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.
Posts Tagged → 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.
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
Raymond Poulidor: Bad Luck Badass
Raymond “Bad Luck Badass” Poulidor, 1968 Tour de France.
This post takes a few different views of Raymond Poulidor’s crash on Stage 15 (Font-Romeu-Odeillo-Via to Albi) of the 1968 Tour de France.
Time Trialing & Going Nowhere
I’m not a fan of the time trial (individual or team) unless it’s vintage pre-time trial bike, pre-aero helmet stuff (like the pic above featuring Jacques Anquetil circa 1953) or on dirt (like the Yankee Springs Time Trial here in Michigan each spring). While I have NO plans to ever do a road time trial, I do plan on returning to Yankee this spring. This winter I also plan on continuing my version of the time trial on the trainer; pedaling my ass off, going nowhere for 15 miles trying to best the time before. It’s basically doing lactate threshold training but that sounds all fancy and like I actually know what I’m doing. Since I don’t, and tend to wing things by the seat of my soiled chamois, I just call it doing a time trial.