velominati is perhaps the first community to discover its true secret. It was the Romans who cobbled together the most diabolical numbering system know to humanity, but they stumbled upon a hidden secret when they chose to represent the sacred number 5 as a V. The V is what surrounds us, penetrates us, and binds us together. The V is the everywhere around us, waiting for the initiated to absorb it, and convert it into force for strength, change, personal development, and tearing the legs off our riding mates.
The V is everywhere. In road signs, in the clouds, in paintings, in the spreading of water from our wheels as we ride in Rule #9 conditions. It is in our quads and our calves. It is in the angles of our frames. We hereby open the second Velominati photo contest: post your photo of the V revealing itself in daily life. Photos will be judged for content as well as composition. The winner will be awarded an as-yet unreleased cotton Velominati cycling cap. Submit your photos by November 1 in order to be considered. The photos have to be your own, or belong to a person who has given you permission to use the photo for this purpose.
Update:
Please don’t name your photo “The V” as it will bugger up the code until I get a chance to fix that bug. Also, don’t believe your preview if you are copy-pasting photos on iPads or elsewhere; it will not work after you push “submit post”.
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View Comments
@Marko
Very cool. You sure look like you have your shit together. I'm always in awe of people who can keep composed in moving water. I did about a gazillion OC days on flatwater but only irregular white water days - enough to stay well on the 'anxiety side of flow'. Never got my roll solid. Aussie creeks are usually dry or flooding and full of rocks. The lads I lived with for a while in the 90's used to put in to the local hydro release every day - they tried to educate me but I heard enough of their stories and saw enough of their movies to know I didn't have the right stuff. Maybe one day...
@Marko that's fucking awesome. I've never really tried the canoeing or kayaking thing but I love sailing and swimming in rough open water. That looks like a blast.
@strathlubnaig an old friend from school does that sort of thing for a living, I think it's his way of keeping the excitement in life after leaving the marines. Mental bastard.
@Marko
Just...wow. There is a whole side to your life I admire. When working at MWM - which you know was a hugely important part of my life - I never got into white water kayaking - but I really wanted to dive into white water canoeing. In my mind, I would be in a little boat designed for that shit. Not in the fucking canoe my parents and I took on Gull Lake. Fuck me, dude, that is an awesome shot, and the ultimate of looking Casually Deliberate in a high-stress situation. Top marks.
@strathlubnaig
You like as much a twat super-gluing a giant metal dildo as you do riding a bike. Just as an FYI.
@hyppy
Me too. For cereal. Red Kite, Rule #5, and pray for daylight!
@GogglesPizano
I forget which Tumblr it is, but I follow one focussed on women's cycling which dishes out equal measure of women laying down massive loads of The V and them looking V notches beyond gorgeous. To be fair, they don't even need to unzip that shit to Look Fantastic. A fit woman in their cycling kit, not doping, and riding a bike for the love of it is more than enough to convince me that if there is a future in Cycling, its in the women's side of things.
@frank
I agree
Doesn't count as an entry (I didn't take it, I don't have permission and not everyday life) but when a an image has been waiting for a topic....
This my friends is an "Uber V". An upgraded version of C'dales Super V.