Long week of trainer boredom, snow day ennui, and some job searching. Time to eat up, drink up, watch some footy and maybe go for a snowshoe or ski or two in betweenst some family plans.
Tag Archives | vintage velo
For The Sake Of Cool
If you can look at this photo from the 1927 Paris-Roubaix and not think it one of the coolest photos you have ever seen, I will politely ask you to never visit my blog again (not really). Thank you.
Lonely For The Road
Another coating of snow, ice and slush overnight has made me a bit lonely to get out on the dirt roads. Sadly, a ride on roads free of ice and snow doesn’t look like it will be happening any time soon, so today I wasted some time THINKING about riding and pulling the velo-trigger on making a tire change.
Rolling Nowhere
Unlike the ladies in the above vintage roller race photo, some days it takes everything I have mentally to complete a session on the trainer, and today was one of those days.
Ciao Bella
Oh mama mia, I could use more traffic furniture like this on my rides.
Side note, for some reason my son (B-Man) has been using “ciao” for “yes” and “no” these days. I corrected him, but he didn’t seem to care. Now I find myself doing it. Maybe I shouldn’t do things like misuse the word “girth” when talking about speed. As in “holy shit, that kick had a lot of girth on it.” Beds of stupidity were made, now I’m lying in it (as per usual).
*By the way, I blame my old friend and current Florida Man Dave for teaching me how to misuse the word girth. Thanks.
A Soiled Moser
Just soiled a legend’s chamois for the hell of it.
Sponsorships & The Isolati
When I was racing around five or six years back, I found myself thinking a lot about sponsorships, teams and that sort of thing. Looking back on it, I am pretty embarrassed about all that. I mean on one hand I worked hard at being a bike racer back then: I watched what I ate (or didn’t eat), I drank less beer, trained harder and rode a ton more. Regardless of that, I was–and still am–very much an amateur bike racer. I did OK-ish in the then burgeoning endurance mountain bike race scene, not winning per se, but not embarrassing myself like I do now either. I guess I thought that having a team or sponsor throw me a discount justified all the work I was doing, or maybe it just made me feel like I was being accepted into some sort of bike racing fraternity. Still, looking back on it I wonder why the hell I cared. Did putting logos on my blog make me faster? No. Did getting tires at cost win me any races? No. Did it make me look like a douche bag for blathering on about products or blogging stupid things about what I got in the mail today from my sponsor rather the talking of the true spirit of riding and racing? Yep.
Crush Pasta II, I Like The Translation
This morning I found the above photo of Gianni Motta downing some pasta while racing, and I have to say it makes the perfect intro photo for today’s Cat 5 Cooking post on Spaghetti alla Puttanesca.
Spaghetti alla Puttanesca translates into “whore’s spaghetti ” or what my favorite voluptuous, turned thin(ish) recreational drug using celebrity chef Nigella Lawson calls “Slut’s Spaghetti.” I’m not real sure why slut is better than whore, but I digress. When a dish translates into a combination of pasta and whorism* I’m all in.
Random Cross Scan
Here’s a random scan from the April, 1990 issue of Winning, Bicycle Racing Illustrated magazine. The subsequent over processing in Photoshop was done by me for no reason other than sheer boredom. The race is the 1990 World Cup, the racer in front is Adri van der Poel (I believe). The racer behind looks like he could be related to Jeremy Powers.
Photo credit: Unknown, as it was not listed in the article.
It’s About Ned
I would say that 99.9% of cyclists (including myself) were pretty pissed and disappointed at Specialized and their corporate wankery towards the Cafe Roubaix shop. I am also relieved to see that things are smoothing out and we don’t have to hear about it anymore. I hadn’t even planned on mentioning the whole small shop vs giant bike brand with apparently nothing else to worry about saga, since just about every single cycling media (and pseudo cycling media) outlet already has. BUT, I wanted to repost (for my sake) a little PS piece that I did for xxcmag.com a while back and figured I better justify giving Specialized any free positive coverage (fingers are still crossed they don’t sue me for mentioning their name here).
Oh well, this isn’t about the bike anyway, it’s about Ned. Dude was a mountain bike legend no matter who he raced for or what he raced on. Who among us hasn’t at least taken a peek inside his book Mountain Bike Like A Champion while loitering around Barnes & Noble, drinking coffee and not buying anything? Hmm… in hindsight I should have really paid more attention to the chapter on high-speed turns.
More on Ned [HERE].
Photo Source: Winning, Bicycling Illustrated, March 1991
Photo: Neal Palumbo
Text by Tracy Seip
PS Design: Jason Mahokey, XXC Magazine