The Ride of the Immortals
Years ago I was listening to Cream bassist Jack Bruce being asked about Eric Clapton’s guitar playing. He drew a comparison between Clapton’s songwriting and soloing and the melodies written by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. He said that what they both did sounded so simple as to be obvious, but that the choices they made were the result of extraordinary gifts, that their genius made the extraordinary seem inevitable. Racing is an almost inevitable outcome when two cyclists ride together. That, combined with the sense of open-road adventure that a bicycle engenders when it’s not a routine activity makes audacious rides an ...
Friday Group Ride #36
Alejandro Valverde, Roberto Heras and Isisdro Nozal at the 2004 Vuelta The final Grand Tour of the season is upon us and that can mean only one thing: You've planned your Labor Day Weekend. Wait, no, that's not it. Your kids are back in school. Hmm, maybe, but still not quite right. Oh, right, your TV is about to get monopolized. Frank Schleck says he can win the Vuelta, but to do so, he's going to have to go chainring-to-chainring with all of Spain, including Giro second place David Arroyo and Joaquin Rodgriguez. We've got Carlos Sastre, Oscar Pereiro and Carlos Barredo. Garmin-Transitions ...
The Route des Grandes Alpes: the Maps
The Barcelonette loop ride over the Col d'Allos, Col de Champs and Col de la Cayolle. As I mentioned in my post The Void, I wouldn’t ordinarily publish each of the routes for a given tour. Travel companies don’t have a boatload of intellectual property and the specific routes they use often feature often feature a stop here or a back road there that makes the riding more enjoyable. However, most of folks won’t get the chance to ride this tour with Erickson Cycle Tours, so publishing the routes won’t actually hurt their business. Now that I’ve had a chance to quantify ...
The Vision
The lower reaches of the Col de la Cayolle wind through a canyon carved by river. When I left home my mind contained a vision. In it I was fit. I was ready. I was unencumbered by obstacles. I’d ride at threshold until 1km to go, whereupon I would bury the needle and arrive at the col marker out of the saddle and a little out of breath. I would descend with mad Formula 1 skills, drifting my bike around switchbacks and sitting up to eat pain au chocolat as I caught cars. Sci-fi is fun, huh? The last two weeks of ...
Friday Group Ride #34
The King and His Chosen Heir? Great movement is afoot. The tides of change rise with the moon and deposit treasures of all sorts on the shore of our cycling beach. Holy Moses! That's a horrible metaphor. Anyway, so far we've seen: Contador to Sungard - SaxoBank, Greipel to Omega Pharma-Lotto, Fränk and Ändy Schleck to Luxembourg - TBD, Jurgen Van de Walle to Omega Pharma - Lotto, and many more strong support riders shifting allegiances and lining up behind new leaders. The one that sticks out for me is Team Radio Shack. This is a sponsor that got into the sport based ...
The Grand Loop
The climb up the Col d'Allos was largely forested. When I was last in the Maritime Alps, roughly ten years ago, I did a ride that has remained on my list of all-time greats. That loop, starting and finishing in Barcelonette, was included in the tour I’m doing now. Indeed, it was one of the features that attracted me to this tour. In broad strokes, the ride heads south from Barcelonette. A few kilometers out of town you turn right and begin climbing the Col d’Allos. It’s a 19km Category 1 climb and reaches 2247 meters. You descend until you reach the ...
Body
The Ride of the Immortals
Years ago I was listening to Cream bassist Jack Bruce being asked about Eric Clapton’s...
Friday Group Ride #36
Alejandro Valverde, Roberto Heras and Isisdro Nozal at the 2004 Vuelta The final...
The Route des Grandes Alpes: the Maps
The Barcelonette loop ride over the Col d’Allos, Col de Champs and Col de la...
The Vision
The lower reaches of the Col de la Cayolle wind through a canyon carved by river. When...
Friday Group Ride #34
The King and His Chosen Heir? Great movement is afoot. The tides of change rise with...
Read More Posts From This CategoryMind
Friday Group Ride #37
As the transfer season churns and boils, riders lining up new teams and new plans...
peloton magazine
A new publisher is entering the market and is about to launch a new road bike magazine,...
FGR #36 Wrap
Could it be that we’re Grand Tour weary? Or is it that the list of favorites for...
Indecision
Joop Zoetemelk finished on the second step of the Tour de France podium six times....
Laurent Fignon: 1960-2010
We’re sad to learn of the death of Laurent Fignon. To Americans, he is most often...
Read More Posts From This CategoryMachine
Re-Thinking Travel With Bike, Part II
SRAM Apex might just be the most reliable and versatile drivetrain on the market Securing a frame I could pack and travel with easily was only half of the solution to the problem before me. I know from experience that I wouldn’t have been one of those riders to get stronger while racing a Grand Tour. I needed to build the Seven up with a component... [Read more of this review]
Re-Thinking Travel With Bike, Part I
My Seven Cycles Axiom, retrofitted with S&S Couplers by Bilenky Cycle Works Even before I knew I’d be joining Erickson Cycle Tours for the Route des Grandes Alpes I began researching a new solution to traveling with a bicycle. For more than 10 years I’ve been using a double BikePro case, which was perfect as long as I was traveling with another... [Read more of this review]
2011 Felt F1
Felt introduced its 2011 line of bicycles yesterday at its headquarters in Irvine. Frankly, it’s hard to imagine how a company of just 58 employees can do so much in a year. They have a new full-suspension mountain bike called the Edict. There’s a full-carbon version of the company’s ground-breaking Virtue. There’s a redesigned... [Read more of this review]
The Department of Goods
Back in the early ’90s I ran across a catalog for a Utah operation called Sierra Trading Post. It was the very first mail-order retailer I had run across selling closeout products from high-end outdoor manufacturers. The market has changed a great deal since then, with a great many new retailers entering the market and the paper catalogs giving... [Read more of this review]
Cannondale’s New Sheriff
Back in the 1990s Mario Cipollini was getting fined by the UCI with the frequency Cristiano Ronaldo seems to be fouled. The Lion King couldn’t just show up to a stage of a grand tour and ride it. No, he had to put on a show and when Cannondale became the sponsor of Cipollini’s Team Saeco, in them he found a willing partner to make an entry... [Read more of this review]
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