What motivates a Velominatus?  It seems a simple question, but the answer is complicated and gets into various issues that are neither interesting nor compelling.

For me, cycling has been a life-long obsession.  I enjoy any kind of riding.  I enjoy technical, single-track mountain biking, I enjoy riding on dirt roads or wide trails.  I enjoy commuting by bike, and I enjoy riding my bike to the local markets. I love riding an old clunker bike around a city like Amsterdam.  But my heart has always belonged to road cycling.

When I was a kid, my dream was to start a frame-building business.  In my free time, I sketched bicycles – anything from standard road bikes to exotic time trial machines.  I even designed logos for my imagined company, humbly named Strack Cycles.  When not designing frames, the next priority was to dream up the names and kits for the teams Strack Cycles would invariably sponsor.

When time allowed during the Summer months, I would go for multiple training rides per day, some on the road, and some off. Officially a Nordic ski racer, I realized that I had become a cyclist when the shortening of the days as Fall approached was met with dread that the cycling season was coming to a close rather than excitement for the imminent ski season.

Long hours on the road bike were filled with fantasies of being in day-long solo breakaways at the Tour de France; motivation to climb aboard my bike in the rain was eased by imagining I was racing in a Belgian Spring classic.

Such are the motivations of this particular Velominatus.

Then came Velominati.  We've carried on long conversations.  We've established our own vernacular. Most of us are probably on some psychiatric “People of Interest” list.  And, we have our own kit. In addition to bearing the Velominati colors and logos, the kit bears various details that only those of us in the know will appreciate:  the “Obey the Rules” emblem appears in various places, and the right leg of the bibs bear three Rules, referred to only by number and oriented such that they are legible for the wearer.  We modestly believe it to be the most awesomest kit on the planet, ever.

A non-nondescript box greeted me upon my arrival home from work yesterday.  The box bore a simple, handwritten note: “Velominati – You Must Obey”, signalling the arrival of the first order of the Velominati Kit (which leads me to believe the folks at Castelli subscribe to Rules Holism). My hands were shaking as I opened the box and gazed in at the oblique realization of a lifelong dream.

With that, I present the Velominati kit, made by Castelli and designed by KRX-10. We'll be placing more orders throughout the year, so just drop us a line if you'd like to put the whole Rule #17 issue to bed and fly the Velominati colors.

UPDATE: I have updated the set of photos in the post to more accurately reflect the colors of the actual kit.  The kit is black, and in no way brownish or purple, as some of the photos appear to be.

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