January should be struck from the calendar. What a waste of days. One day you’re singing the praises of global warming as you cycle along in summer kit, and the next you’re freezing your nutsack off and watching it “snow,” which in Colorado these days means greasing the streets just enough to keep the ERs and body shops busy.
If I had any brains and a little money to go along with them I’d be camping in McDowell Mountain Regional Park outside Fountain Hills, Arizona. Alas, I am short on both. Herself’s Subaru just got about four years’ worth of service all at once, and paydays remain uncertain as publishers try to find a pulse somewhere on the bike business.
The new owners of VeloNews have a mania for contracts that delayed my check for services rendered during January as online editor at large of the VeloNews.com website, and now we must negotiate a deal for the remaining 11 months of 2009. I’ve gotten along just fine for the past 20 years without a written deal with VeloNews, and so has VeloNews, but as the song goes, the times they are a-changin’.
Now we must set down at length in black and white what both parties already know — that for chasing typos around Al Gore’s Intertubes I will get a monthly paycheck and nothing else, and can be cut loose at any time with neither severance nor notice. Feh. When has it ever been otherwise? Cycling journalism is not a union gig, last time I checked.
And anyway, I learned a long time ago that a union card isn’t exactly a crucifix when it comes to warding off corporate vampires. The Newspaper Guild provided about as much protection as a thousand-year-old rubber when I found myself at odds with the management of The Pueblo Chieftain back in 1985. I negotiated my own buyout and got the fuck out of Dodge before they could sack my dumb ass. Before long I found an even worse job, at the Sentinel Publishing Co. in Denver, which laid me off two years later. No golden parachute that time, just six months of unemployment insurance.
My man Hal Walter is staring down that long lightless tunnel now, trying to figure out what’s next. He has a wife, child, mortgage and truck payment, in a changing world that seems to no longer need newspapers, so he can’t do what I did in January 1988 — give up the apartment, throw the dog and some essentials in the truck, and go looking for another newspaper job.
Mad Blog Media 
Patrick,
Can’t say that I’ve read VeloSchnooze anytime in the past three years. Reasons: not “news” when it’s delivered nearly a month late, the website was in serious need of updating with timely info (see previous) when compared to the ‘other site’ from Oz, and I could care less about some dude named “Lance.” In fact, I usually left the copy I was purloining where it served my best with said ‘superstar’ on the cover – in the ‘library’ with the ‘other reading materials.’ So if the guys/gals from the Schmooze want my cash for their product, or my eyes schmoozing their site, I might suggest that they cut the “LA Lovefest” and give us stuff that is at least “NEWS.” Un-retired bike racers aren’t NEWS anymore than bankrupted newspapers are NEWS. Let’s move on and get back to bike racing – not Lance loving. Or at least show some love to the former admitted drug addicts of the peloton, like the homey who’s racing again. Give it up for CG!!
Speaking of winter: the ToC will be in town on the 14th of next month. I’m getting my “Dope! Dope!! DOPE!!!” signs ready for the prime-time. Or maybe just reasting my lungs for the verbal abuse. Hopefully the weather will cooperate this year. Last year it sprinkled the entire time we were waiting at the vendor love-in and made my voice hoarse. But I still got in a few at Rock Racing. This year should be even better….haha
Oh, and to the suits from Competitor: what would BB do? He’d have more Roll and O’Grady in your fine magazine! Humor and senselss shenanigans are somehting that bike racing REALLY need in 2009.
Saying “NO” to L.A. since 2004!
Not sure which is worse: LA 24-7, or the “I’m too cool to care about LA” crowd.
Gotta admit, when the year features the return of three of the world’s top riders who have been out of action for the last two years, you gotta cover it.
Cyclingnews.com seems like bike news for folks with ADD and two second attention spans. Sometimes it’s cool to read an article that’s a couple of pages long, with at least one bad pun and an obscure reference.
Roll? Uh… let’s not.
Not sure how negotiating a contract for the upcoming year let’s them not pay you for work you already did, but if I understood big business…
The two things a union can provide of service are a legally binding contract between the employee and employer, and a very good lawyer who can get the bosses by the balls when they fail to live up to the deal. Getting that contract is the tough part–not sure how well a strike works these days in any business, to say nothing of the dispersed print media. Seems they have the grunts by the balls.
Quality labor lawyers are worth the price of dues if they are the shark on your side and you have a case. Our U of Hawaii faculty lawyer Tony Gill, also my USCF bike racing team captain back two decades ago, was very good at coming out of a courtroom with the boss’s balls in a sack over his shoulder.
Not sure how pro-union or how much into solidarity the folks in Patrick’s biz are these days. Strikes are economic warfare, and its never clear who the winners are until the smoke clears. Recall Ronnie Rayguns vs. PATCO. I was on the Union Board and its collective bargaining committee during the 2001 Univ. of Hawaii faculty strike. Had many a sleepless night wondering what the outcome was going to be for the 3,300 people we represented–thought a lot about PATCO. Fortunately, both sides gave a little and a contract was signed.
Good luck.
Khal,
I thought that name sounded familiar. I was an HBL member from ’96 to ’98. Lived in Kailua. Pretty sure I ran into you at least once. I wasn’t super-active in HBL — had a job that kept me off the island and jetting about the Pacific a bit — but tried to make all of the major rides.
Hi, SteveO’. Yep, that was me back in Honolulu making trouble both at the University and as an officer in HBL. I hope you enjoyed the rides!
Aloha,
Khal
Wha’ Steve I lost yah there good buddy it took too long to read your thingy…so I surfed on over to VeloBums and it still made no sense. Back about 10 years ago, there was this cool website that featured ALL the cycling news from around the globe…it was called “Bill’s Cycling News.” Best web site for bike geeks since the intertubes got going IMHO. But anyway, back at the ranch, the site had it all – including obscure references to Belgian cycling coverage. Something that the good ol’ boys in the People’s Republic of Shoulder never got around to. They seemed to go merrily on their little way jumping on the LA bandwagon and pimping themselves to the highest bidder; i.e. Trek.
Now I don’t profess to know jack diddly about bike stuff, but I can tell you that if I want to read about velo news I won’t be doing it on that site. Too many ads and not enough news. The guys in Oz seem to cover the sport a bit more openly. Heck, they even dedicate different parts of their site to things other than road racing (like cross, mountain, track and rarely BMX). That in my book is hardcore.
Or at least it was until their latest redesign. Their site is now in bed with one of those Euro mags who have a love affair with ol’ Tex. Dude’s been on the cover every month since 2008!! But heck it is still much better than the floatsam that is drivling out of the Shoulder Republic. Except for Fat Guy and the cartoons spewing forth from one Patrick O’Grady. That dude is hella funny, brah.
That’s if you can stay awake long enough to make it to his cartoons and/or rants that Inside Comm publishes between the ads and product placements for stuff from Trek, Specialized, Giant and/or Look. All great companies, but not the only fish in the sea.
But then again I guess I get what I pay for, right? And since I let my subscription lapse to VeloScmooze three years ago, I get even more news. Ironic isn’t it?