Bicycles

I have a bicycle problem.

Some people drink; others take drugs. I have been both of those people, sometimes all at once, and man, was it ever fun, too.

But bicycles are more fun. And that may be why I’m still getting sideways on bicycles instead of on booze and dope.

My most infamous work about bicycling was done over three decades with VeloNews and Bicycle Retailer and Industry News. And just as I started losing interest in dynamite-fishing those two ponds, Mike Deme tugged on my coat to ask if I had ever written about bicycle touring.

Huh? What? I had commuted, raced, and ridden just for fun, but the bulk of my touring had been via Japanese pickup truck, often at some newspaper editor’s urging (“Get the hell out of my newsroom!”). Thus I expressed a few reservations.

But Mike, Dog rest his soul, was a persistent cuss. And before I knew it, I found myself not only touring, but reviewing touring bicycles for him at Adventure Cyclist magazine.

Why not? Ignorance had never stopped me before, or even slowed me down. Hell, I didn’t know how to type when I got my first newspaper job at age 19.

“Better learn,” the city editor advised. And so I did. My technique was and remains self-taught, outlandish, and hard to watch. Nevertheless I get where I’m going, eventually.

And so did my bicycle reviews. Or so I’ve been told. The checks cleared, anyway.

Mike is gone, more’s the pity. And the 10 years’ worth of reviews I wrote for Adventure Cyclist are imprisoned behind a paywall. All save a few of the ones I wrote about bikes I bought, after the reviews were in the can. Those I downloaded before the portcullis dropped.

And you can read them below, if you so choose. Be advised that they were written for money under a cloud of ignorance using perhaps three of 10 fingers. It’s not my fault that several of these bicycles are no longer available. But then they tried to blame me for the demise of several newspapers, too.