The rain is coming down in sheets, blowing sideways out from the coast. I hear its intensity more than I feel it; the drops reverberate through my helmet as they lash down. The temperature is just cold enough to add a sting to the rain, like a thousand needles upon the 15cm of exposed flesh between the…
I dream of painting and then I paint my dream. -Vincent Van Gogh Poor old Vinnie may have been Dutch, mad as a cut snake, riddled with gonorrhea, a romantic in the most insane sense, and a raging alcoholic, but despite these encumbrances he knew a bit about the use of colour. He also spent…
Cyclists need the carrot and the stick. It’s all we understand. Do you want to perform well or not be embarrassed? It’s all the same. Either way one needs to train like a bastard to get there. The good news is training means more time on the bike. The bad news is not much else…
We all know where I stand in the cycling sock department, white and not too tall, any color sock as long as it’s white. If you have diminished calves and need to somehow hide that by wearing too tall socks, that is sad but not a crime. I always thought I was less flexible on…
Not too many people espouse the virtues of Daylight Saving Time, much less chose to write about it every bloody year. But Daylight Saving Time is my favorite day of the year, no question. Better than Christmas, Sinterklaas, or my birthday. Combined. The reason is simple: Daylight Saving is the day of the year when it becomes feasible to…
Northern Europe is supposed to have crap weather in the Spring. By crap, of course, I mean wet. I call bullshit on that, because the last time I saw rain fall in Hell, it was 2002. In 2002, Outdoor Life Network aired an hour-long broadcast on the history of Paris-Roubaix before airing full live coverage of…
As surfing is to skateboarding and vice versa, so is motorcycling to cycling and… yes, ok we’ve mentioned this before, but it bears repeating, or at least elaborating on, as I’ve been experimenting with a crossover technique gleaned from the world of MotoGP racing: the Rossi Leg Wave. Or, as I like to call it for the…
Cross-training: words that strikes fear and boredom into my heart. My cycling library is contaminated with training books I’ve collected over the years. Each one is purchased knowing, yes, this is the one. Each one has a chapter on off-the-bike training. I recently bought Tom Danielson’s cross-training book, read some of it, have not done…
My training hasn’t gone as I’d like it to be going. My days keep getting loaded up with things that pay the bills more than they add to the account at the V-Bank. It’s part of not being a Pro, I suppose, as if to spite my obvious talent which is a sort of talent sleeper cell…
Live music is better than recorded music. It’s a given. Having that connection, where you’re sharing the same space as the artist is a unique experience that can’t be replicated on a plastic disc. To receive the gift from the giver personally is a moment of intimacy not possible if it arrives in a package in the mail….
I have to tell you, there is very little that gets me as aggravated as having Velominati go down. Its like having kids kicking down my sandcastle when I was a kid, watching helplessly as your labor of love collapses right before your eyes. We’ve spent the better part of the last month with the…
Why is it that all the greatest riders look strangely happy when they are suffering the most? Hinault says he still hasn’t regained the feeling in some of his fingers from racing off the front that day in Liege in 1980. He wanted to get someplace warm as quickly as possible, he said. That’s why he went…
This is the kind of guest article I love. It is also the first proper report of the 2014 Heck to reach the Velominati bunker. The V was strong at the 2014 Heck with Velominati flying across the Atlantic from Scotland and old school road trips from the East coast. This is the reason this…
Rule #12 is a luxury of passion; the #1 for good weather and epic rides or races, the Nine Bike for bad weather, the Graveur (which is neither a cross bike nor a road bike), a ‘Cross bike, a mountain bike, a townie, a track bike, a time trial bike. Add in steel, carbon, titanium –…
Ya don’t fuck with a Planckaert. Do so at your own peril. And that’s any shorts length debate settled, too.
Reality is always an unpleasant surprise; no one wants to see ourselves the way others see us, and that’s for good reason, too: depression would be much more widespread problem if each of us realized what a pain in the ass we are. Speaking of unpleasant realities, after recently reviewing videos of myself speaking, I have deduced that I have the face…
It’s not difficult to understand that climate change, global warming, call it what you will, is real. If you’re still in denial about this fact then you are probably one or more of three things: ignorant, complicit or a complete moron. You can cite all the statistics you want, read the reports, or just stick your…
Monday in the USA is the national holiday to remember Martin Luther King. He was a great man but he was no cyclist. Fifty years before MLK, Major Taylor was the Eddy Merckx of cycling. In 1900 cycling was the king of sports. Outdoor tracks and velodromes dotted the country. Taylor was the original Cannibal,…
The Tour of Beijing may no longer be, but Cycling in China continues to grow. DJC Media’s Daniel Carruthers is helping push the development and sent us this report of the recent Gran Fondo in Yunnan. The Fondo fever is slowly taking a grip of the world’s most populous nation, the Red Kingdom of China;…
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…