Giro d'Italia Wrap

The Giro is finally over after three weeks of drama, mountains, sprint controversies, and Contador domination. The Giro is a different beast than the other Grand Tours, it doesn't have the polish and reputation of the Tour de France, it doesn't have the heat of the Vuelta a Espana, but it does have the passion of the Italian fans, difficult stages and an element of danger. This years course was widely criticised for being too long, too mountainous, and having too many difficult descents. Despite this, it wasn't the most interesting of races. The field lacked many of the current stars, and as Aussies, we didn't really have any riders to cheer for. Richie Porte and Cameron Meyer did a great job as domestiques for their respective teams - but they were never let off their leash to have a real crack.

Things got off to a shaky start - with the tragedy of Wouter Weylandt's death on the third stage, then there was the neutralised stage afterward and the subsequent exit of team Leopard Trek out of respect. Then things once again got going in earnest with a few successful break-aways. But after the awesome win by Contador on the top of Mt Etna on stage 9, the race was a foregone conclusion and we were left to just marvel at the domination of one of the world's best cyclists.

There were some great moments though. As already mentioned, Contador's win on Mt Etna was awe-inspiring. He broke away from the other major players effortlessly and no one was able to match his speed on the steep gradients. Stage races are won on the mountains and this is where Contador won the Giro. The perfect organisation and meticulous execution of a race plan by HTC Highroad as their lead out train delivered Mark Cavendish to two brilliant victories, was also a highlight. I loved Igor Anton's brilliant win on Monte Zoncolan and finally, David Millar's speed on the final time trial in Milan was amazing. The time trial specialists, like Millar and the infallible Cancellara (who wasn't competing in the Giro) always blow me away with their inhuman high average speeds (Millar averaged more than 51kph on the 21.5km stage).

So that's it, the Giro done and dusted for another year. I've got to give a mention to SBS before I sign off though (the only station in Australia that gives any airtime to cycling). SBS did a cracking job of presenting 4 live stages of the tour and aired a half an hour update show each day. Hopefully it all rated well so we get the same or better coverage in 2012. The SBS Cycling Central website was brilliant as usual. Most of the time I'd fall asleep on the couch when watching the live stages, so watching the stage updates on the web the morning after is a necessary and enjoyable ritual, and one I'm sure other cycling fanatics can relate to! Thanks SBS!

Book Review: Bike Snob: Systematically and Mercilessly Realigning the World of Cycling

The Bike Snob is a bit of an institution in NYC cycling circles. I first started reading Bike Snob NYC's blog about a year ago and like many others, I have found it hard to keep myself away from his trademark dry wit, that's as parched as the Simpson desert, and his relentless satire, ever since.

Like Stephen Colbert and his musings about American politics, Snobs musings about cycling are rarely serious. He is constantly trying to show the lighter side of a sport that all too often takes itself too seriously. And perhaps because of this it's not that easy to start reading his posts. Unless you are an original fan, you can't help but get lost in his in-jokes and bizarre references. And don't try asking what the hell he's talking about in the comments, you'll just expose yourself as a noob to his loyal legion of fans who compete for top position in the comments of each new post.

And so, with the blogs increasing number of hits and with more and more public appearance requests, it seems the Snob got a book deal.

I was interested to find out how the Snobs rants would translate into the the traditional printed book form. His writing on the blog is strongly supported by imagery and embedded content - and there's no possibility of a YouTube link in a book.

All in all, even if I wanted to, I don't think I could be overly critical of the book. The Snob has been published and achieved notoriety from his simple little cycling blog. A feat that provides inspiration to me and others in the blogoshere I'm sure.

His comedy shines through from the first page to the last, there's not as much humour as there is in his blog - but this is unfamiliar territory for the Snob. The wordplay and anecdotes are laid on thick and fast, yet some of the stories are almost completely devoid of sarcastic overtones. Which is kind of refreshing. The description of his ride through Long Island, during which he traces the historical origins of cycling in the area is fascinating. And the entire chapter on the history of the bicycle is a treat - I never realised there was so much I didn't know about the origins of our sport.

It's a pretty easy read, the text is regularly broken up with superb illustrations and there is a pictorial section in the middle that is an extension of a feature of his blog where he awards the seal of approval or disapproval to random peoples bikes.

The section that categorises all cyclists into 11 defined groups is hilarious! The cycling regular will get a kick out of this for sure. The groups are instantly recognisable and you'll find yourself nodding and laughing to yourself as you read about the peculiarities of the 'Roadie', the 'Lone Wolf' or the 'Beautiful Godzilla'!

As the book trudges on and as he continues his attempt to cover all facets of cycling things do begin to get a bit tedious. I found it hard to not skip the section that details how to go about locking up your bike. I mean, wouldn't the intended audience already know how to lube a chain or adjust a saddle? You know that bit in Star Wars where Luke goes and meets Yoda in the Dagobah System, it's all a bit boring and the movie stops dead? This section of the book is a little like that. So... living up to the high standard set in the early chapters proves difficult for the Snob and the book does drift off toward the end. But, like the final battle scene in Star Wars, the book does recover and in the end, the dark side is defeated with the epilogue.

All in all, it's a great read and the book is a well produced package to boot. The hard cover, the quotes, the typesetting, the illustrations, the photos and the thick paper stock make for a really nice package. So grab it, and read it. There's a lot of worse things you can do with your hard earned! Our bike budgets are so big already, with all the repairs and the new parts and the clothes, what's another thirty bucks?

Gran Fondo?

All of us sometimes use words from another language to emphasize something or to simply spice things up a bit. We all use various international greetings like ‘aloha’, ‘hola’ and ‘bonjour’. When I was young my mum would yell ‘ESSEN’ (German for eat) to get us to come to the table for dinner. We will use the Spanish word ‘aficionado’ to describe an expert, if someone has made an ass of themselves at a dinner party they have made a ‘faux pas’ (French), and Bob Dylan embodied the ‘zeitgeist’ (German) of the 60’s.

You know where I’m going with this don’t you?! Why does everything we do in cycling have to have a French name? Don’t get me wrong, I really like the French language, I’ve been to France, I loved it and I’d like to go there again and learn the language, but some of it seems over the top to me.

For the sake of tradition, and to respect the history of our beloved sport I really like most of the cycling lexicon. A group of cyclists should always be referred to as a ‘peloton’ and I don’t even mind if we always refer to the coveted yellow jersey as ‘le maillot jaune’, but it seems we now have to refer to everything by its French translation before any credibility is given.

Other sports don’t do this do they? Skiing supposedly began in Sweden and Norway… I can’t recall Bruce McAvaney using much Swedish during the winter Olympics telecasts? I mean do we really need to refer to every mass participation ride as a ‘Gran Fondo’? In October there is the Levi Leipheimer Gran Fondo in California – couldn’t they have just called it ‘Leipheimers Big Ride’ (yeah, creativity was never my strong point). I suppose I should just be thankful that we have the ‘Around the Bay in a Day’ and not the ‘Melbourne Gran Fondo’.

I guess this all relates to the title of this blog – I’ll be damned if I was ever going to spell it Domestique!

Sad news at the Giro

The Giro d'Italia has started in tragic circumstances this year with the death of Wouter Weylandt on the third stage of the classic. The crash happened on a decent considered to be one of the tamer decents of this years course, which some pro's have argued is too dangerous. This is a terribly sad accident. All cyclists know the dangers of what we do - but you can't think about it, you just ride and hope for the best, and most of the time it's fine. But every once in a while something like this happens and it reminds you of the nature of our crazy sport. RIP Wouter and good luck to the Leopard Trek team for their re-building process.

Reinventing the wheel...

I saw this on the Tube the other day and had to post it...



I'm not sure these guys were out to improve the tried and tested upright design of the traditional bicycle, or whether they were trying to create a masturbation aid! I can't think of any situation where this would actually work! Maybe I shouldn't be too harsh - maybe the guy is just a little eccentric. Although, he and his contraption remind me a lot of Mr Garrison and his 'IT' machine from South Park. They look similar, and both machines could be worked seamlessly into an exhibition at Amsterdam's famous sex museum.

On the topic of reinventing the wheel - I have never understood recumbents, I don't understand how they are an improvement on the standard bicycle, which has existed in its current form for over one hundred years with little change to the core design. I've never seen a recumbent overtake anyone, so it's not a speed thing, and I cant imagine a recumbent having any comfort advantages... I guess I just don't get it.

I'm not going to be too critical on the Contraption Captains, as the infamous Bike Snob NYC refers to them as. I'm sure they have their reasons, and I'm sure they must have their benefits; I just read a great article about an old fella who has been using his recumbent tricycle to beat Motor Neurone disease, which is awesome! I'm an advocate of all types of cycling, even if some are a little... unconventional.

Riding Melbourne's Trails

I use some of Melbourne’s bike trails regularly; the Main Yarra Trail most often for my daily commute. Because the MYT is constantly dogged by controversy it’s easy to forget that not all of Melbourne’s trails are semi-permanently diverted for the purpose of improving road infrastructure. And, in fact, improving road infrastructure sometimes works in our favour – like the construction of the Eastlink bike trail, which was mandated as part of the larger Eastlink freeway project.

Melbourne’s bike trails are actually pretty good, truth be told. And Bicycle Victoria does a decent job advocating further bike specific development. I always knew this… but getting out and using the trails, when there were perfectly good roads available, was never on my to do list.

After reading a post on a cycling forum saying that people have actually moved to Melbourne specifically for our cycling infrastructure I decided that a ride incorporating some of our trails had to go on the list – and the Easter weekend provided me with the perfect opportunity to tick the ride off the list.

This was the planned route:

So I started out along beach road and went along the bay trail, carefully weaving between the mums with prams in Brighton and the cool kids on their custom cruisers in St Kilda. My aim was then to get to the Eastern Freeway and discover the Koonung Trail, which follows the Eastern Freeway. There’s no easy way of getting from St Kilda to Kew, so I just put my head down, stuck to the left and darted across town as best I could – managing a small sojourn on Punt Road, and I lived to tell the tale.

The Koonung Trail was actually really beautiful and surprisingly un-broken. It pretty much goes all the way from Kew to Donvale with only a couple of road crossings. There were times that I could of sworn I was in the Victorian countryside; I knew that to the right of me there was a freeway and to the left of me was housing, but the trail makes you oblivious to all of these urban eyesores as it takes you through manicured parks and wetlands. By the time you hit the beginning of the new Eastlink trail in Donvale I was definitely starting to feel better about all of the tax I’ve paid over the years.

The Eastlink trail, which was the real goal of the day, started with no real pageantry. But by the time you come out of the Mullum Mullum reserve and the trail starts winding under a myriad of overpasses through Ringwood you know you’ve hit the new stuff.

The Eastlink trail is kind of like a new docklands apartment. It’s got all the bling, the shiny new appliances and fittings and the view, but lacks in terms of actual everyday living; once you start using those appliances and fittings you realise they’re a bit crap and they’ll probably need replacing soon. The Eastlink trail has magnificent new bridges and public art, smooth new concrete and fancy automated toilet facilities that speak to you, it even has speed indicators, but the signage constantly confuses and the breaks in the trail seriously impact it’s functionality for everyday cycling commuters.

Despite the fact that you have to stop every five minutes to check you’re on the right trail, and the fact that every time you are brought up to a road there is no indication of where the trail continues – or if it even continues at all, overall the ride is great and I shouldn’t complain. We are lucky to live in a city where they bother to build trails like this for our cycling pleasure – and adorn them with random art installations! I particularly liked this Lennon inspired scrabble dichotomy!

The trail ended abruptly in Dandenong and that was where I left it – it may have continued on somewhere else, but for the lack of signage I will remain none the wiser.

I then made my way back to the safety and familiar bitumen of beach road, and eventually home – the loop being just over 105 km’s in total.

Around Melbourne there are certain rides that are so sacred to the cycling fraternity (Beach road, Kinglake etc.) that you have to do them regularly, but it’s always good to discover new rides, like this one, especially if they’ve cost major taxpayer $’s!

It’s a simple equation: more cyclist’s using trails more often, means that more trails will continue to be built! Hats off to the State Government for making the Eastlink trail happen.

I fell off my bike

The other day I finished work early and with nothing better to do I thought I'd get cultured and visit an exhibition centered on the far too common bike stack.

The exhibition, called 'I Fell Off My Bike', is a series of short animations created by Melbourne artist Isobel Knowles. The videos are shown on a number of screens that have been embedded into large green-dinosaur-egg-looking-contraptions, just outside ACMI at Fed Square.

It's worth a look, and a good way to waste 20 minutes. Personally I think the exhibition would have greatly benefited from a segment on the classic 'can't-get-out-my-clip-pedals-quick-enough-when-stuck-at-lights' bike stack. No matter how many times I witness it - it never fails to raise a chuckle.

The exhibition is free and it runs daily from 6am - 11pm.

Inappropriate Pants

All roadies should watch this comedy sketch from Eddy Perfect - taken from the 2011 Melbourne Comedy Festival Gala. It is hilarious! Although, it's comedy value seems to be questionable according to some devoted roadies. But c'mon if you've lost the ability to laugh at how ridiculous you look in tight multicoloured lycra then there's a problem!

I know I look like some sort of strange human-wasp - trust me, this is extremely apparent as I do the walk of shame through my office every morning - and my work colleagues cop an eye-full of me looking like I'm auditioning for a fluro 80's version of Swan Lake.

One bloke said of the sketch in a web forum "it's soft target bullshit at best" - roadies... soft targets? I don't know about that, I've seen some cyclists, me included, turn into the Hulk after a car inadvertently cuts them off. And have you seen George Hincapie - I wouldn't want to meet that guy in a dark alley.

There are so many funny lines in this, "[car drivers] may as well rape a dolphin", and "we fill coffee shops, dressed like flocks of flabby lorikeets".

Watch it, have a laugh!

Your LBS

The Local Bike Shop can be a strange place for the un-initiated, all of the different bikes, strange clothes, walls plastered with odd accessories and worst of all, strange salespeople that are eagerly hanging onto some remnants from their punk younger selves, and worst of all, everyone is speaking some weird language that could possibly have evolved on a sister planet where the internal combustion engine was never developed and bikes reigned. And, the LBS can be just as anxiety inducing for the cycling regular; people trying to sell you things you know you don't need, mechanics over-charging for jobs you know take five minutes (but you have to get it done 'cause you're stuck without your tools), and of course, there's the problem of resisting the temptation to upgrade, and walking out of the shop with your wallet firmly lodged in the hip pocket.

Roadies are criticized regularly for chasing bargains whether they be online or at a low price chain, rather than staying loyal and supporting their LBS. I don't know about this - I tried to stay loyal to a shop for a while - but there's only so many times you can get ripped off and continue to just calmly cop it on the chin. The last straw was being charged $40 to replace a two dollar spoke, only to find out that the original broken spoke was just re-attached.

After that, I don't feel guilty about searching for bargains online, it's fun actually, I recently scored a Specialized Toupe saddle from the US for $100 less than here in Melbourne! And, in stark contrast to the situation with the spoke, I bought a cycling computer online, after 7 months it stopped working, I sent it back to the online store and within three days they had replaced it with another model that retailed for $40 more! That would just not happen at your LBS.

One day I went to a shop on Kings Way, I won't name them, looking for a hardtail for hire, to thrash at the You Yangs with an Irish friend. The smarmy prick that served us was a a true bike snob, not a snob like the satirical BikeSnobNYC, but a real snob in that he treated everyone like a noob - you and your opinion didn't count unless you worked in a bike shop. I think we actually asked him politely to stop bullshitting us - which made no difference. Unfortunately, the damage was done, and he made a lasting poor impression of Melbourne LBS's on my Irish friend.

Oh - then I had the funny encounter of impulse buying a shiny new fixie at a shop in Geelong. The girl that served me told me that without a shadow of doubt I could fit my Shimano 105 clipless pedals to the cranks. I took her word for it and off I went. Well, as it turned out, the cranks only took the smaller bmx style pedals. Guess I was the fool for not checking myself. Then again - I did flip the bike two weeks later on Gumtree for a small profit, so all's well that ends well.

And as for maintenance, for regular cyclists it would simply be too expensive to go to the shop every time something falls apart - most stuff has gotta be done yourself. I just wish I knew how to re-grease and re-build a hub!

On a recent trip to the States, I noticed an interesting trend in bike shops, especially in California (San Fran and LA). Bike shops there had tapped into another income stream - that being shop-branded casual clothing. Some shops had so much of it, it was like being in Abercrombie and Fitch, I had to fight through the clothing racks to see the bikes. It was cheesey, but some of the t-shirt designs were very cool... and I'm a little ashamed to say that I returned to Melbourne with a decent collection of new t-shirts from shops in the suburbs of New York, LA and San Francisco. Maybe, this is something shops here could tap into? If they can't compete with online prices and people (like me) are giving the workshop a wide berth in favor of doing work themselves - then draw people back to the store with something different. Then again, maybe I shouldn't be too concerned - a plague, of Victorian locust proportions, of new bike shops has sprung up over the last few years in Melbourne - maybe business is pretty good?

Otways Classic

A few posts ago I wrote about the crappy jerseys you get when doing a charity/fun ride. Well, I'm happy to report that I just got another, and it's just as crappy as the others! Last Saturday I did the 145km 2XU Great Ocean and Otway Classic. A great ride, through some of Victoria's most spectacular scenery, and I did actually have high hopes for the jersey, it was made by 2XU afterall.

You know 2XU, they make the tights that overpaid footy players are all too often photographed in, despite this, and the fact that their clothes are mostly unaffordable, they do make some quality stuff. But sadly they took the budget option on the compulsory event jerseys and now I'm stuck with another poor quality top - that is kind of ugly. Alright, I'm over it, just had to get that out.

So, the ride. It was great actually. I felt terrible for the first 60 to 70 km's, as we headed toward the Otways National Park and the 'Dean's Marsh' climb. Despite feeling pretty average, I stuck with a lead group and then as we hit the climb my legs woke up and I was off. The climb through the National Park was beautiful, well I think it was anyway, I only stole a few quick glances to the left and right as most of the time my eyes were firmly fixed on my wheel and the road ahead of me.

Half way up we encountered two actors dressed as the iconic El Diablo, a character made famous by the German Didi Senft who, since 1993, has been wearing his red devil costume at the Tour de France and other such classics. This guy is a bit of a legend, according to Wikipedia (is there any better source of factual and trustworthy information - I think not!) he is also an inventor who has created over 100 bicycles. I know cycling can really inspire passion, but this guy takes it to a whole new level!

Descending into Lorne was a real thrill, living in Melbourne I don't get to ride too many hills, or mountains for that matter, so I relish in the opportunity to garner speeds of 75kph for longer than 30secs. Although fun, I realised I pretty much suck at descending - something to work on for sure.

And what can I say about the ride along the Great Ocean Road back to Torquay? Well, not much really. I'm sure the scenery was pretty good but I had entered some sort of 'zone' where I was oblivious to everything except my wheel and the km's dropping away. And then all of a sudden, I was rolling across the finish line and it was over. I clocked up a time of 4:14, which I was pretty happy with! I thought anything around 5hrs would be decent, so this was a surprise.

Definitely gave a confidence boost and stoked my fires to try my luck at some club races during the winter road season.