2008 Man of the Spring

The end of each Spring Classics season is always a bit of a downer. The season of epic conditions and hardmen passes to the natural next step of the season, the Grand Tours. Looking back at the spring. One rider stands out in particular for his wins and the incredible length of his peak form: Fabian Cancellara.

In 2007 Cancellara had a season anyone would kill for: six wins including the Time Trial World Championship plus one stage and the prologue of the Tour de France. Already this year he has had five wins led by Milan-San Remo and Monte Paschi Eroica. What’s most impressive about Cancellara’s season is that he held peak form for two full months. Boonen might have taken Cancellara in the sprint at Roubaix, but Cancellara was winning for the eight weeks before that.

Even when Cancellara didn’t get the win, such as at Flanders, he usually figured as one of the day’s protagonists. We don’t often see that anymore. More often, the pattern is one of a patron we’ve been waiting to give us a show, and waiting. Finally, we get the fireworks as we did with Boonen at Roubaix, but we’re a hungry bunch and we like to see a great rider give their best a little more often. To be fair, Stijn Devolder’s performance at Flanders threw water on Boonen’s ride over the mur; he certainly seemed strong enough to win.

Like I said, we’re a hungry bunch. We want wins from our heros. Winning in February and April is PRO. One big day in three months isn’t how we live our riding lives. Whether you consider it selfish or delusional, when Saturday dawns, we want to ride at full strength and full fitness—that’s the best kind of Saturday there is. Cancellara’s two months of crushing fitness is just the sort of inspiration we need, just the message we want to hear.

Photo courtesy John Pierce, Photosport International

Foolproof

When Coca-Cola elected to roll out New Coke and then backpedaled like a messenger in traffic only to introduce Coke Classic, one of the great crimes of pop culture was committed. How could anyone mess with so simple, so perfect an item as Coca-Cola? If you doubt the severity of the crime, drop by a kosher deli and get an imported Coke with actual sugar in it. The pleasure centers of your brain will be bathed in the soothing kiss of pure sugar. You will smile. You might even hum a jingle.

Coke Classic proves that some things shouldn’t be messed with, either by the producer looking to make a faster buck or by competitors looking for hunk of market share. There’s more to be said for consumer service than gets said, unfortunately.

The inexorable march of progress catches ideas both great and awful in its maw. As it happens the bike industry has been particularly susceptible to the awful idea. From indexed steering systems intended to help you carve the perfect arc to automatic shifting systems guaranteed to keep you at a cadence of 85 rpm, lots of bad products get made for bicycles each year.

It’s hard to imagine that so innocuous an item as a rim strip would give anyone cause to think twice about how to insulate a tube from a rim, but once you’ve experienced more than one faulty rim strip in the same ride, you’ll find yourself out for blood with the vengeance of a clean cyclist accused of doping.

I’ve had rim strips melt in a hot car and cause double flats. I’ve had the new polyester ones slide and expose spoke holes, giving me a succession of flats. I’ve had the butyl ones break and expose nipples, causing shockingly sudden flats.

Each of these incidents could have been avoided had one precaution been taken: Spend the extra money on Velox rim stips. Able to withstand pressures that a would render a blow dryer lethal, the seemingly ineffectual adhesive on the back of the rim strip secures the stip in place sufficiently. I’ve never experienced a rim tape-related flat when using Velox rim strips. And at this point I’m frustrated enough with the others that I’ve thrown them all out.

I’m all for making things better as innovation remakes our world. However, products that don’t offer any noticeable improvement shouldn’t see the store shelf. Any reasonable person might surmise that a superior rim strip could be produced; cut the weight and improve the adhesive’s stickiness and you’d have a home run, right? But in an era of constant innovation, surprisingly, no one has managed it. Stunning when you consider Velox has been around longer than the folding clincher. A lot longer.

If someone actually invents a rim strip that improves on the Velox, I’m all ears, but until then, I’ll pay retail—no team or club discount, no industry bro deal, just straight retail; it matters that much.

Call it my insurance policy.

The Balance

Through cycling, I have come to know more of the world than I encountered through any other endeavor of my life. Cycling has given me an appreciation of both foreign cultures and languages. I’ve gained a greater appreciation of world history, of manufacturing processes, heck, even economics. It’s not an overstatement to say that cycling has given me the world.

One of the more unexpected pleasures cycling presented me is an appreciation of wine. I don’t claim that cycling made me appreciate wine; that would make for a rather idiotic suggestion. Rather, it was in my travels as a cyclist that I had my personal wine epiphany.

I’d had a Margaux and Napa Cabs but it wasn’t until I’d had the tiniest taste of the Vieux Telegraphe Chateauneuf du Pape during a trip to Provence that my brain said, “Hold the phones: We want more of that!”

Through wine I’ve gained a greater appreciation of land, climate and a fresh perspective on the change of seasons. It’s also a new take on real estate, to say nothing of the patience required to wait for the product to mature. Only a Richard Sachs customer has this kind of patience.

What I’ve noticed is that most of the places I like to ride, with the exception of the most mountainous terrain, also happen to be great for growing wine. Riding by the ordered rows of vineyards is peaceful and relaxing.

The intersection point between wine and cycling is, naturally, problematic. The monastic life of the competitive cyclist doesn’t mesh well with alcohol and wine drinking doesn’t tend to lead to spontaneous episodes of exercise. Balancing the two means I must watch how much I drink so that I can continue to ride well while wine reminds me I need to live a little.

It occurred to me one evening after a particularly difficult ride as I was enjoying a glass of a big fruit bomb that my taste in riding terrain and in wine bears something in common. I like roads and wines that are unpredictable, straightforward in their appeal, off the beaten path, on the flashy side and rather thrilling as they go down. In cycling, that means mountain roads with dramatic vistas and thrilling descents, and in wine I define it as big, fruit-driven wines, particularly Zinfandels.

I’m slower for drinking wine, there’s no doubt. I’m also poorer for it. Nonetheless, my life has been enriched by it as much as it has been enriched by cycling. It has taught me to take my time with meals, the value of slow food, and in a world being inexorably homogenized by big box retailers, bringing home a bottle of wine from my travels can be a way to bring home a real reminder of a place, an actual taste of the place itself. Long after my memory of the roads begin to fade, I can open that bottle to bring out the sun of a perfect day.

Baking

In my years, I’ve known a number of women who liked to bake. Nay, loved to bake. They did it as a way to pass time, to dote on loved ones, to find peace. While I could never deny the magic that came of the result, what I saw in the process was a mess that required extraordinary amounts of cleanup. As a one-pan sort of cook, the array of mixing bowls and cooking tins one session could dirty always made me question the effort required in the endeavor.

Recently, I saw the movie “Waitress”—twice actually—and I realized that I’m a baker of sorts as well. In the movie we hear the main character, Jenna, played by Keri Russell, discuss her love of pie making in an interior dialog. Some of the points the movie’s writer and director (the tragically deceased Adrienne Shelly) touched on—the peaceful meditative state she reaches, the solitude, the love of the process—are all things I love about working on bicycles.

I’ve loved the bicycle as a machine since the days of the Tourney derailleur. I couldn’t resist the urge to work on my first bicycle even before I knew how it functioned. Fortunately, I didn’t kill the headset when my chopper bars got twisted and I used channel locks on the adjustable cup to make an adjustment.

I’ve learned a thing or two about working on bikes since, thank heaven. I haven’t relied on my ability to work on bikes to bring the cash in for nearly 15 years, but I still do all my own bike work. The work takes longer now, as I suppose baking a cake does for the home baker as opposed to the PRO. My slower pace has done nothing to lessen my love of working on a bike.

My preferred time to do it is Saturday afternoon following a shower and lunch. Unlike Radio Freddy’s precision-timed bike wash routine, when I get to the garage, I treat the excursion as a process of discovery. I’m always aware of a few items to complete, but I take my time about my work and don’t mind taking some extra time for an inspection to see what else turns up.

Working on my significant other’s bicycle is a win-win to me. I get to work on a bike (fun) and then be thanked for doing something sweet (even better). Imagine having your SO tell you to go play video games. Could it really get better? As a guy with all the charming romance of an oil change, bike work is a way for me to distinguish my greater efforts from a day’s mundane tasks.

With my iPod playing a collection of B-sides, I can tune out the rest of the world, feel the heft of the wrench in my hand, watch the swing of the derailleurs, and rewrap the bar as many times as I want until each the tape follows each contour and turn. With each turn of the wrench I’m paying respect to the sport, to my safety, to my sanity: We all need time to feel at peace without the burden of a timetable.

Image courtesy Fox Searchlight Pictures.

Torelli Gavia and Lugano Tires

I’m fussy about a lot of things. From how I make my peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to which glass I drink wine from, I tend to make selections with some forethought. Likewise, I’m picky about tires. While I do believe there are a great many perfectly serviceable tires out there, when I buy a tire, I want something that offers sensitivity, excellent grip and low rolling resistance. I don’t need a casing that can withstand 60,000 psi and can only be cut by a diamond. That’s like insuring a migrant farm worker in a Pinto for seven figures. Part of the fun of cycling is, well, the fun, and if the tire rolls like something from the Flintstones, there’s not much point.

I’ve put more than 4000 miles on the Torelli Gavia open tubular. It uses a 320 tpi polyester casing, enjoys a hand-vulcanized tread and barely tips the scale at 200g. Polyester has nearly the same suppleness as cotton at the same thread count, but doesn’t cut quite so readily. I mentioned these last fall during our Interbike coverage. There's a reason I'm mentioning them again.

It's true that running these tires, I do get flats. So what. The ride quality of the Gavia is as good as I’ve had the pleasure to experience in using any manner of clincher. I simply do not run any other tire any more.


Recently, I had the opportunity to ride a set of tubular wheels you’ll see reviewed in the near future. I decided to try the more erudite brother to the Gavia, the Lugano. Made from the same casing and tread, it opts for a puncture-resistant latex tube and weighs in at 280g.

As impressed as I am with the Gavia’s performance, I can still note an improvement in ride quality that only comes with tubulars. What a gas! I had the opportunity to ride the Luganos at 105 psi over some pretty rough roads recently and actually smiled as I noticed how they smoothed the road for me. A good tire should do that; it should make cycling fun and increase your sense of the road surface, making you a more confident rider. In the vernacular, this tire is the opposite of Kryptonite.

These tires beg the question: Why don't we make a bigger deal about handmade tires? You can spend more for a tire, but when $69.99 (for the tubular, $59.99 for the clincher) does the job, there’s just no point.

www.torelli.com

The Guilty Pleasure

I indulge myself in rich refusals.
—Donald Justice

As cyclists, we define endure. From the way we suffer during our efforts to the way we consistently go out to train day after day, year after year and even the way we deprive ourselves of dietary items that seem for all the world utterly innocuous, we could teach a thing or two to Sisyphus.

For all our discipline, all our deprivations, the dedication to a life in which we find meaning, we can—and should—occasionally have a holiday. A respite in which we reacquaint ourselves with life’s simpler pleasures has the ability to maintain our motivation but perhaps more importantly, it has the ability to keep our dedication from becoming a prison.

Whether it’s a glass of Cabernet, a chocolate bar or a nap, we find renewal in places both familiar and surprising. And what we need to keep us going changes just as our needs for speed work or endurance miles vary from day to day.

We know how the exception does prove the rule: the genetic freak who can drop us on any climb after being off the bike for the last two weeks, or the day so devoid of traffic that we know to be grateful (and mindful) on the spin home. So it is that the guilty pleasure is the exception in our lives, an event so incongruous to our daily habits as to cause friends and family to utter the universal exclamation of amazement: "Whoa!"

The PROgram

For most riders I know, the season begins with the sluggish pace of an early morning. Those first rides are spent as if we were wiping the sleep from our eyes. We pile on the base miles and our bleary legs gradually stir.

So too, does our seriousness for the sport. As if jolted by a shot of caffeine, we realize that dessert must, well, we must at least cut back. Maybe that second beer or glass of wine isn’t quite so necessary. We can’t miss any days this week if we’re going to be fit in time for the rendezvous. We’re on the PROgram.

The PROgram is a system, a coordinated effort that begins with a mindset of seriousness that only others who willingly sacrifice life’s pleasures may understand. We recognize that achievement is the result of nothing so much as hard work, that the existentialists got it right when they realized, as Bruce Cockburn sang, “Nothing worth having comes without some kind of fight.”

And so the PROgram is a siege. It is undertaken with full knowledge that no matter how much we want the result now, no force of will “can alter time, speed up the harvest or …” nevermind. It’s not happening today; there will be no new you is six weeks.

We speak of the life as monastic; it has much in common with religion, for it does require daily devotion. The PROgram instills in us a set of values, guides us in our actions, differentiates between the good miles and the junk miles and creates an arc to each day, week and month. There is a similarity to the circular nature of our routines and many prayer cycles. And like the religious, as we see the benefits, we become more devout.

Beyond the base miles, we move through that first build phase and toward the first tests. It’s midterm all over again, but this time, we look forward to it. We seek the results, but they are little more than a treat, a dessert at the end of a good meal. We say the PROgram is only a method, a system, but the fact is while we think of it as a means to an end, rather than an end in itself, to suggest that we only pursue the program for the form is to imply that we’d really rather not suffer. And if that were the case, we wouldn’t tell the stories of miles spent in misery, the utter horror we feel if we realize we’re not closing a gap, the amount of lactic burn to which we willingly subject ourselves. If we didn’t love the suffering, the very endeavor of the training, we’d have given up long ago.

There is no mistaking the way form satisfies. But the best lessons we learn come in those moments when the outcome isn’t certain. They come in the day’s great challenge when we muster, moments that may have occurred kilometers before the ending. Sitting up in triumph isn’t the victory. Living the PROgram is the victory.


Photo courtesy John Pierce, Photosport International

Six Figures

Jan Ullrich has elected to pay a fine to the Bonn Prosecutor’s office, thus ending the investigation into his possible sporting fraud through doping. Ullrich is reported to have paid six-figures to make the investigation go away. Most of us wouldn't voluntarily write a check that large unless real estate was involved.

Naturally, the out-of-court settlement allows Ullrich to admit no guilt. That works fine for major corporations, but in this instance it has the feel of closing the gate after the horse has left the barn.

The case began after allegations arose that Ullrich was one of the athletes who had used the services of Dr. Eufemiano Fuentes’s Spanish clinic. An alias for Ullrich had been found in the doctor’s records. That was enough to send German authorities into action.

German authorities launched a criminal inquiry that allowed them to request blood and plasma from Spanish officials. The basis of the criminal complaint was sporting fraud, that by winning the Tour de France while using banned substances and forbidden doping techniques, Ullrich had defrauded his employer of millions of Euro, thus illegally increasing his income.

The authorities tested both blood and plasma found at Fuentes’s clinic. Prosecutors, in a turn that wouldn’t fly in the U.S., announced that they had confirmed a DNA match between the seized blood and plasma and Ullrich. As trials by public go, the announcement was effective enough that Ullrich retired from the sport almost immediately after the announcement.

In a gentler time, the world might have let Ullrich go quietly. But there has been a widespread desire to know the truth, to find out just how prevalent doping was, if only one rider at a time.

Ullrich’s settlement lacks the finality of a conviction in court and while he insists he has done nothing wrong—that he has never used performance enhancing drugs or used illicit means to boost his performance—there is ample credible evidence that he all but had Fuentes on a retainer. Even though the criminal investigation has ended, there is more than enough damning evidence to have tarnished the athlete’s career

So the chapter on doping titled “Jan Ullrich” is at an end, right? Wrong. Ullrich’s settlement seems to be an effort into stopping any further inquiry into his alleged (or confirmed) doping. Unfortunately, Ullrich has a history of underestimating his opposition. First it was Marco Pantani. Then Lance Armstrong. Then the German Cycling Federation when he moved to Switzerland and registered as a Swiss pro; that didn’t stop the investigation into his activity as he was employed by a German team. It could just be that Ullrich hasn’t taken into account the next phase of “The Persecution of Jan Ullrich.”

T-Mobile has ample evidence to file a civil claim against him.

To the degree that his settlement was meant to end investigation into doping activities by the Olympic Gold Medalist, Ullrich was successful, but to the degree that the settlement was meant to protect his legacy, and ultimately his Yellow Jersey from the 1997 Tour de France, the settlement might prove to be fuel for a civil claim by T-Mobile. If they do file suit and prevail in court, ASO is guaranteed to come calling for that yellow shirt.

For the PROs of the '90s, riding in a doped peloton was a classic double-bind. The riders were damned if they rode clean and damned if they abandoned their values to be competitive. And now it is our turn.

As fans of cycling, there is no satisfactory outcome for us. If we choose to endorse the retroactive rewriting of the record books, we find ourselves on a slippery slope that would eventually see not only Bjarne Riis’ and Ullrich’s Yellow Jerseys seized, but also that of Marco Pantani and the Polka-Dot Jerseys of Richard Virenque on our way to record books filled with names we don’t recognize as greats.

If, instead, we dismiss the doping of the '90s as being an unfortunate footnote to cycling’s past, we turn our backs on those honest athletes who suffered at the hands of a supercharged peloton, suffered as only Prometheus could appreciate. Who says Ullrich shouldn't pay for his part?


Photo courtesy of John Pierce, Photosport International

The Perfect Race

In a world where possibility can be celebrated, there are times when even the expected can seem unexpected and the unanticipated can seem orchestrated. So it was that when Tom Boonen stood up and sprinted away from Alessandro Ballan and Fabian Cancellara in the final 200 meters of Paris-Roubaix it was hard not to cheer in triumph. It was the quintessential ending to the ultimate race.

It was the second Classic to end thus this season. In seeing Stijn Devolder in the Belgian National Champion’s jersey crossing the line alone in triumph, the world achieved a certain satisfactory order. The alliterative quality of a Flandrian wearing the flag in Flanders fits. Could there have been a more appropriate outcome?

The fact is we love great champions. The masterful stroke of the great hardman never disappoints and we love to see the move of exceptional strength and style. But the danger here is dominance. We want the possibility of a range of winners, an as-yet-to-be-determined outcome, rather than the foregone conclusion. For most folks Indurain’s Tour wins in ’94 and ’95 were, well, boring. And not too many of the cycling cognoscenti were psyched about Lance’s exploits in the ’05 Tour. And lest anyone think that winning is routine for Boonen, just check the delight on his face; we should all be so lucky as to find such joy.

In a Classic the possible winners number nearly 200 and to those of us weaned on the either/or of football, basketball and baseball, possibilities on that order might as well be infinite. Compared to bike racing, betting on football is easy; even roulette offers better odds.

It's true that seeing a domestique such as Wampers or Demol win can be exciting, but often such a victory is a let-down for its lack of the mark of a known champion. Which is why young Martijn Maaskant’s fourth place might have been the ideal compromise. While the win went to a definitive star of Roubaix, Maaskant’s fourth was a memorable rookie performance and yet another great statement from what is arguably cycling’s most conspicuously clean program.

Had Boonen rolled out of Compiégne with a dozen wins in hand from this spring, the threat of his utter dominance would have cast him in the roll of villain, the obstacle to be overcome. And at Roubaix, the star of the day should always be the course; nothing should ever upstage the stones. Without the wins in hand, we wondered when Tornado Tom would delight us with yet another display of his power. Similarly, Cancellara was an unknown, but for different reasons. Having already performed brilliantly at Milan-San Remo and Monte Pasche Eroica—heck, he’d been going well ever since the Tour of California—we knew he was strong, but he missed the move at Flanders, and frankly, you had to wonder if he could maintain winning form for yet another week. And let’s not forget Ballan. He’d put it together once before and was showing great form at Flanders.

When that trio went up the road part of the satisfaction we felt was in our understanding the dynamic. To the uninitiated, they were just three very fast cyclists. To us, they were the masters, eliminating the weak and working the odds; it was as much chess as it was brute force.

As they entered the velodrome in Roubaix, we knew the winner would come from that trio and while we can each be forgiven our partisan preferences, we knew any one of them would make for a fitting winner, a champion in the classic sense. Ballan would be a surprise for extending his range, Boonen would be a pleasure in seeing him confirm his mastery of the cobbles and Cancellara would be a shock for the sheer unlikeliness of the repeat and of carrying his form for weeks on end.

With reality increasingly scripted by Hollywood, the sight of Ballan, Boonen and Cancellara together was both more natural and more surprising than we've come to expect. In the end, Boonen’s sprint was a definitive statement that eliminated the almost, the what if, giving him what every champion deserves, a place in history.


Photo courtesy John Pierce, Photosport International

BKW Featured on Slowtwitch!

Following our post on Pacific Cycle's purchase of Cannondale, Slowtwitch Publisher Dan Empfield got in touch with us and expressed some interest in working together.

Trek announced it was dumping LeMond yesterday which was just the occasion Empfield was looking for to get back in touch. You can read our analysis here.

Imperfection Is Perfection

“I love working at the bench. It’s the best part of the job.”—Richard Sachs

Filmmaker Desmond Horsfield has made a documentary about Richard Sachs. Having now seen the work no less than a half dozen times, I can say it is a momentous work encompassing all that Richard Sachs is: frame builder, racer and philosopher.

There are a number of theories about why Richard Sachs is arguably the most popular of all frame builders. I’ve often pondered the issue myself. Now I know. Even though I’ve known Sachs for more than 15 years, the documentary condenses the man to his essence. He is, frankly, the archetypal frame builder. Equal parts artisan, engineer, racer and theoretician, he is all things we imagine a master should be.

The film opens where it should: With riding shots of Sachs aboard his bike. Riding the bike is, after all, where it begins and ends for Sachs and where he wants the experience to begin and end for his clients.

From riding, Horsfield moves next to a shot of Sachs brazing. The thrill of seeing Sachs braze is akin to seeing Audrey Hepburn or Grace Kelly walk onscreen. It’s the moment we’ve all been waiting for. The drama we experience as we watch is Horsfield’s creation. His camera movements are efficient, economic even, and his editing seamless, fluid.

Filmmaking is much like sculpture and the artist’s real talent comes in knowing what to take away; how to leave just enough behind. What you see onscreen is imperative.

One wonders how many people have actually seen the man braze. Like painting or writing, brazing is solitary effort, and as rarely recorded as whales mating. What you notice is his precision of movement, how his hands execute each act with the assured grace of the routine. To see him braze is to know the brush stroke of Monet. And all the while the voiceover continues as a counterpoint to the physicality of fabricating the frame itself.

Sachs gave Horsfield a surprisingly rich vein to mine. From saved letters and newspaper clipping to old photos and videotape, Sachs’ archives add a depth to the film utterly unexpected. We also see Sachs racing in his latest passion, cyclocross, and seeing him work his way up through slower traffic tells you just how serious he takes racing.

I expected to watch the film and come away with a better sense of how to build a great bicycle frame from steel. That didn’t happen. Ultimately, the film raises more questions than it answers. It’s a window into an endeavor, not a skill. That, perhaps, might be Horsfield’s great achievement; he created a film that reflects the conversation that Sachs wants to have, not the job skill we may imagine frame building to be.

In documenting Sachs’ lifetime of work, Horsfield has not only created a great film about two subjects we find fascinating—Sachs and frame building—but he has created an indispensable work for all those who find beauty in cycling.


To order the DVD go here. To learn more about the film maker and see a clip, go here.

Spring Is Here

Establishing shot: Cyclist shown from shins down walking up stairs. With each step water squeezes from his booties. The brand is unrecognizable thanks to a mellange of mud and sand. As the camera backs up you see the thick tights and jacket covered in sand too. The bike on his shoulder is covered in grime. The cyclist shivers uncontrollably, drops his keys twice before ramming one into the lock on his apartment. He opens the door, sets the bike down and begins to strip: First the neoprene gloves, then the glasses, helmet, struggles with the jacket zipper and as he staggers, naked, from the foyer, we see a wet, dirty spot on the wall where he leaned while he struggled with his socks.

That’s a memory I have of a succession of springs I spent in New Belgium. I would ride the eight miles to the university to go train with my cycling team, ride some 40 miles with them, then turn off and head back to my apartment. I’d do this two or three days during week while I was a graduate student and the oldest guy on the team.

On phone calls home to my mother she’d ask me about spring. I’d tell her about eight inches of snow, about sand on the shoulders of roads, about stretches of black ice, the ride nicknamed “DMC,” not in honor of a rap star, but rather Jan and Dean’s “Dead Man’s Corner,” how the name was apt, how I couldn’t keep my bike clean, that, in short, spring did not exist in New Belgium.

Then, every year, at some point in May the daily temperatures would rise into the 70s, I’d notice the piles of black snow were gone, and gardens sprouting full of flowers; all this, seemingly overnight. Frankly, sitting thousands of miles away, I can’t remember a single ride I did in the spring that featured 60-degree temperatures and that distinctly “springy” smell: you know, the one that is part rain, part fresh manure, and part pollen. I hated spring in New Belgium. Loved summer, was crazy about the fall, and as a ski instructor, I couldn’t get enough of the winter … but spring … spring was a prison.

Miserable training ride after wet, miserable training ride went by and I’d gradually ride myself into shape. I’d arrive home each day humbled—nay—humiliated by the conditions. I’d stagger into the shower and turn the hot water up gradually until I stopped shivering.

I’ve been away now for nearly 12 years. Or have I? I recently heard the editor of a prominent mountain bike magazine say that Central California was being called “New Belgium” as a result of all the rain that fell during the Amgen Tour of California. New Belgium was meant to refer to a different place, one with snow and maple syrup. But he had a point.

New Belgium is anywhere where the riding is unpleasant. Where 20 miles can be epic. Where the stench on the road is organic, stronger than mustard gas and likely to stain a jersey the color of chocolate. The roads are nastier than a Hollywood attitude and the skies grayer than a battleship.

Here I must take a page from my mentor, James Tate. In his poem “Stella Maris” he concludes a harrowing account of an overwhelming encounter with a “beaten, disheveled” priest with the statement “only now do I look back on my darkest hour with nostalgia.” I relish the New Belgium spring. I treasure the shivering, the frozen roads, the sand, the frost heaves, my shattered, wretched self, a landscape too hard to love outright.

Photo courtesy John Pierce/Photosport International

Giro d'Italia 1953

The fluid Fausto Coppi at his best.

Amateur v. PRO: Part 2—PRO

To recap: athlete gets support: supporting government gets international prestige. That would constitute quid pro quo, which makes what the athlete does a job. We might at this point dispense with the notion of an “amateur” athletics at the Olympic level.

Art vs. Commercialism?

There is a burgeoning practice in Hollywood of placing products in movies and television. It started simply enough: Recall the Klein (then Cannondale, then Klein again) hanging in Jerry Seinfeld’s apartment? Both companies sold oodles of bikes thanks to the cache that came with the Seinfeld association. Today, though, the practice has become an organized sales pitch where script writers are being courted to make particular products are part of the story arc. Done gracefully, a product placement can slip into a storyline as seamlessly as Steve McQueen’s Mustang in Bullitt. Done poorly, it has the ability to distract the storyline, making the final product a clumsy, long and heavy-handed advertisement. Seeing the cast members of American Idol sing the praises of Ford just doesn’t seem quite so cool. Actually, to most people, it seems utterly lame.

It’s not hard to guess why we want our entertainment to be free of commercial interests. If anything, the reduction of our free-time interests to the classification “entertainment” is part of the problem. Entertainment implies a kind of throw-away or optional quality. However, it’s anything but.

Whether your spend your evenings reading books, watching movies or sports on television, or listening to music, each of these diversions has the power to brighten our lives. Done well, they can show us the power of the human spirit and encourage us to risk achieving more ourselves.

And there’s the rub: The most powerful stories usually come from the greatest practitioners of the discipline, not the upstarts. Sure, there are exceptions, but the performances that inspire our lives share a common commitment. Martin Scorcese, The Beatles, William Shakespeare, Claude Monet and Eddy Merckx committed their lives to their professions. Each epitomizes what it means to be PRO. There’s no way to reconcile the Olympic ideal with an amateur status. What cycling needs now is no different from what it has needed all along: We want great champions of integrity. We want riders who race clean so that when we see a win, it confirms our belief in the value of honesty and hard work.

Amateur v. PRO: Part 1—Amateur

The promise of amateur athletics is a utopian ideal where physical achievement and the triumph of the human spirit remain impervious to the contamination of capitalism. This idealism grown in a world where basic needs aren’t in doubt, a Star Trek society where you do what you’re good at and are adequately rewarded with a happy off-duty life.

If only it were so.

So why do we have this fantasy of sports uncorrupted by capitalism? Because it creates the impression, if not outright illusion of athletics pursued for the sake of excellence alone—the real Olympic ideal. There are those of us who mistrust the introduction of money into any endeavor. After all, money is the source of greed and greed is among the most cancerous of human frailties because it has the ability to hurt the community.

There is, however, nothing wrong with the desire to see athletics freed of cash’s ability to short-circuit our sense of ethics and fair play. But let’s ask the question: Independent of our desires for the Olympics to be wrested from the grip of professional sportsmen, what do we believe will be gained by having amateur athletes contest the Olympics? There are many possible answers, but one is most likely.

The simple truth is that we want to see sports pursued for the simple pleasure of honest, but profoundly skilled competition. We want to see sports played to the height of their given excellence. And we want that to happen in a setting in which the drive for achievement is nothing more than the love of the game.

Unfortunately, different people have different drives. Sure, there are examples of athletes, musicians and artists who were driven by their dedication to their craft and often their commercial achievement suffered because they were so inattentive to the realities of the marketplace. However, some people excel because they see athletics or art as a means to an end. Achieving in one arena provides the fuel to acquire the good life, much like a career in acting can lead to success in politics.

While we can expect that most athletes aspiring to the Olympics have the same goal, it is unreasonable to believe that we can persuade all athletes to be motivated by the same ideals. The corrupting element of riches can be eliminated from amateur sports before an athlete competes in the Olympics, but one cannot stop the rush of money that comes with winning Olympic gold. And because Olympic gold is a guarantee of short-term success and a good insurance plan on long-term success, no one should ever believe that an athlete who wins gold will willingly continue a lifestyle marked by deprivation.

We may doubt the achievements of professional athletes who have the resources necessary to employ a medical team that can not only guide a doping program, but has the requisite sophistication to avoid detection. And for some reason, this has fostered a belief that stripping a sport of financial reward will eliminate the threat of a sport degraded by doping. ‘If you get rid of the money, you’ll get rid of the drugs,’ seems to be the thinking. But will a return to the days of amateur status, i.e. financial deprivation, really bring about the change we seek?

In short, no. Athletes seeking that short cut to glory and riches will do what’s necessary to get results. It would likely eliminate the systematic drug programs of the ‘90s, but such a change will not ensure a clean sport.

We must also ask the question: What does it mean to be an amateur and how does that relate to the Olympic ideal? The Olympics are meant to be mankind’s greatest expression of athletic excellence, epitomizing what the human body can accomplish with proper training. Broadly defined, an amateur is anyone who engages in a sport on an unpaid basis. Put simply, no one makes it to the Olympics while holding down a full-time job that pays the bills.

If we look at the modern Olympic movement, the participation of “amateur” athletes is characterized in most countries by a national athletic federation supporting the athletes in dormitories or apartments and covering their basic financial needs. In absolute terms, these athletes live at a subsistence level, though former Iron Curtain athletes were said to live far better than the average citizen.

This seems to be a reasonable arrangement. No one would contest the understanding that the training necessary to win an Olympic gold medal can not be done while holding down a full-time job. Ask any cyclist who has ever raced if they could have been faster had they not worked.

These national federations receive substantial value by supporting aspiring Olympians; by providing them “room and board” they increase the likelihood that one of the athletes will bring their country the prestige that comes with a gold medal. Which is why governments fund these national federations. While not as distasteful as a political manifesto, touting a country’s Olympic accomplishments is still propaganda.

Andy Hampsten's Land Shark

One of the most interesting bikes at the Handmade Bicycle Show lacked the high-polished freshness of many of the bikes that had been assembled in the 72 hours prior to display. John Slawta of Land Shark presented the bike he built in 1988 for Andy Hampsten, the bike he would go on to win the Giro d'Italia aboard.

The bike featured crisp lug work and fastback seatstays.





In one corner of Slawta's booth he displayed the original promotional poster put out by Cinelli celebrating that great day on the Gavia. However, the most curious aspect of the display was in the lower right corner of the frame.

Slawta displayed a postcard signed by Andy and members of the 7-Eleven team.

Slawta's hand-scrawled notes regarding Andy's requested frame measurements. The bike was built around 56.5cm top and seat tubes a 74-degree seat-tube angle, 73.5-degree head tube angle and only 35mm of fork rake, resulting in a whopping 6.42cm of trail, which is roughly a full centimeter more than is used in most racing bikes made today. With so much trail, the bike steered deliberately and remained calm at high speed, just like our hero did on those crazy descents in the Dolomites.

The Crash

In the moment of the unfolding the brain’s most primitive, most knowing, self registers a change which radiates out as instantly as light, and our stomachs confuse with the drop of an elevator: Something is wrong.

Whether the event is a yard sale of our cycling self strewn with the force of a wet dog shaking itself dry or the seemingly accelerated zoom view of the single fence post growing as we slide toward it, our first real thought is: I can get up, get back in the race. It’s not so bad.

What defines this event as either comedy or tragedy is the very nature of PRO. When a mortal crashes, the race is almost always over. Give up any more than a thimble-full of blood—the proverbial pound of flesh—and witnesses will do whatever is necessary to prevent us getting back on the bicycle. Quitting a race for any injury that can be addressed with Bactine is comic. However, the very nature of PRO, what it means to be PRO is to get back up and get on the bike. For a guy, there is nothing more PRO than dripping blood and being fast at the same time.

For a PRO, there are no choices. When a PRO doesn’t get up it’s because getting up simply isn’t possible. When they pedal away in pain so obvious we turn away from the sight, we know the meaning of tragic.

In the knowledge that we are crashing, the reptilian brain takes over. Glands fire and a hormone simple as sugar and effective as gasoline takes over. Time slows down and we have time to think: I just bought this jacket. I knew he couldn’t hold his line. I’m going to shred my skinsuit. I have a presentation on Monday. I promised to anchor the leadout.

The world stops moving, seconds pass and then reality takes over. I need some help. Oh wow, this means a trip to the hospital. If the crash isn’t too serious, you make the call to your significant other yourself. If someone else calls, well, that’s more stress than they deserve.

Through the process we have but one choice to consider: Do I fill the prescription for painkillers? Gritting it out with Ibehurtin is PRO, and we all want to be PRO. But the simple fact is we each have our price, the point at which we say, Drugs? Yeah, give me the drugs. Now!

The lifestyle of the crash victim is unlike that of the cyclist. We discuss the merits of Tegaderm, how we sit when we drive, which parts we need to replace. The bottom line on the cost.

The first ride back is a contradiction of experience. Riding is both familiar and somehow alien. The legs rarely enjoy the first full revolution of the pedals. And yet being in the saddle, feeling the air pass is a sign that the world is improving and that familiarity is comforting despite being the cause of so much pain. The physical exertion reminds us of that pain and we often cut that first ride short. How often we overestimate our post-crash capability.

We measure our progress in increasing flexibility, pink skin, disappearing scabs. Gradually, rear wheels lose their power to inflict claustrophobia, turns seem less like hidden skating rinks.

There comes a moment in a ride, sometimes weeks or even months after the crash. It may pass unnoticed at the time and is only recognized hours later. In that moment we push; it is a push, a dig, an effort that we do not temper in the knowledge that going hard hurts, hurts at the site of the injury. No, there comes a day when we forget the pain, forget the injury and instead what our body remembers is the former self, the cyclist we have worked so hard to achieve, the person we’re meant to be.

An Interview With Darrell McCulloch, Part III

In our last installment of our interview with Dazza, we discuss inspiration, his riding and the nature of the custom bike experience.

BKW: From where do your draw inspiration?

DLM: From everywhere, from everyone, from everything around one that passes by, and perhaps something from inside me. I like to think I am a student of the world.

"Model Engineer" magazine is brilliant.

BKW: What about your own work continues to excite you?

DLM: Trying today to better what I did last week. Not just the metal work, but also all the other things that an independent framebuilder likes to do and must do.
I call my work or way I express myself in my work/lifestyle my Ph.D. that will never be completed.

BKW: Where do you think you are going with your frame building and also where do you think frame building will go?

DLM: Better, more refined and a greater recognition as an alternative to the ones that are sick of 900 gram awful riding and looking breaking carbon mass-produced stuff.


BKW: Do you ride and how often?

DLM: Five to six times a week. I don't pull the knicks on unless it is at least two hours pedaling and it must be first thing in the morning or it just does not happen.
No coffee shop stuff. I reckon coffee shop riding is a lame excuse to get on your bike.

I ride, look around and think and sometimes huff and puff when I am motivated to lean on the pedals. I like the hills.

For while I stopped riding for a few years (insert extra workshop toil here) lost the need to ride, that passed and now I have to ride! Sundays is with mates over some climbs for four hours.

BKW: Do you race, tour, MTB or ... other?

DLM: I did a lot of road and track racing for many years, also a few seasons in France; I loved racing on France, lots of seconds and thirds as my gallop was barely detectable by modern scientific instruments. I could scamper up a decent climb as I weighed about 60kgs. Touring, not yet, but I want to cycle tour properly, but I have to build myself a touring bicycle first. Project for next summer. No MTB here, life has been too short.

I love bush walking and camping, walk in and walk out stuff.


BKW: In a few words, can you sum up bespoke hand made frame construction?

DLM: Toil, more toil, lots of toil. More complicated than it was 10 or 20 years ago. Maybe that is why some lifetime builders struggle with the niche market that it is today.

However, it is fun, and rewarding to my soul. I would not have done it any other way.
Bicycles and racing have allowed me to visit and work in 23 countries, work two Olympics as national team mechanic, travel, enjoy good times with many friends around the world. All way more than I could have expected to see and do when I kicked off in Sandgate 1979.

So the toil has a nice payoff. What do I have to complain about? I am happy.


BKW: What do you want your clients to take away when you make them a bicycle?

DLM: A bicycle that gives them many years of enjoyable riding. So with each passing year, their Llewellyn bicycle gives them greater value. Thus they Cherish their Llewellyn. That pleases me.

An Interview With Darrell McCulloch, Part II

In Part II of our interview with Dazza, we discuss his love of polishing, his wait and how he plans to live a long time.

BKW: Do you work with stainless steel very often?

DLM: Yes.

Every frame I make has some stainless: the dropouts, cable guides and stoppers, chain hanger, front derailleur mount, and the heart detail between the stays. I use stainless here because it has merit. I like frame parts that function well, keeping paint tidy, no corrosion from road salts, or from people who perspire battery acid. Aesthetic is important but durability and function should never be sacrificed, intentionally or through ignorance. I see/hear people chatter on about so and so's dropouts or some other design feature they see on a frame, but 30 years of experience tells one that there will be grief and tears with some designs currently in fashion. There is reason why the long time professional builders have not done the design of a part or a frame that way.

Having said that, then there is my reputation for the bling bikes; but you know, I only do three to four of those elaborate stainless lugged frames each year. They get a lot of attention. Some of those have 250 hours of metal work in them. They hurt in many ways to make. This year I will make only three of those and two slots are already taken and the other one is being finalized. So if a client wants one, they need to sign up/deposit for a 2009 slot now.

BKW: Where are most of your customers located?

DLM: Mostly in Australia.
Most of my export frames go to the USA and these typically feature hand-cut, polished stainless lugs.


BKW: How many bikes do you deliver in the average year?

DLM: I have given up counting. Truly, I have not counted production for five years, but I can say, not as many as I would like to get out the door. Running the show takes more time than it used to when compared to the good old days.

Also, those elaborate stainless lugged frames take up a lot of energy, time. Each one is big black hole for 5 to 6 weeks.

BKW: How long is your waiting list?

DLM: It fluctuates from 6 to 12 months.

BKW: Tell us a bit about the red bike that was at the Handmade Bicycle Show. You said you had 250 hours in it.

DLM: Yes, 250 hours, that is not counting customer discussion time and sending pictures of the build process each night.

I cut a set of Pacenti lugs, crown and BB, in a variation of a theme I have done before, and I was very pleased with the results. I machine the seatstay plugs and hand miter them to the seat lug to fit and look the way I desire. Cut stainless details for aesthetics and many other extras. But I would like to stress, that bike frame is made to be ridden and be used, it is not fragile or for the mantle piece. No compromise is made on the ride and longevity of the bike because it has shiny bits.
Typical frame, fork and stem like that one is $9,500 AUD ($8,500 USD) or more depending on what the customer desires.

Compared to my normal build style road frame, fork, stem which still has stainless fittings, polished dropouts and other details for $3,800 AUD ($3,350 USD)


BKW: Do you paint your frames?

DLM: No, never, never want to, I am too young to die!

My old training partner from the early 80's, Joe Cosgrove, paints my work, he does a splendid job. He was very chuffed recently to receive high praise from Joe Bell and other paint legends while at NAHBS 2008.

I also think painting is so specialized, it is a full time Ph.D. that will never be finished. I think that builders compromise their painting if they apply themselves to the metal work and design of their bikes properly, or painters compromise their painting Ph.D. if they put time into metal work. Some do reasonable work in both skills, but they are limited or perhaps have to keep to a narrower pathway, and some are not always progressive or attuned to the changes and progress of today's market for hand made frames.


BKW: You seem pretty proud of your lug designs and other casting projects, are there delights on the drawing board?

DLM: If the handmade bespoke/custom bicycle scene is to stay healthy and vibrant, we builders cannot go on producing frames that are just repros of circa 1985 with the additions of some extra windows in the lugs with leather handle bar tape and pastel coloured paint jobs. These have their place and is super cool, but the demographics of these clients is dwindling each year.

The new generation of clients/enthusiasts are the new buyers. All they have seen is carbon this and carbon that but they can be shown the merits of both the traditional build methods and styles, fused with contemporary designs and styles. A better bicycle is the result. The best of the past with the best of today. We build better bicycles today than 30 years ago.

This desire prompted me to invest a lot of time and resources in designing and producing lugs and dropouts to strengthen what I do. I have to admit, it is a lot of toil, thrown on top of workshop production, added with the hiccups along the way. I have as much pride in these casting projects as the attention my stainless lugged frames receive.

As for new projects on the drawing board, the answer is yes and no for the time being. No, but yes, when time allows.

An Interview With Darrell McCulloch, Part I

BKW's recent trip Portland, Oregon, for the North American Handmade Bicycle Show was our first opportunity to see the work of a builder we had heard of for some time. We'd been hearing about Llewellyn Custom Biycles for years from folks who know great work and when confronted with his work, well, we were blown away. BKW's editors do not suffer this much lust easily.

Darrell Llewellyn McCulloch, "Dazza" to his friends, is one of a rare breed of framebuilder whose work inspires such an instant sense of awe that your first thought is, "Gosh, I'd love to have this frame." We talked with him at the show and made plans for an e-mail interview to follow.

BKW: Where are you located? Are you a native?

DLM: I was born in the city of Brisbane Australia, 1963. I live and work in my home located on the outskirts of Brisbane, where I can still ride away from the traffic and can still go for walks in the state forests across the road.

BKW: How long have you been building?

DLM: I have been associated with handmade frames and bike racing since 1979. I started building the "Llewellyn" marque in 1989 (Llewellyn is my middle name).

BKW: How did you learn your craft—were you self-taught or did you apprentice under someone?

DLM: I was a bit lost at school, looking for something to do with my hands. Was it going to be art, wood work, aviation, or...? Then, after reading a magazine article on frame building in a 1978 copy of Bicycling magazine, I fell in love with the notion of making bicycle frames. That article is responsible for sending me down the path of this tragic lifestyle. (Giggle.)


BKW: If you apprenticed under someone, can you tell us a bit about the builder?

DLM: I started work at Hoffy Cycles in Sandgate in 1979. The owner was Eric Hendren; he worked his whole life in that shop from age 13 till he retired 53 years later. I learned to fix coaster hubs, Sturmey-Archer 3-speeds, wheel building, frame repairs and some new frame work. Eric built frames with a vice, power drill, three files, and a surface plate. He was a good boss to me, but after 6 years I got restless and bored and wanted to move on.

An opportunity came to work for Brett Richardson (Berretto frames). This allowed me to get my hands into full time frame building (circa 1986), but the shop went through some partnership troubles so I ended up leaving and working in a bigger retail bike shop. A couple of years there and I was prompted to start Llewellyn Custom Bicycles as a part-time affair. The time was right.

Llewellyn was a part time affair while I raced in France and worked the summers in the shop. Then I worked full time with the Australian Institute of Sport—head road mechanic for two years—then I went part time with the teams and only did the Euro season from May to October. Based in Germany and then Italy, I did not see a Brisbane winter for 8 years.

The rest of my education is self discovery from inside my cave, absorbing as much as I can cope with.

BKW: Do you work in materials other than steel?

DLM: Oh yes, but only with splendidly fine materials; like a couple of glasses of good red wine with my fiancée.


BKW: In addition to working with lugs, do you fillet braze or TIG weld?

DLM: I used to do lugless fillet brazing with oversize shaped tubes, but it drove me nuts. The in built stresses from shaped (squashed) tubes annoyed me. So I created my own compact angled lugs for round oversize tubes and banished shaped main tubes from my life for ever. (Until recently, these were known as the Slant 6, and Mini 6 lug sets, now known as OS Compact and XL Compact.) The lugs are much better for the purity of the build processes, so this pleases me. I don't do funk or what this year's brochure has to have.

I want a good fit, accuracy of the build and no stresses in the frame. And it has to look pleasing while lasting a couple of decades.
No TIG here.

BKW: If you do work other than lugs, are lugs your preferred form of expression?

DLM: My chant is, "It's steel, it's lugs, let the others get on with the madness"

BKW: What is your preferred tubing these days?

DLM: I use lot of Columbus "Spirit for Lugs" tube sets. Good to work with, well made with sensible butt lengths. If I need special tubes for some frame designs or for bikes that have different tube requirements I will use a mix of suitable tubes from Dedacciai or True Temper.

BKW: What lugs do you like to work with?

DLM: My Llewellyn designed and produced lugs, like the standard oversize compact lugs (was Mini 6, now OS Compact ), and the extra large compact angled lug set (was Slant 6, now XL Compact), my socket stainless dropouts and lugged handlebar stems.
I created the stem and compact (sloping top tube lugs) lug sets to meet my needs, as there was nothing out there in the market and they blend traditional lugged frame construction with the merits of contemporary designs. I cannot understand builders who make a attractive lugged bike and plonk a CNC machined alloy handle bar stem on it. Makes me puke. I provide the lugs for other builders to use, and it was pleasing to meet these builders at Don (Walker)'s show (NAHBS) and see their good work with them.

For horizontal top tube frames I use Kirk Pacenti's artisan lugs for elaborate designs and I use Richard Sachs's lugs. Both are good mates and are life time tragics with bikes.