Another blast from the past.
Here we go again (crash, bang, shriek, ow, wow, yow, zow). …
Tags: Tour de France
Phil ’er up
Mad Blog Media
Arf for arf's sake
Another blast from the past.
Here we go again (crash, bang, shriek, ow, wow, yow, zow). …
Tags: Tour de France
Mad Blog Media 
July 6, 2019 at 11:06 am |
Refresh my memory… The Tour de France… That’s the race we were grownups get on kids’ toys and ride in one big circle in their underwear , right?
July 6, 2019 at 11:22 am |
That’s the one. Now and then one of ’em topples over like Arte Johnson on his tricycle and then complains that the other fellers didn’t wait for him.
July 6, 2019 at 11:13 am |
Zzzzzzzz.
July 6, 2019 at 11:25 am |
You can tell it’s rigged ’cause Peter Sagan didn’t win. I blame Obama.
Meanwhile, here’s a little bicycle music to liven things up.
July 6, 2019 at 3:42 pm |
Obama must have put in the fix.
Seriously, the tour just doesn’t grab me anymore. It really got me riding more during the Postal years, but after Discovery folded, I just couldn’t justify spending that much time in front of the lobotomy box. You and Charles got me interested again for a little while, but it was a passing fancy. I was going to ride today, but the guitar grabbed me. But, I am chasing tandem wheel in the morning, but only for 90 minutes or so.
July 6, 2019 at 4:08 pm |
The UCI Deep State is not to be misunderestimated.
July 6, 2019 at 3:58 pm |
It was fun while it lasted. But I was never really a sports fan. I prefer doing to watching. Couldn’t have cared less about stick-and-ball sports as a kid, though I did enjoy some aspects of auto racing (Formula One, mostly, and Jim Hall/Chaparral in particular).
The thing I came to hate about the Tour was that covering the damn thing took a shit in my own cycling for three straight weeks. Add the Giro and the Vuelta and I missed out on a lot of riding, especially after we moved to Albuquerque, where it gets hot after the early morning.
July 6, 2019 at 11:51 am |
Ok, I liked it. But this is also the reason I generally only watched the Tour highlights rather than the whole thing back when we had some sort of high zoot cable.
July 6, 2019 at 11:57 am |
1998. Now what the hell was I doing back in 1998? I think by then I might have bought my first Old Guys jersey. I know I had it by the time I did my last Castle to Hanauma Bay TT, just before we moved to New Mexico. O’G, when did you first start making The Other Yellow Jersey?
July 6, 2019 at 12:13 pm |
Man, I dunno. Sometimes it feels like I’ve been doing this shit forever. Probably because I have.
Le Tour isn’t getting much traction in the mainstream media on this side of The Big Ditch. There’s NBC Sports Gold, if you want to trade your own gold for NBC’s. Elsewhere, NYT went with AP, and WaPo and LAT went with fuck-all.
Meanwhile, we have this: The Waltons to the rescue?
July 6, 2019 at 12:44 pm |
I think the coverage on this side of the pond was always about making money rather than interest in cycling. Once TCWSNBN was out of the picture, it was ho-hum, time to move on.
I’m not about to pay sixty bucks to watch it live, either.
July 6, 2019 at 12:49 pm |
We had two surges: LeMond and that other guy, Ol’ Whatsisface. Lacking a Yank contender to pitch to the rubes, the press looks elsewhere. The women’s World Cup, for instance.
July 6, 2019 at 2:31 pm |
I was part of the LeMond surge that I think started circa 1984. I had recently taken up Serious Cycling(tm) in the early eighties while recovering from a divorce. Four of us, my friend Chuck Herzig on his Eisentraut, my advisor Gil Hanson on his Bianchi, sedimentologist Bill Meyers (yep, that Bill Meyers https://www.usacycling.org/resources/national-champions-records/national-records ) on his Cannondale, and yours truly on another Cannondale used to ride from Stony Brook out onto the North Fork and back on Sundays, a 53 mile trip. Chuck and I used to duel for King of the Little Hills award in the White Trash Mountains (Middle Island Moraine) during the school week and then eat an entire baked ziti at my house, too. Bill Meyers and I did a torrid ride out east and back in 1986 that was probably the high point of my cycling life. Then Bill retired from being a college professor, moved to Colorado to be with brother Jim, and got serious about national championships.
Chuck and I called them thar hills the White Trash Mountains because if there was anywhere Chuck and I were going to be called “faggot” or worse due to our Protogs wool shorts and jerseys, it was down in those Middle Island towns. Sheesh, the place had some backwards folks. If you watched Do the Right Thing, you get the drift.
We got into Bicycling Magazine in its halcyon days and started watching the Bernard and Greg show like a newfound religion. Some good days those were. It seemed purer then, but probably wasn’t.
July 6, 2019 at 4:21 pm
I’ll see your Middle Island towns and raise you Devil’s Elbow, MO. Or anywhere in Tennessee. I could’ve made a small fortune on the 5¢ per can return off the half empty PBRs thrown at me.
July 6, 2019 at 3:37 pm |
I started with Bicycling and then went to Bicycle Guide and Winning: Bicycle Racing Illustrated. I also bought Barbara George’s quad-fold, newsprint Velo-news when I could find it.
There was some good stuff in those magazines. I’m pretty sure first heard of Albert Eisentraut via a Bicycle Guide story on triathlete Dave Scott. I immediately modeled my breakfast habits on his (Dave’s, not Albert’s), though I expect I was drinking more hooch than both of them plus the dudes who wrote and edited the article and thus a change in diet was unlikely to make me a champion anytime soon.
July 6, 2019 at 4:07 pm
I subscribed to the print version of Velo News back in Hawaii for a few years. That was when I was fantasizing I was a bicycle racer with the Oahu Cycling Team and when I first started emailing back and forth to some guy in Weirdcliffe. That subscription to VN and my USCF license lasted long enough for me to learn the term “Lanterne Rouge” up close and personal. So I got into cycling advocacy, where I was effective as something other than rolling wheel stock for my teammates. Still, it was fun. I did manage to win a time trial or two but when it came to jumps in a race, I was always left wondering where everyone else had gone.
July 6, 2019 at 12:55 pm |
We need some heroes for sure. But, we need them in politics, not in sports.
Glad I didn’t buy any Rapha stuff; it’s not my style (none in fact) anyway. Waltons have enough of our money. We don’t go to Walmart either.
July 6, 2019 at 2:38 pm |
Hard to be a hero in politics.
July 6, 2019 at 1:00 pm |
The Waltons owe the sport a little sumpin’-sumpin’ after all those years of selling shite bikes, which I suspect did not encourage buyers to stick with the sport.
I can’t even remember when I last set foot in a Walmart. It was just before an Interbike, I remember that.
I was having Sue Baroo the Fearsome Furster serviced at Heuberger in Bibleburg, and my Timex Ironman croaked on me. As I had some time on my hands (hor hor hor) I strolled over to Walmart and bought another. It was my only option within walking distance.
July 6, 2019 at 2:16 pm |
PO’G: Are they “still tickin'”? The Subie and the Timex. 🙂
July 6, 2019 at 3:30 pm |
They are indeed, JD. The Subie has only 135,000 miles on the odometer after 14 years, and the Timex — well, shoot, it’s Timex. Every 20 years or so I need to buy a new one.
July 6, 2019 at 4:10 pm |
After the Lance debacles I lost all interest in racing. Then, inevitably, I lost all desire to (try) ride fast. Started leaving the clip less pedals off my bikes and ditched the bone shaker skinny tires. Next came some upright bar conversions. Lo and behold riding became fun again and going slow, but far the preferred choice.
I was always an Eddy man and even bought a Falcon back in the day since he supposedly rode one for a short while. I have a feeling he just used their decals since my Falcons were horrible racing bikes. I shook The Canibals hand once at Interbike and had a picture snapped. I looked like a was gonna cry and Eddy looked like he would like to ping me in the nuts. Even post racing career he was one serious dude.
July 6, 2019 at 4:16 pm |
I always enjoyed the training more than the racing. In Bibleburg there were a bunch of us who were self-employed, underemployed, or otherwise at liberty during the day, and we’d do these long-ass rides just ’cause.
We’d attack each other for no good reason, barking Liggettisms (“The heads of state have come to the fore!”), and just have a high ol’ time. Come race day we mostly got murdered, but the racing was good for our training.
July 6, 2019 at 7:50 pm |
I don’t think I’ve ever written down the entire Willy Balmat cookbook story. Lordy, everyone gets their 15 minutes of fame. Pelkey, Lindsey, Vaughters, Andreu, the USPS bus, Evanshine …
July 6, 2019 at 10:06 pm |
We’re waiting, sounds like a good one! There’s very little writing about cycling that’s worth reading these days.