Respect is a cornerstone of La Vie Velominatus.
I’m struggling with how to open this conversation without sounding like what I’m assuming my grandparents did when I was growing up. Maybe it’s because I’m just now clawing my way into some of the wisdom they had, or maybe I’m just less of an idiot than I was when they were moving their lips and I wasn’t listening. (Spoiler alert: everyone is less of an idiot then I was when I was a kid. No need to wait for the memoir.)
Kids these days have no respect.
There. I said it. Let me add some stage directions to this, for clarity.
Stage left, everyone under the age of 25: [heads down, tapping at their phones] Text me. I don’t do “speaking”. [All look up, sigh in chorus, and look back at their phones. Some of the cast members roll their eyes.]
Center stage, anyone between 25 and 37: Yeah, but they’ll learn. Give them a chance to express their ideas on this world and we’ll be happy for their challenging perspective. I embrace their view as it will help us grow both as individuals and a society. Also, Mom and Dad, please text me.
Stage right, everyone else: Bugger off, you disrespectful cretins.
The past informs the future; wisdom is learned through experience and experience is earned through the errors of our actions. That sounds a lot like a rationalization for screwing up all the time and maybe that’s true, but that doesn’t mean the premise is flawed; we must look behind us to understand where we are going. By respecting our past, we may build a better future.
In a world where the young have no respect for the wisdom of age and the old have no appreciation for the genius of youth, La Vie Velominatus cuts through the din and grounds us. Cycling is deeply rooted in the past while fiercely embracing the future. The Cyclist lives happily on both sides of the coin; cherishing our steel frames and hand-made tubular tires while embracing 10 and 11 speed drive-trains and featherweight carbon frames and deep-section wheels.
Keepers Tour 2012 was the first time I’d been to the cobbles of Northern Europe. When we arrived at the mouth of the Arenberg Forest, we were compelled to climb off and pay our respects to this, the most sacred of roads in our sport. By modern measure, this is the worst road imaginable: mossy cobbles roughly strewn across a narrow lane; uneven and sometimes as far as two or three centimeters apart. This is a road so rough it is difficult to walk down. To a Cyclist, it represents the most beautiful road on Earth. This is a road that lets us touch history.
A puzzle is meant to be solved; a mystery is not. The past is a puzzle and the future a mystery. Beauty is found in the space where the past and future live as one. Cycling is beauty.
Vive la Vie Velominatus.
I know as well as any of you that I've been checked out lately, kind…
Peter Sagan has undergone quite the transformation over the years; starting as a brash and…
The Women's road race has to be my favorite one-day road race after Paris-Roubaix and…
Holy fuckballs. I've never been this late ever on a VSP. I mean, I've missed…
This week we are currently in is the most boring week of the year. After…
I have memories of my life before Cycling, but as the years wear slowly on…
View Comments
this sport needs more of the stage left and center crowd.
@SamFromTex
If these razors get any more high tech n turbo we'll be riding them to work
@SamFromTex
@PeakinTwoYears couldn't agree more. I liken it to making espresso. I used to have a beautiful little Francis X1 and a burr grinder. Bought my beans from a cool place that roast every Friday morning and that hadn't had a refit since 1965. It took me 8 or 9 minutes each morning to make an espresso. It wasn't perfect every day; sometimes I over tamped, sometimes under, but when I got it right it was like angels dancing on my tongue. Then I had kids and 8 or 9 minutes in the morning felt like a lifetime. I sold out... Bought a Nespresso machine, discovered the Dharkan espresso pod which is rated 11, just like the amp in Spinal Tap! My machine makes wonderful espresso every time, but...it is soulless. I don't love it like I truly loved my X1. We find pleasure in life by things not being easy, "if it's easy it ain't worth having" just like in cycling. I love a fast descent, but shit as I am at climbing, it's where I find pleasure. The pleasure is in the difficulty and the challenge. The Nespresso is going on ebay!!
@gilly
Would want this in my future too.
Friends.
I hope you're roasting your own fucking coffee.
Seriously. No bullshit. It makes more aesthetic and economic sense than using a safety razor. Way more.
@PeakInTwoYears
I've had quite a bit of wine and whisky (note no E) tonight but I'm sure I fail to work out how roasting your own coffee makes more sense that using a safety razor.
@gilly
There's a great quote in It Might Get Loud by Jack White; he says something to the effect that technology makes life easier, but it doesn't make someone a more creative person. I love that sentiment; the implication that a fight makes you want something more and when you want something more you try harder. He then goes on to talk about the eighties and engineers spending weeks getting the perfect gate on a snare drum mic instead of musicians focussing on playing music.
Then you figure into that the engineers talking about recording Stevie Ray Vaughan; they stopped trying to have the band play in separate rooms and overdubbing and all that to get a cleaner recording; the simple fact was that whenever Stevie played with headphones, he'd get into the music and start wandering around the room as he played and trip over the cables. It was worth having some bleed just to have the band play from the heart and finish without someone falling over.
@unversio
She is a beauty. Had her but I let her go...