thewashingmachinepost




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and on the seventh...

rotterdam six day

typical journalists, knock them down with one hand then build them up with the other. cycling.tv's website has a rather maze like race calendar where it is nigh on impossible to follow which races they might actually be covering. it wouldn't be the first time that i'd joined a stage race on the third stage because i was unaware the darned thing was on in the first place. occasionally the publicity department will hurl a well aimed e-mail in my direction to announce the availability of televisual joy, but just as often they don't.

however, as mrs washingmachinepost never tires of saying 'you've got a tongue in your head' - biologically true no doubt, but using same at the appropriate time is something else again. inquisitiveness got the better of me this time, so i contacted simon brydon and asked -are cycling.tv showing coverage of the rabobank sponsored, rotterdam six day meeting?

yes.

while mr brydon expects there to be a few technical problems on day one, due to the live feed constraints, we can all log in to our computers on 3rd january with grins from ear to ear. according to the official zesdaagse van rotterdam website most of the racing would appear to start at around 19:15 cet (18:15 gmt - further to the introduction above, i have been unable to find any details of the programming on cycling.tv's website). just time to shovel some food down, wash the dishes and lounge about in a comfy chair with the macbook pro.

start your 2008 year off in incredibly fine style by watching the rotterdam six day on cycling tv.

there may even be commentary this time.

posted on thursday 27 december

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cycling.tv - speechless

sven nys

allow me, for at least a few sentences to be festively uncharitable. cycling.tv today (boxing day) broadcast the cyclocross race from hofstade, decisively won by rabobank's indominitable sven nys ahead of fidea's bart wellens and sven's team mate, lars boom. the joyous part is that the two rabobank chaps are on cross c50s, the less than positive part has more to do with cycling.tv.

now i know i've moaned about this before, but intent as i am on turning moaning into an art form, we'll run it past one more time. the race was billed to start at 14:00 gmt, and indeed, the official race website confirmed same by advising that the elite race commenced at 15:00 central european time (they're one hour ahead of us british people). coverage actually started on the computer screen at 14:35, with only four laps remaining. that's rather annoying: however, it's always possible that cycling.tv are the innocent party here and the broadcasters could have been late with the live feed. no apology was listed and no indication of a delayed start on the ctv website. since they do have a customer services department ostensibly to serve their customers, that's not so good.

however, when the coverage appeared in pixels, there was no commentary, other than the dutch race commentary over the course loudspeakers - no anthony, no brian and no martin. again, nothing to tell us why, and though it was easy to see that nys had the race pretty much under control, it's always a help to be told what's going on etc. official word from ctv was that all the commentators were on holiday.

so is there something going horribly wrong at cycling.tv? this is the first time i've known there to be no commentary at all, though the notion of sending anthony and martin to eurobike and leaving the hapless brian smith to commentate on the world road championships on his own, was a very mysterious strategy, to say the least. the variation in actual start times against advertised start times is becoming more than just an irritation. during the last race, i, along with many other subscribers, received an e-mail two days before the event advising that the race coverage would start at 13:00 - it actually started at 12:00, and i switched on the computer in time to watch nys cross the finish line with arms aloft. re-runs aren't the same when you know who won.

then just bfore christmas, mainstay of the public side of ctv, anthony mccrossan announced his departure from the position of commercial director at the broadband station. in the absence of eurosport's commitment to certain aspects of cycle sport, notably cyclo cross and less than comprehensive coverage of the classics (especially the 'minor' ones) cycling.tv is a lifeline service for cycle fanatics, and it would be really nice if it behaved like one.

that said, the race was exciting and very much worth watching - just a shame that we have to wait another month before the next race. as i have said before, if i really didn't care, i'd keep my pixels to myself.

posted on wednesday 26 december

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whither the humble handbuilt?

chris king wheelset

currently a solid fixture on thewashingmachinepost colnago are a pair of mavic r-sys wheels, with their somewhat revolutionary tubular carbon fibre spokes and unique tension/compression lacing which even a luddite such as myself has to admit provides a degree of comfort that, up till now, i haven't found in a pair of hoops. the mavics have been reviewed elsewhere (and are, in fact, still on long-term test), but the ones that they replaced on the colnago were also factory builds - campagnolo protons. and a feature of the majority of factory built wheels, such as vicenza's, mavic's kysiria, wheelsbikes etc, etc pretty much all have in common their straight lacing, the exception often being the rear drive-side which seems to thrive on being crossed at least once (or twice). and if this had been a year or two ago, i would have been digging a hole for myself by telling you that never would i forsake my mavic/campag handbuilds for something as commercially crass as factory built wheels.

lucky for me, perhaps, that i didn't write this twenty-four months ago, though i do have vague recollections of wittering endlessly about how radial spoking was merely a ploy by the big boys to facilitate ease of mass production. i'm not entirely regretful of such a statement, since the previous restriction on such a spoking pattern was ususally the thickness of the hub flange - if you take even a distant look at the alloy chunks employed on mavic's range of wheels, you would be able to detect how this problem has been circumvented - seemingly by brute force. so where does this leave the good old handbuilt wheel?

with a bit of luck, during the forthcoming early part of the season, i might just be able to answer that question with a bit more conviction. chris king, he of the finest headsets in the world, after one or two teething problems, finally released a variety of handbuilt wheels on the american market during 2007, even issuing a set of cyclocross specific round bits at the time of interbike in late september. should you fancy tinkering yourself, the cyclocross hubs are available separately. with a large proportion of good luck and possibly the aid of fedex, thewashingmachinepost may just get its hands on a pair of these wheels for a road test, and we'll be able to find out whether there is any useful life left in the traditional handbuilt 'factory' wheel.

chris king cross hubs

but there are still many, many expert builders throughout the world who are still able to take a pair of shiny hubs, 28 or 32 lengths of stainless steel wire and a decent set of eyeleted rims and create a work of art that can be easily maintained, will see off the worst that your roads department can leave you with, and will last for many a long year. i'm not suggesting that a pair of designer hoops will last for any less a period of time, but if there's still room in this cycling world for craftsmanship in frame construction, then the same can surely be said of the humble wheel - surely one of mankind's greatest inventions? it would seem somewhat of a travesty to take a handbuilt colnago master frame and shoe it with a pair of lightweight ventoux (dreamy though the latter pair of wheels are). such italian frame art can only be truly complemented by a pair of thirty-two spoked, handbuilt wheels (preferaby with old style campag record hubs - the ones with the greaseport and monogrammed clip).

and despite the almost ubiquitous fitting of factory wheels to the peloton (apart from, notably, the hell of the north) the handbuilt has not been squeezed out of existence just yet. without wishing to blow my own trumpet (and you thought i only played drums), the mighty dave t cheerfully rides on a pair of washingmachinepost handbuilts. so i eagerly hope for delivery of a pair of chris kings, but in the interests of scientific investigation (we all have our own ways of justifying these things), obtaining a pair of king hubs and building a pair of wheels in thewashingmachinepost workshop may come a close second.

and just to underline this delusional self importance, i think i'll designate 2008 as the year of the handbuilt wheel. let's wait and see if that turns out to mean anything.

posted on wednesday 26 december

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tis the season of bah humbug

finest time for a bike ride (at least until the next one): christmas eve. spent the morning in the office finishing off stuff that needed finishing off, had an early pasta lunch and took a flyer down to bruichladdich where awaited me a fine specimen of a double espresso. and a double espresso that turned out to be free, gratis and for nothing, by way of a christmas present. isn't life good?

cold day, less breezy than yesterday (which the bbc forecast described as light winds but stronger nearer the coast - at saligo it was near gale force) but so much fun that i took the long way home. i'm sure we've often joked that we treat cycling as a religion, and grovelling uphill to have a nice overview of bowmore village, i could sort of see why this might be closer to the truth than humour would demand.

oval concepts stem bolts

so as we all settle down to wait for santa to pop that colnago master x-lite under the tree (it's a big tree), it only leaves me to wish you all, wherever you are, a very merry christmas, and i hope you all receive a nice warm glow inside whlie out riding on christmas day or boxing day.

and just while i remember, i thought i'd point out that i was indeed correct all along - when i tested the oval concepts bars and stem, i said that pointing the bolt heads towards the rider (me) was an excellent way of preventing ferrous discolouration. i have ridden this excellent stem for quite a number of months and often in the worst that the atlantic can spare, and if i look closely enough, i can still see my reflection.

told you so.

posted on monday 24 december

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seats don't fail me now

brooks swallow saddle

you will perhaps recall that, a couple of months ago, the company colnago was fitted with a very stylish new saddle from the pinnacle of cool - brooks of england. while the company itself is now owned by selle italia, the saddles are still assembled by hand in, of all places, downing street, smethwick. at the time i was set to experience agonising pain in the posterior, entirely in keeping with the brooks characteristic of riding like a coal bunker for around the first six months, before moulding takes place and luxurious comfort ensues. the jury is out at the moment on whether this moulding is on behalf of the butt or saddle, but either way, brooks aficionados tend to be most effusive over the degree of luxury bestowed upon their bottoms after the leather has 'broken in'.

for the benefit of those either too young or too weight obsessed to know much about brooks saddles, they feature a single piece of tanned leather stretched over a metal frame (in the case of the brooks swallow under consideration - titanium), which clamps to the seatpost in the normal manner. because the leather is stiff, to put it mildly, it takes an indeterminate amount of time to soften, while a supplied mini-spanner allows the tensioning of the leather should it start to 'sag' in the middle.

the brooks swallow is also available in slightly cheaper format with stainless steel rails, with a concomitant increase in weight. the titanium railed version weighs in at 310g, admittedly about 100g+ over a titanium railed fizik arione, but hardly a sack of coal, and surely worth it if it turns out to be the ultimate in comfort.

the saddle arrived in its nice presentation box along with the aforementioned spanner, a small tin of proofide and a brooks cloth to polish the saddle after the proofide has 'soaked' into the leather. and here lies the trick - since an un-upholstered leather has a degree of flexibility and malleability that normal saddles can only dream of (my fizik pave is exactly the same shape now as it was when fitted around three years ago), to sustain this through its working life, it is advisable to treat top and bottom with proofide to keep it supple, particularly during the early days. consequently, the swallow received a thorough embalming on both sides before fitting to the colnago's carbon post. when the proofide on the shiny top of the saddle has dried in, the soft cloth can then be usefully employed to shine it back to polished pristine condition. it's unnecessary to polish the underside.

the titanium rails are lengthy enough to allow for a wide range of fore and aft adjustment on the post. or at least that would be the case were it not for the two bolt adjustment on the colnago post (a necessary evil, because the c40 takes a non-standard 28mm post) - the position of the front bolt, coupled with the narrowing of the rails on the saddle made front adjustment very awkward. it also provided a restriction on saddle position, because the swallow features a folded and rivetted leather section mid-length, which coincided with the the top of this front bolt. when new, problems were non-existent, but after a couple of rides, when the leather had started to flex, this section started to 'click' rather irritatingly, necessitating a slight forward shift on the post. granted this is not something that could have been foreseen by brooks, but colnago owners should take note.

brooks swallow saddle

now having fitted, proofided and started riding with the brooks, i had expected to become a martyr to the cause, enduring agonising pain on behalf of technically investigative journalism. sadly, this turned out not to be the case. in fact i'm feeling dispiritingly short changed by this saddle, because it has behaved as a paragon of virtue and displayed not one whit of the agony on which its legendary reputation is based. i have ridden regularly and far, wearing a variety of quality nether garments, and have singularly failed to evince so much as a modest twinge.

in fact, if truth be told, this has to be one of the most comfortable saddles it has been my privilege to sit on, and i can't see that changing in the foreseeable future. the leather has already begun the moulding process, with a flattening of the saddle top, and even a small indentation where, on previous saddles, such a concavity has been noticeably absent. granted such a shape does not equal that of the peloton's finest, but since the pervasive numbness on long rides that has been a feature of every other saddle i have ever tried, has all but disappeared, complaining i am not. it has continued to receive regular coatings of proofide (a little goes a long way), top and bottom, and the occasional tweak on the tension bolt after a ride.

brooks lore would have it that keeping the saddles out of the rain marks itself as a rather good idea, and to this end, it is possible to purchase a brooks waterproof cover to place over the top when visiting debbie's for a double espresso. however, despite it's lack of similar elegance, a biodegradable co-op bag manages a similar job, should such prove necessary.

so if i'm frighteningly honest, the brooks saddle has been a big disappointment, but for all the right reasons. it looks disgustingly cool, it's not substantially heavier than a normal saddle and it has been a pleasure to sit on. these are definitely qualities one would prefer from a saddle. i am now also glad to be aware of one of brooks' other endearing features - longevity: because i now look forward to having my bottom pampered by the swallow for as long as we both continue to cycle. and at the risk of being viewed as an eccentric in the world of carbon fibre, i would urge you all to divest yourself of weight weeniness and seek out your nearest brooks dealer forthwith.

the brooks swallow retails at a recommended £164.99 ($425). brookssaddles.com

posted on sunday 23 december

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it's cool to be square

pmp bottom bracket

even i now have to accept that the cycling world is not going to throw away all its external bottom bracket bearing cups and return to the ways of old. i take a lot of persuading that some of the stuff pointed at us isn't a triumph of form over function, and i have already heard tales of external bearings requiring replacement a tad more frequently than their predecessors - doubtless midst great economic glee from the component manufacturers. however, not everyone has given up on the much loved (or hated) square taper. there are those who don't find the need to bond the bottom bracket axle to one of the cranks, and development doesn't necessarily go in a straight line.

pmp components of italy (sponsors of the fidea cyclocross team) have taken a look at the traditional square taper, found little inherently wrong with it, but given it a modernist tweak. instead of being a solid taper, the pmp version has a slot at each corner. thus when the crank bolt is inserted and tightened, the taper ends flare out slightly, binding themselves to the inside receptor on the crank. judging by the photograph above, this still seems to be a proprietary system, and it's unlikely to work with that old nuevo record crank you've been dying to bring up to date. as far as i can make out, the split taper bb is only available as part of a complete crankset for road or off-road.

pmp cranks

in contemporary fashion, the bearings have been moved outboard, threading into the bottom bracket shell similarly to the current shimano regime (campagnolo have the bearings fitted to the crank arms), but this method of crank attachment still relies on two crank arms and a bottom bracket. unlike both campagnolo and shimano, pmp seem to be quite reticent about this development, since it is well nigh impossible to find any trumpeting of this design variation on their website or 2008 catalogue, but it strikes me as perhaps the middle way between innovation and development.

that said, their crank arms don't have a great deal of italian design flair about them, looking rather industrial and cnc machined (which they probably are). however, they still provide a viable alternative to those who subscribe not to the current carbon fetish.

pmp products are distributed in the uk by otago cyclesport (a distinctly unhelpful website, by the way). a list of distributors in other countries is available on the pmp website.

posted on saturday 22 december

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the tour baby! (deux)

tour baby deux

i keep having the feeling that i'm one of the few that didn't ever get to see scott coady's tour baby where this manic californian followed the 2000 tour and, as you would, filmed his daily moves. in between then and now, scott has produced it's cobbles baby! a rather entertaining 'documentary' of his excitement of watching paris-roubaix. while most of us would be quite ennervated to attend either of these races, just to stand at the side of the road and watch our heroes blast past in a matter of seconds, scott takes fandom to a whole different level, by filming pretty much everything that happened along the way.

and for someone seemingly armed with only press credentials he does pretty darned well. his reactions to even the most mundane (tour rider pulling his own wheeled luggage while riding to the hotel) may seem a bit over the top to us stiff upper lipped brits (aren't we?) but it does remind you of why you're a fan of the tour and bike riding in the first place. who else would have the luck - probably coupled with a large degree of brass neck - to get a vip car ride just behind the peloton in a france tv car, also in a discovery channel car and even (lucky blighter) to watch a part of one stage from a tour helicopter.

we can all watch the tour on eurosport, then buy the 48 hour dvd boxed set in order not to miss a single wheel turn, but without scott or an official tour pass, we'd never gain this much insight into the goings on behind the scenes. those big publicity portakabins you see at the side of every stage finish, the village depart, the publicity caravan (even if he does have a penchant for, as they say, anything in a skirt).

disc one lasts an hour and a half (as does disc two), and despite all the manic camera shots, and various attempts to have unsuspecting french persons shout 'it's the tour, baby!' the pacing is to be commended. granted we don't have a great idea of who's placed where, other than lance, but that's not really what this movie is all about.

by way of a couple of interludes from the coady overexcitement, carlos da cruz and fast freddie are each given a camera to show us behind the scenes at davitamon lotto and francaise de jeux - both considerably more restrained than the public face of the tour. scott's camerawork relies more on enthusiasm than professionalism and some scenes are a bit overexposed, but heck, it's the tour baby, and this is way more exciting and inclusive than words on a blog. he is forgiven.

disc two provides a different ending to the movie (you can find out for yourself), extended fast freddie and carlos cams, and scott's visit to nike's lance museum. and there's the inevitable outtakes, though in this case these are extraneous scenes that didn't make it into the final movie, rather than the bloopers you might expect.

it might be a bit too late to grab this for christmas, but there's always new year and hours in front of the telly after your daily training ride. and just as an aside, the cover was drawn by thewashingmachinepost's hero du velo, david 'brintoni' brinton (available as a poster from the tour baby website). in the uk, this double disc dvd set is available for £24.95 from prendas ciclismo, and if you're across the pond, you can order direct from big ring films for $39.95.

posted on friday 21 december

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le tour en ecosse?

tartan road

you can't really say you didn't see this one coming. we've had a total of three tour de france visits to england, including the award winning start in 2007, and in 1998 the whole shebang started from dublin, though it became famous for other reasons that year. so with a pseudo scotsman almost in the pro-tour peloton wearing an appropriately scottish jersey, and historically scotland's and britain's finest ever tour finisher (check the robert millar pages), it was only a matter of time before somebody started thinking about starting the tour de france in scotlandshire. and why the heck not?

granted there would then be a sizeable air transfer over to french country, but according to david millar, this would actually be shorter than some of the air transfers experienced en francaise. edinburgh based eventscotland (you can sort of guess what they do by the name) have almost reluctantly admitted to having had exploratory talks with aso about the possibility, though no locations or venues have reached the talking part yet. cyclingnews.com are quoted as saying that a tour start in scotland could arrive as early as 2011, though this is pure speculation at the moment.

however, convinced that it will happen, thewashingmachinepost has already asked mr shaw, bowmore street cleaner extraordinaire, to fly a small french flag on his truck, and make sure main street was kept spotless just in case monsieur prudhomme should drop by on a reconnaissance visit. straight off the ferry at port askaig and right in to the king of the mountains up the brae. with the local co-op always producing an excess of croissants (not very crescent shaped, admittedly) on the cuisine de france stand, an islay start is as good as signed, sealed and delivered.

who's delusional?

posted on thursday 20 december

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going the other way

factor_001

i am mystified, greatly mystified. formula one motor racing has long been held up as the pinnacle of engineering when it comes to carbon engineering, hydraulics, telemetry and such like. it's unlikely that it's a complete coincidence that the carbon tubes on our favourite colnago are manufactured by the same company that provide ferrari's formula one team with their carbon chassis. but it comes as rather a surprise that a firm renowned for supplying every formula one team with vehicle wiring harnesses, tyre pressure monitoring and stress measurement, thought what a neat idea it would be to make a bicycle.

as you can perhaps see from the photograph, it's not just a 'let's re-badge a taiwanese piece of alloy' type bicycle - it's even sitting on a carbon plinth. released under the futuristic moniker the factor 001, it's not just an ordinary bicycle, but one hoping to be the ultimate (price in the region of £10,000) training tool, combining 'innovative design and advanced electronics to record and analyse biometric data. from the pictures alone, it's very hard to tell just how this will be achieved, but beru f1 systems, manufacturer of the above are currently hiding their light under a closely guarded bushel.

however, what can be deduced from the photo? well, it looks like campag components in the gear department with some stylish hoods covering the carbon levers, coupled (or not - can't see any cables at all, not even on the gear mechs) to carbon disc brakes. why we need discs (probably hydraulic) on a road bike is quite beyond me, while the closeness of the rear wheel to the seat tube/post would worry me greatly. still it is only a display prototype.

ironically, the bicycle was unveiled at the british racing drivers' club luncheon in london where beru were sponsoring the graham hill trophy. yes, and we'll now lose the cycling connection almost completely because the winner of the award was the almost ubiquitous lewis hamiltion - and belief comes perilously close to total suspension when you discover that, as part of his prize, lewis is going to receive one of these interesting machines.

surely, surely, if beru f1 systems are serious about presenting this to their target audience (i'm guessing it's well heeled cyclists) wouldn't it seem a frightfully good idea to give one to bradley wiggins or chris hoy on the run-up to the beijing olympics?

just a thought.

factor001.com

posted on tuesday 18 december

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what are these people looking at?

london crowd

just a brief bit of reading with this one, but since we are in the video age, this seems the ideal way for us all to have a look at what roller racing is all about. courtesy of the rollapaluza crowd, here's three minutes of video highlights - who could have known it was this exciting? and i have no idea who's competing. footage from december 15, waterloo hall, london.i'd like a shot at this, and soon. (nice musical accompaniment too).

posted on tuesday 18 december

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pastures new

anthony mccrossan

for a good number of years now, i have harped on enthusiastically about the real reason for the invention of broadband - cycling.tv. sure, there's been moans when the browser thingy doesn't work the way it's supposed to, and when they send out publicity material advertising the wrong time for race viewing. but if i didn't care, i wouldn't complain.

however, throughout all that's being going on with broadband cycle viewing, the pairing of anthony mccrossan and brian smith has, in a relatively short space of time, become one of the more entertaining and informative partnerships from the other side of the microphone. and i am extremely relieved that this situation will continue for the foreseeable future, and certainly through 2008. however, something has changed.

it seems a little known fact that anthony mccrossan was not just the principle commentator with cycling.tv, but he was also the company's commercial director. i say was because as of friday past (14th december) this is no longer the case. with cycling.tv having been sold to the canadian jump.tv earlier this year, anthony felt that his objectives had been achieved, and it was time to move on.

now outwardly, this will affect nothing, but it does mean that anthony will now be developing his future through a variety of new projects in production and advertising, as well as eventually establishing his own company. this bodes well for cycling and for our experience of cycling, because mr mccrossan has the ability and people skills to tie up heretofore unconnected strands within the world of cycling, of which we shall be the principal beneficiaries. (and fortunately it means that he'll still be riding london-paris in 2008). he will continue as senior cycling.tv commentator on a freelance basis.

anthony has agreed to a washingmachinepost interview in the near future, and hopefully we'll find out more by the start of 2008. i am proud to count anthony amongst my friends (along with co-commentator/pundit, brian smith), and i wish him all the very best in his 'new' career.

and who would have guessed he had his own website?

posted on monday 17 december

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gerry bracken

gerry bracken

i'm afraid for once, i need to leave behind all the jocularity and lightheartedness to pay tribute to my friend gerry bracken, who died unexpectedly on 6th december. you wouldn't know the man, because he wasn't famous in any way, but he was a tall, sincere and wonderful irishman who made my acquaintance by sending me tour de france cuttings from irish newspapers a number of years ago.

surprisingly enough, that sort of thing doesn't happen to me very often (not at all, actually), and i had the pleasure of meeting the man when he sailed from ireland across to port ellen on islay in his own small boat (about 25 miles i think) and dropped by the office. but it didn't end there: gerry had invented, and subsequently patented a brake light for bicycles which didn't depend on being connected to the brake system. it was during one of his trips to the london cycle show in 2006 that we met up again, as he trawled various exhibitors' stands trying to drum up interest in putting his invention into production.

gerry bracken's brake light

unfortunately it wasn't made of titanium or carbon fibre, so there wasn't as much interest as he'd hoped. now it's extremely unlikely it will ever see the light of day (pardon the pun) but gerry was quite enervated to see an article on the post about his brakelight. he was a wonderful man who had an even more eccentric interest in cycling than i am often accused of.

i miss him already. rest in peace gerry.

posted on sunday 16 december

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better out than in

swimmer

over the past few weeks, the guardian newspaper has been pitting sport against sport as a feature in its 'weekend' magazine that helps bulk the saturday edition to considerable proportions. this week they've put swimming up against cycling - and, surprise, surprise, cycling actually won, only losing out to swimming under the heading 'fighting flab'. of course this latter point was based on cycling burning fewer calories per hour than swimming at an average of 10-15mph. none of us would even consider admitting to being that slow on average, now would we?

i genuinely meant that this was a surprise, because for many a year i have been indoctrinated to the notion that swimming is regarded as the premier form of exercise, because the swimmer's entire body weight is supported (by the water) during exercise. cyclists, especially on drop bars, require to support at least a proportion of their own weight while pedalling ensues. i'm sure that there are many of you who partake of both forms of exercise and feel all the better for it, but with the current obsession with obesity, there seems to be something amiss here.

i'm none too sure of the curriculum practised in other schools, but here at least, the kids from both primary and secondary schools are actively encouraged to swim, either being taken by the teaching staff, or encouraged through the existence of a junior swimming club. since we are on an island, any competitive activities require travel to and from scotland, quite frequently accompanied by members of the school teaching staff. and, of course, exactly the same happens for cycling.

not!

other than the cycling proficiency test in the latter years of primary school, there is no encouragement whatsoever for kids of any age to take to the roads or off-road on their bicycles. and i'm willing to bet that there is a great deal of similarity between the situation on islay and many other educational institutions in the united kingdom. granted, it is possible to take to the water with little more than a towel and a pair of speedos (or the female equivalent), but schools have access to a myriad of expensive technical sports equipment, none of which possesses two wheels and a pair of handlebars.

the guardian's article is hardly presented as a scientific study, and is certainly not taken as such, but the same criteria has been applied to swimming as to cycling. none of the three of us in velo club d'ardbeg have ever been given house room by members of the schools' management teams, so we're not experiencing something that has been tried and failed. i'm sure that many of you are as mystified as i am as to the discrepancies and prejudices that favour swimming far more than cycling (if the latter is favoured at all).

suffice to say that, during my 45km this afternoon in cold, blustery weather, i didn't pass a single cyclist in either direction. somewhat of a hollow victory - but how many swimming medals do we expect to win at beijing?

posted on saturday 15 december

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disk jockey

fixie inc. pure blood cross bike

this has been mentioned before, but allow me to recap: on the fast becoming annual washingmachinepost pilgrimage to the cycle show in london, we were fascinated to see some rather droolsworthy steel bicycles sitting proudly on the mosquito bikes stand. german in origin, fixie inc. turned out to be a retro revolution not quite hidebound by their adopted name. in other words, not all the models on display sported a fixed gear. in fact very much in spite of the retro ethos, one of the bicycles displayed a thorough understanding of the concept moderne.

while not yet homologated by the notorious uci (doubtless due to rushing off to mexico for non-existent blood tests) the fixie inc. cyclocross bicycle featured front and rear disk brakes with no braze-ons that would allow the substitution of cantis. however, should you have felt the need to partake of the world single speed cross championships in portland earlier this winter, the modular rear dropouts would allow the latter, as well as a normal cross season with gears (see gallery pics). the rear disk mounting is incorporated in the left hand dropout, so if you opt for fixed, there's a track end substitute with disk mounts to use or ignore depending on your fixed preferences.

while it probably shouldn't be remarkable in this day and age, the frame finish on all the fixie models is exemplary - the understated colour schemes would not look out of place hanging on the sitting room wall (we all do it, right?). at a value for money frame price of £820 ($1660) it only remains to choose the bits you'd like mosquito to build it with (or build it yourself, if spanner wielding takes your fancy), and mud plugging with drops could be just the winter activity to get you off the carbon for a month or two. frames are in stock even as you read, from xs to xl. translated into english, that's 48.4cm up to 56.4cm in 2cm increments. click here for a closer look. just love that script on the down tube.

absoluteness is originated in purism - couldn't have said it better myself.

cycles-for-heroes.com | mosquito-bikes

posted on friday 14 december

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the angels wanna wear my red shoes

meraklon oversocks

well, ok so it's not actually the shoes that are red, but a wee bit of artistic license doesn't go amiss every now and again. the redness is actually provided by prendas meraklon oversocks - the modern equivalent of finding an old pair of socks, cutting a hole in the bottom and pulling them over your gold vittorias (or whatever). the latter is exactly what the mighty dave t would have done in his heyday (and probably would today, if mrs dave t would let him), but this is a far more satisfactory notion. for starters, hands up anyone who has a pair of socks in their top drawer that they would even consider wearing outside their cycling shoes?

thought not.

meraklon is quite extensively used in sportswear, generally that of a close-to-the-body nature, because it's thermal, weighs next to nothing and wicks pretty well. the ideal material to keep your tootsies cosy on days when it's not actually raining. having played hooky from work on a cold december friday afternoon, i could hear a double espresso calling me from debbie's, so the colnago and i had no alternative but to follow our destiny. cold and wind have a habit of seeking out small toes and reducing their temperature as you merrily pedal along, but on this occasion, wearing a bright red pair of the prendas oversocks, my feet could have cheerfully melted a block of ice while i slurped my espresso. these are really great: light, cosy, bright (unless you buy the black ones) and, dare i say it, rather stylish. the prendas variant on this item of historical apparel already has the necessary seamed cutouts for cleat and heel. while meraklon is tougher than it looks, it doesn't do any harm to be a tad careful when pulling on or removing the socks - some cleats are sharper than others.

they're available in the red shown, plus blue, white and black, in sizes ranging from 36/39 to 44/47. the astounding part is the price - only £7.50 ($15.20) a pair. global warming or not, the weather we're likely to get in the northern hemisphere over the next few months could make a pair of these the ideal accessory to make bicycle riding a mite more comfortable.

prendas.co.uk

posted on friday 14 december

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