Cycling Guidelines, or How Not To Be a Fred - Part I

Introduction

I want to start off this post by stating something important:  I think novice cyclists are great.  These are people making the transition from non-cyclist to cyclist, which is a difficult transition all of us cyclists have had to make.  I earnestly wish to make cycling as friendly as possible to all newcomers, which is why I chafe at the (albeit sometimes jocular) elitism of the so-called Velominati, and why I criticized “The Rules” in these pages.

That said, I suspect that many newcomers (to cycling or, really, to anything) would prefer not to wear their novice status on their sleeves.  Nobody wants to be a Fred; that is, nobody wants to be this guy:

To the extent that cycling is a social sport, people will naturally want to fit in—but that’s not the same thing as being told what to do, especially by a self-appointed expert.  A set of widely accepted guidelines, which the novice cyclist may choose to heed or ignore at his or her whim, strikes me as a useful thing.

To sidestep the matter of whether my authority counts for anything, I created a survey and sent it to my cycling buds.  This is an accomplished group of no-nonsense road cyclists, most of whom have been riding for at least twenty years.  I based my survey questions on several sources:  behaviors I myself find questionable; behaviors cited in various Internet “are you a Fred?” articles; and pre-survey ideas from my cycling buds.  The overall gist was, “How would you react to this behavior if displayed during our club ride?”  I had respondents rank each behavior according to these descriptors:  “Totally Normal/Acceptable”; “Borderline/ I Wouldn’t Do It”; and “Laughably Fredtastic.”  The results of that survey, along with copious commentary and caveats, are presented herein.

But first

To reiterate, I’m not trying to tell anybody what to do.  Rebelliousness has been a part of this sport for generations, and I’m all for it.  What I think most people would like to avoid is being an accidental iconoclast—i.e., a dork.  It’s useful to know what the norms are, whether you intend to adhere to them or flout them openly.  So take each of these guidelines with a grain of salt, and jettison them as you see fit.

I hasten also to point out that I use “Fred” as a kind of shorthand.  I don’t actually get any smug pleasure from labeling this or that rider a Fred.  Codifying behaviors is as much about helping people rest easy as it is warning anybody about potentially sneer-inducing behaviors.  So if, for example, you’ve been feeling self-conscious about buying house-brand bike clothing (i.e., Nashbar) instead of springing for mainstream brands like Pearl Izumi, you can relax:  49% of the seasoned veterans surveyed find the low-cost choice perfectly acceptable and normal, while only 14% think it’s Fredtastic.

One respondent suggested that “the main reason we care about these behaviors is that they act as a signaling system for safety—a sign that the rider is a newbie and may need a bit more space.  It’s not just that we’re dicks (although that’s part of it too—good social skills are not a requirement for participating in a quasi-individual sport).”  I think he’s onto something.

A final bit of perspective:  I was riding recently with a cycling newbie—my 13-year-old daughter Alexa—and she asked, “Dad, were you ever a Fred?”  I said, “Sure.  I had big tube socks that were usually stained with chain grease, and I tipped over a lot when I first got toe-clips, and I had a particularly ugly helmet with a visor.”  She asked, “Did you know you were a Fred?”  I replied, “No, I didn’t.  Freds never do.  But after my best friend complained about my visor, I did snap it off.”  After a pause, Alexa asked, “Dad, will I ever be a Fred?”  (She likely perceives that, for now, she’s too young to be judged, which may well be true.)  I replied, “No, you’ll never be a Fred, because I won’t let you.”

But then I caught myself.  What if she doesn’t actually care?  Who am I to stand in the way of her individual expression?  So I asked, “Is that okay?  Are you even looking for my opinion?”  She rolled her eyes and said, “Dad, I’m a teenager.  I’m self-conscious.  Thank you for giving me advice.” 

If that’s where you’re coming from, this blog post is for you.  On the flip side, if you’re looking for ways to get under the skin of overly uptight bike fascists, this post is also for you!

Survey results:  part one

My survey comprised 41 questions.  About half of the behaviors surveyed didn’t produce a sizable negative response; for example, “Wearing mountain bike shoes instead of road shoes” was tagged “Laughably Fredtastic” by only 2 out of the 37 respondents (i.e., about 5%), and 35% of respondents found this behavior “Totally Acceptable/Normal.” 

The variety of responses across many of these surveyed behaviors suggests something I’ve long suspected:  that, as a group, cyclists’ perspectives actually aren’t that homogenous.  One respondent commented, “Many of the ‘borderline’ (and even some of the ‘Fred-tastic’) I have committed and/or seen committed on EBVC rides.  Conclusion:  hypocrisy is ‘completely normal/acceptable’ among ‘serious’ cyclists.”

I quite agree.  Consider the mountain bike shoe question:  my friend Peter, a former pro road racer, wore mountain bike shoes on the road for like two years even though he actually owned a brand-new pair of road shoes.  He was just too lazy to set up the cleats.  On the flip side, a current teammate of mine was so bothered by Alexa’s mountain bike shoes, he offered to take up a collection for me to buy her some proper road shoes.

Here’s a summary of what appear to be the least frowned-upon behaviors surveyed.  Click on these to zoom in:

Survey results:  part two

Next I’ll go through 10 of the top 20 offending behaviors.  (I’d do all 20, but so many people complain that my blog posts are too long.  The top 10 will be covered in my next post.)

 20th Most Fredtastic:  Abruptly Rising

Asked for their opinion on “Abruptly rising from the saddle so your rear wheel is thrust backward,” 53% of respondents cited this as borderline behavior, and 47% deemed it laughably Fredtastic.

This behavior clearly identifies a newbie, because it’s a somewhat dangerous move that, because it comes naturally, must be unlearned.  Whenever you stand on the pedals, the bike automatically goes back (actually, it probably just slows down for a beat), which requires evasive maneuvers on the part of anybody drafting you.  I wonder how many newbies don’t realize this, and are puzzled by how often guys in the group start cussing for no apparent reason.

19th Most Fredtastic:  QR on Right

Queried about “Wheel quick-release lever on starboard (i.e., wrong) side,” 47% of respondents found this borderline, and 50% Fredtastic.  One respondent found this normal/acceptable.

Why should this matter?  Well, many road tires are directional, though I couldn’t say whether mounting them correctly actually makes a difference. If you’re old-school and have a magnet on one of your spokes for your bike computer, this would be a problem.  Most of all, the backwards skewer shows a lack of attention to detail.

I don’t see this mistake very often, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen.  I was riding with a pal who noticed, before I had a chance to, that his front wheel was on backwards.  He actually took me to task for failing to call him out on this, but we both agreed it was an understandable error simply because my friend was a new father and wasn’t getting enough sleep to function properly.

18th Most Fredtastic:  Too much watt-related commentary

When asked their opinion on “Commenting too frequently about power output,” 51% found this Fredtastic, 37% said borderline, and 11% said normal/acceptable. 

This behavior suggests an interesting dichotomy:  expertise vs. experience.  It tends to be the serious rider who lays out the cash for a power meter and understands the readings well enough to talk about them.  On the other hand, the true veteran probably tired of all this performance-related (and, more generally, cycling-related) conversation long ago, and has little appetite for it.

17th Most Fredtastic:  No socks

Riding without socks was tagged as Fredtastic by 53% of respondents, with 36% finding it questionable and 11% normal/acceptable.  The fact that four respondents approved of going sockless surprises me, because I cannot remember the last time I rode with someone who didn’t have socks.

In road racing, socks are mandatory.  Way back in 1985, when my feet were at their adolescent stinkiest, a friend of mine showed up to race having forgotten his socks.  He had to borrow mine—after I’d raced in them.  He was an even stinkier dude than I was, and I said, “Just keep ‘em.”

16th Most Fredtastic:  Pie plate

Responses broke down as follows:  57% found pie plates Fredtastic; 34% questionable; 9% acceptable.

What?  You don’t know what “pie plate” means in a bike context?  Well, you’ve come to the right place!  Check out this post for a full explanation of why spoke protectors are such a grind.  (Short answer:  “We didn’t call them spoke protectors though,/ As ‘pie plate’ better mocked how big they were./ They caused the largest cog to seem to grow—/ A mean illusion, awful to endure./ A bigger cog meant lower gearing, see;/ The stuff of weaker boys, embarrassing./ We longed for smaller clusters, finally free/ Of pie plates. Lack of metal was our bling.”)

15th Most Fredtastic:  Sleeveless jersey

For “Sleeveless jersey when it’s not that hot,” 54% came back with Fredtastic; 41% borderline; 5% acceptable.

To me, nothing says “newbie” like a person who is woefully ill-prepared for the weather conditions.  I clearly remember the first time I wore a sleeveless jersey on a not-so-warm day.  In my defense, I’d just moved to San Luis Obispo (where the weather is often cooler than it looks) from Boulder (where sunshine almost always means glorious warmth), and I’d listened to too much “Beach Boys” music and got the wrong idea about California.  Sleeves, even short ones, make a huge difference, and I froze my ass off that day.  I never made that mistake again.  So when it’s 60 degrees and cloudy here, and feels like 50 degrees, and I’m rocking two jerseys and a pair of arm warmers, and I see some biker in a sleeveless jersey, I think, “Either this is your very first ride, or you never learn.”

14th Most Fredtastic:  Half-wheeling

Half-wheeling is Fredtastic to 56% of my panel; borderline in the eyes of 33%; and normal/acceptable to 11%.  I think that 11% is more along the lines of “normal,” as in “an inescapable evil we’ll never be rid of.” 

This behavior—whereby the offender is riding next to a pal, and keeps pulling slightly ahead, so his bike is half a wheel ahead—is surely based on the competitive impulse.  Resisting this impulse demonstrates the triumph of discipline over instinct.  Probably because I ride so much by myself, I have to struggle against this one constantly.  It’s not that rare for a pal to grab my shoulder and pull me back so our wheels are lined up again, and whenever this happens I’m completely mortified.  Let me take this opportunity to apologize in advance for the next time I do this to you.

13th Most Fredtastic:  Bento Box

If you don’t know what a Bento Box is, in the context of bike gear, congratulations.  You must enjoy a more rarified biking environment than I do.  A Bento Box is this little bag that mounts behind your stem.  I’ve circled it in this photo:

One of the Fredtastic things about the Bento Box is the company it keeps:  the bike above has a pie plate, aero bars, and saddle-mounted water bottle cages (all of them flagged in my survey).  No, I don’t know what the junk is on the top tube of that bike, nor what the white thing is mounted to the aero bars.  Maybe it’s a diaper-wipe dispenser or a blood bag.  Man, I just looked too closely at the far-forward position of the saddle on that bike, and I almost barfed into my mouth.  If my daughter ever tricks her road bike out like this, I’m sending her to boarding school.

No, not all Bento Box users are triathletes.  But every time I see one of these things, it’s on a way over-accessorized bike that generally looks way too expensive for the speed it’s being pedaled at.  Not that an over-expensive bike is a sign of Fred-dom, exactly; only 17% of the panel found “Quality of equipment clearly surpasses rider’s ability” to be Fredtastic, and 39% found it normal/acceptable.  One respondent commented, “Riding equipment above the ability of the rider should be acceptable if, and only if, the rider aspires to higher quality [defined as fitness, skill and élan] AND the combination and configuration of that equipment is otherwise PROfull.”  Bikes overly loaded with accessories are never PROfull, and particularly egregious examples like the Bento Box suggest that a silver-tongued bike shop salesman had a field day with the bike owner.

My main issue with the Bento Box is that it’s utterly needless.  I’ve done unsupported rides of over 200 miles and I never needed more room than my jersey pockets provide.  (And I don’t even use a seat bag.) 

Survey response:  56% of respondents tagged the Bento Box as Fredtastic; 31% found it borderline; and 14% of these softies said it was acceptable.  I wonder how many of that 14% thought I was talking about Japanese food as a glycogen-window snack.

12th Most Fredtastic:  Jersey riding up

“Jersey that rides up over non-bib shorts, exposing skin.”  There’s no easy phrase to describe this, and there’s no easy way to tolerate being stuck behind it when you’re in a paceline.  Back in the ‘80s my brother did a really long ride while afflicted with this sartorial malady, and he got this terrible crescent-shaped sunburn on his lower back.  Like many teens of that era, he liked to go around shirtless (when off the bike), and his low-riding non-biker shorts showcased that sunburn and the golden brown tan that followed it.  It was kind of creepy, like the Cheshire Cat’s grin that remained long after the cat himself was gone.

Perhaps it’s mostly novices who don’t grasp why bib shorts are worth paying more for.  Myself, I haven’t worn non-bibs since I was junior, when it was popular to ride up behind a guy, grab the waistband of his shorts, pull it down, and hook it under the back of the saddle—and then attack.  This was as effective as it was humiliating to the victim, and I wouldn’t rule out a nefarious plot concocted by the Sportswear Industrial Complex.

Not a single respondent found this scenario acceptable.  It was deemed Fredtastic by 57% of the group, and borderline by the other 43%.

11th Most Fredtastic:  Clip-on mirror

Not surprisingly, 58% of respondents found it Fredtastic to use a little mirror that clips to the helmet or the glasses.  Another 39% deemed it borderline. Oddly, one respondent thought it was acceptable.  Must be a really nice person.

My issues with this accessory are threefold.  First, if you crash, you’ve got broken glass right near your eye.  (Yes, I also favor plastic lenses for sunglasses.)  Second, if a motorist is behind you, it’s better to make eye contact with him (by turning your head) than to assume he’ll notice your mirror.  (He won’t; you’re lucky if he notices you.)  Finally, it could be that the guy who buys this mirror lacks the skill to look over his shoulder while riding—in which case you may not want him in your group.

Okay, you caught me.  I was inventing rational reasons to support my predilections, which I confess are largely aesthetic and stylistic.  Go right on ahead using your clip-on mirror, your Bento Box, and your pie plate.  I promise I won’t say anything, especially if you ride me off your wheel.

Stay tuned...

Watch these pages, because next week I’ll unveil the top-ten most widely denounced signs of newbie knowledge gap.  Here’s a little teaser:  behavior #1 was rated “Laughably Fredtastic” by 92% of the panel!

Update

Click here for Part II of this article ... the top-ten Fredtastic behaviors!

“Kit” Revisited - Not OK with “Kit” Commentary!

Introduction

In my last post I tried really hard to lead my readers away from using “kit” to refer to bike clothing.  My strategy wasn’t to definitively prove that Americans who use this word are dorks, but rather to introduce an alternative that was so clearly superior, further debate would be needless.

Well, the debate continues.  And if that’s not bad enough, one of my readers—an American living in New Zealand—got his knickers in a twist over a couple of gross inaccuracies in my essay, which were particularly jarring due to my  “smug confidence.”  (I suppose I should point out that I use the chiefly British expression “knickers in a twist” not because I’m trying to sound un-American but because it’s slightly less vulgar, to my ear, than “panties in a wad.”  And please note that I say “un-American” instead of “Euro” because “Euro” is one of the words that got me in trouble last time.)

In this post I shall first apologize, and then go on the offensive because another of my pals persists in trying to advance a nonsensical “living language” argument that really needs to die.

An apology

My first error, as pointed out by the Kiwi correspondent, involved this assertion:

Absolutely everybody who wears a jersey calls it a jersey.  This is a very useful word because it differentiates between a basic t-shirt and that funny Lycra thing with the zipper in front and the pockets in back.

I should not have said “absolutely everybody.”  I should have said “everybody in the United States.”  Obviously, in other countries people would have other words for this garment.  In the Ukraine, they’d call it “Джерсі,” which would phonetically sound like “dzhercee” (the “zh” is my approximation of the sound the “s” makes in “pleasure” and if you have trouble with it, just imagine Chekov, from the original “Star Trek,” saying “jersey”).  I don’t know what they’d call a bike jersey in China, and that’s a shame, because that’s my blog’s third biggest audience (after the US and the Ukraine).  Of course, those who don’t speak English probably don’t spend a lot of time on albertnet.

So why does it matter that I said “absolutely everybody”?  Well, I may have confused some non-American English speakers.  I’ve been advised that while “Antipodean club cyclists would understand [my] usage from exposure to American media,” “non-cyclist Australasians might NOT recognise [my] usage of ‘jersey.’”

Dang it.  I was totally unaware of any of this, and moreover I had to look up “Australasian” (which I’d have guessed means “Australian/Asian fusion cuisine,” as in “throw a couple ginger-infused shrimp tempuras on the barbee!”) and “antipodean.”  The first two dictionaries I checked defined “antipodean” as “being as different as possible” or “on opposite sides of the earth,” which obviously don’t work here.  The third dictionary (the really thick one) had the definition that fit the context; this meaning was flagged “chiefly British.”

Now, it’s really tempting to defend myself here.  How come my Kiwi critic gets to use confusing British terms, wacky spelling (i.e., “recognise”) and single quotation marks, but I have to be aware of every connotation of “jersey” among English speakers worldwide?  How come when I read an original (i.e., non-Americanized) version of a Harry Potter book to my kids, I’m tickled by “jumper” for sweater and “trainers” for sneakers, but my confusing use of “jersey” is grounds for criticism?  Don’t worry, I’m not naive about the truth behind this apparent paradox.  As everybody knows, Brits are charming, but Americans like me are merely annoying.  I get that.  I also accept that for me to be so narrow-minded and insular with my America-centric perspective, while posing as an authority on how best to use the English language, is nothing short of sickening.

Perhaps even worse, as my New Zealand friend points out, I “seemed to equate ‘British’ and ‘European’ in a way that would make many Brits and not-a-few Europeans uncomfortable.”  I have nothing to say in my defense.  I’ve never bothered to interview Brits or continental Europeans about how they feel about one another, and though I believe I accurately represented the way in which many Americans, such as the ones who use “kit” to mean bike clothing, lump all members of the EU together when trying to emulate their cycling heroes, I did so without acknowledging, or perhaps even recognizing, how lame this is. 

But before I actually issue the formal apology, I have to figure out whom exactly I’m apologizing to.  The confusion I have caused among my overseas audience (2.5% of whom hail from the UK) is perhaps offset by the delicious satisfaction they must have derived from decrying my ignorance.  On the whole, was their discomfort greater than the pleasure they got from issuing scathing, probably profane, judgments about me and my ilk?

Well, just in case it was, I hereby apologize to all Europeans and Brits.  I’m sorry I’m a stupid, narrow-minded American, and that my blog is spreading my corrosive ignorance across the world.

It’s very tempting to apologize to Americans as well, but that’s a complicated matter.  After all, both my geopolitical ignorance and my smug confidence are core American values.  If I act apologetic about embracing freedom and patriotism, well, maybe the terrorists win.  So let me say this:  I hereby apologize to American expatriates worldwide, and any other progressive American who thinks we should be knowledgeable about other cultures, be humble about our beliefs, and use air-quotes around “beliefs” to indicate how tentative we are in believing in anything.

I suppose I could go fix my previous post, to be more inclusive of every meaning of jersey and more discerning about British vs. Euro, but that would make this post rather confusing.  And really, repentance isn’t the point; acknowledging my ignorance is.  So, knowing my original essay will be read by more people in the future, I want to make a special apology to any non-American or expatriate-American English speaker who reads it on his or her birthday.  I truly hope I don’t ruin anybody’s birthday.

(Note that I cannot bring myself to apologize separately for being smugly confident.  I believe I am incapable of blogging timidly.  Blogging, as far as I’m concerned, is an intrinsically audacious act.)

Back on the offensive

Okay, enough of that.  It’s time to beat back a burning bush some more.  I’m talking about the ongoing attempt of another correspondent to justify “kit.”  His first shot is the rhetorical equivalent of an air ball:  “Living language Exhibit A.”  In case you’re reading this essay after that link has gone stale, it’s to a website called Cool Hunting (headline:  “Three Fresh Cycling Kits for Spring”) selling a wide variety of awful things:  ugly brown leather cycling gloves that look like Isotoners with the fingers cut off; a coffee cup holder for your handlebars; a hand-painted bike bell; underwear for cycling; a suit described as “Movement-Minded Suiting” that could make anybody look like a d-bag; and a whole bunch of particularly ugly Rapha clothing.  (I know “ugly Rapha” is redundant, but I thought “particularly Rapha clothing” might confuse somebody.)  In other words, it’s a purveyor of awful, overpriced, over-precious, totally needless crap for pretentious dickwads with too much money.  That Cool Hunting uses the term “kit” does not, in my opinion, validate the word whatsoever.  I’m astonished anybody would say so.  If this website hadn’t been trotted out by a defender of “kit,” I’d have cited it myself to explain exactly why “kit” is a term any old-school, non-hipster, self-respecting bicyclist might wish to avoid.

The person who trotted out the Cool Hunting justification for “kit” was quickly rebuked (by others, not me, I might add).  So he  replied, “Call it Bay Area slang, if it that'll make it go down easier. An idiomatic usage in a micro-dialect, if you like. But what you cannot deny is that there ARE people using the word ‘kit’ to mean a cycling jersey and cycling shorts. Living language at its best.”

Okay, first of all, I can’t see how impugning the Bay Area would make anything go down easier.  I do like the idea of micro-dialect just fine, and have embraced it for decades.  (For example, my brothers and I have long used the term “tranja”—pronounced “tron-ya” and taken from a 1960s “Star Trek” episode—to indicate any flavored beverage, and my daughter has now adopted the term.)  But the mere fact of people in any community using a word does not justify promotion of that word, and is not necessarily “living language at its best.”

Consider this:  so far, I have never heard any member of my bike club use the word “bidon,” despite all of us knowing what it means (a water bottle, in Velominati/cool-hunting/poseur/d-bag parlance).  We rightfully avoid “bidon,” despite knowing what it means,  because, evidently, we just don’t like it.  Word choice is a matter of taste, and those who respect language have far higher standards than “what others will be able to grasp.”

I think it’s crucial to understand the difference between evolution and mere change.  Evolution implies progress:  in nature, to evolve generally means becoming better suited for survival.  But when we say language “evolves,” we’re not talking about natural selection.  Sloppiness is just as likely to transform a language.  For example, the word “biweekly” used to mean something specific.  It either meant “every two weeks” or “twice a week,” but not both.  But because people began using it both ways, dictionaries eventually accepted the second meaning as legit, and now the word “biweekly” is utterly useless—it is impossible to tell from context what is meant.  From a usability perspective, this word has been pushed toward extinction.

Even when changes to a language don’t dilute meaning, choosing words carefully is worthwhile.  Often, when two words are equally precise and do an equal job of getting a point across, one is still better than the other.  If we say, “Pass me a facial tissue please,” that sounds stilted and odd, and begs the question, “Why didn’t you say ‘Kleenex’?”  And if my daughter asked her mother for a “snot rag,” she would be rightly reprimanded. 

Clarity is sometimes overrated.  To simply grasp a word’s meaning is nothing special; even a beast can do that.  My daughter did a science experiment with our cat.  It has been well established that our cat knows her name and will actually respond to a call of “Misha!” (particularly if it is issued from the kitchen).  The other day Alexa and I were on the sofa, with the cat on Alexa’s lap.  “Hey Mom,” Alexa said, “Call out ‘feces’ in the same voice you’d call out ‘Misha.’”  My wife called out from the kitchen, “Feeee-ces!”  This summoned the cat just as effectively as “Meeee-sha!” ever did.  So we brought the cat back to the sofa and tried again, but this time with “Eggplant.”  Despite being uttered in the same singsong way, it produced no reaction from the cat.  My wife called “Feeee-ces!” again, and immediately the cat trotted back in there, tail held high.  Following this breakthrough, my daughter started calling the cat “Feces” all the time.  I put my foot down.  “We named her ‘Misha’ because we like that name,” I told her.  “I do not like the word ‘feces.’  You are forbidden to use it in reference to the cat.”  Now, is that bad parenting, on the grounds that the cat does understand the particular meaning of “feces” within our household’s micro-dialect?  I truly hope nobody thinks so.

I am not a fan of “kit,” but I’m not interested in continuing to debate its aesthetic merit, nor the question of whether its (supposed) utility is enough to offset its Velominatic air.  But what I’m trying to do here is squash the idea that the elasticity of language can be trotted out as justification to blithely adopt any new usage that manages to convey meaning.

You still think all linguistic change is for the good?  Well, think about all the corporate jargon so many of us are subjected to on a daily basis.  If you were to hear the following on a conference call, you might only find it a slight exaggeration:  

At the end of the day, the value proposition needs to by synced up with our bottom line, so if we’re going to step up our game, tee this thing up, and swing for the fences, the reality is that—candidly—we’ve got to get Product’s skin in the game, and really incent those folks to add value up the whole stack, because when you peel back the layers of the onion, you can see that business synergies are table stakes in this business, and shareholder value demands that we either reinvent ourselves with some disruptive technologies or we’re going to be in the position of having to ventilate this workforce.  I mean, this is the world we live in.  It is what it is.

If you’re not gagging right now, you’re on the wrong web page.  Maybe you should head over to Cool Hunting.

OK Calling Bike Clothes “Kit”?

Introduction

Some people really care about words.  My favorite people are the type who will argue passionately and at length about a subtle shade of meaning.  I was reminded of this when, in a group e-mail to my cycling club, I employed some questionable vernacular, causing  a massive e-mail debate, comprising over thirty messages in all.

In this post I’ll capture some of the snarkier highlights of the debate; get at the heart of why “kit” is such a divisive term; and provide the perfect alternative so all cyclists can enjoy nomenclature that’s as frictionless as their bicycles’ bearings.

The mêlée

It must be said that a widespread dialogue was already underway, on a topic you shall read about soon enough, when my friend Trevor commented on my use of “kit.”  (As you may recall, our verbal sparring has appeared in these pages before.)  He wrote, “Calling it ‘kit’ is the pot calling the kettle black.  That’s British hipster lingo, and if they say things like ‘Campag’ and ‘mech’ and then say ‘bidon’ you should choose wisely from such a low body of terms.  ‘Kit’ is unwise.”

To appreciate Trevor’s point requires a bit of background.  About a year ago, in these pages, I excoriated the Velominati, a bunch of self-styled cycling experts, for their blatant cultural affectation.  One of the things I pointed out was that saying “bidon” instead of bottle strikes me, like so many of their behaviors, as pretentious and twee.  My outspokenness in this vein puts me in a vulnerable position should I ever abuse such lingo myself.

With this in mind, I immediately fell on my sword, replying-all, “Nice catch on ‘kit,’ Trevor.  I certainly wobbled over my own line there.”  But even though I agreed with him, several members of the club stepped forward to defend “kit.”  Here are some salient comments.  (I won’t bother identifying the correspondents other than to give each of them his/her own text color so you can tell them apart.)

è Here in Kiwiland ‘kit’ is not a hipster term. No one would call riding clothing (or sporting uniform of any kind) anything but ‘kit’. Even to my still somewhat Yankee ears ‘kit’ sounds absolutely common.

è Newb.

è Curmudgeon.

è As to “kit” and “curmudgeon,” might I suggest a dictionary?

è I was being economical! And I do have a dictionary. Also, “curmudgeon” was a polite form for what I really wanted to call you.

è Sounds like something you need to discuss with your therapist.

è Hold on a sec, I’m still trying to find “newb” in the dictionary…

è Newbie or noob is old prep school talk for the “new boy.” As far as I can tell from my OED, “new boy” likely goes back to Chaucer.

è I like and use the term kit. What other one-word term is there that works better? (No, MB, “costume” doesn’t count!)

è The convenience of “kit” is illusory. Just what is it? It isn’t just jersey and shorts. It’s everything and not everybody has the same stuff. My recollection from listening to British sports announcers is that they use the word correctly, as in “that’s a nice bit of kit.” It’s used specifically, not generally. If you’re going to buy a cycling kit, what are you buying? If you bring your racing kit with you, what’s in it? Glasses, helmet, sunblock,…? It goes beyond what you wear.

è I took a break from cycling from about 1999 to 2008. Before 1999 I had never heard the word “kit” when referring to cycling clothing. It was always a “jersey” and “shorts”. When I returned in 2008, the whole outfit was a ‘kit”. “Kit” still sounds dumb to me, but I use the word because I think I am supposed to.

è Do people (or hipsters) prefer ‘strip’?

è Okay, I’ll bite.  “Strip” is short for what? Strip joint, strip mall? And don’t think I haven’t noticed the single quotation marks. By using them, you’ve made both our points, I think.

è I did not mean to offend anyone. The word “kit” is not dumb. I’m the dummy.  Since the shorts and jersey, indeed the whole cycling get-up, are now one (dashing!) matching ensemble, a word is needed.

è I think you’re missing much of the point of this list if you fail to offend at least one recipient.  I think kit sounds dumb, too.

A question of motive

To me, the fundamental question of whether or not it’s okay to say “kit” centers around motive.  Are we trying to sound Euro, or not?  The difficulty is that we cannot know each person’s motive in using this word, and frankly, I doubt many of us bother to question our own motives in adopting one word or another.  Meanwhile, when we use a word, we participate in all its connotations whether we like it or not.  We are not, usually, at liberty to explain our motives.

The first respondent I quoted above is a American expatriate residing in New Zealand.  I have no doubt that “kit” is a totally innocuous word there (as are his single quotation marks, per Trevor’s comment).  The reason “kit” perks the American ear is that it’s one of those British words that has only recently crossed the Atlantic, and isn’t in widespread use beyond our cycling vernacular.  For such a term to become ubiquitous even within such a vernacular takes time, and may not happen if the term isn’t particularly useful.

Here’s an example of how that works.  Consider the word “jersey.”   Absolutely everybody who wears a jersey calls it a jersey.  This is a very useful word because it differentiates between a basic t-shirt and that funny Lycra thing with the zipper in front and the pockets in back.  I cannot think of a single effective synonym for “jersey.”  Use of this word is so entrenched (having been in wide use when I started cycling, in 1981), most people don’t even know its etymology—that it’s named after Jersey, the largest of the islands in the English Channel.

Consider the correspondent above who said, “I use the word [kit] because I think I am supposed to,” even though she personally finds it dumb.  She wants to fit in, and the question is, who has the authority—and the right—to make this word, or any word, into a cultural signifier that tells whether someone is “in” or “out”?  Positioning yourself as an authority and throwing around a word like “kit” is, to me, a distasteful act.  (A cyclist doing so might be said to “velominate,” if I may coin a term.)  Of course, it’s dangerous to reproach anyone on these grounds because we can’t know who is promoting a term versus merely (and sometimes reluctantly) adopting it.

Sometimes will I use an uncommon word instead of a familiar one if doing so increases exactitude.  Consider “twee,” which I used above.  My American Heritage Dictionary flags this word as “Chiefly British.”  Uncommon as it may be in American English, I doubt anybody uses it just to seem more British or more Euro.  “Twee” is free of trans-Atlantic cultural baggage, because modern usage has morphed it and thus reduced its air of British-ness.  In the original parlance, “twee” meant “overly precious or nice” (it stems from an alteration of “tweet,” a baby-talk alteration of “sweet”).  But when modern Americans use “twee,”  we keep the sense of precious but drop the sense of sweet; quite often, we use “twee” to flag instances of hipster affectation.  (Check out urbandictionary.com if you don’t believe me.)  The more this word evolves on the American tongue, the further behind it leaves its “chiefly British” air.

In the absence of such evolution, and in a case where a word’s usage is restricted to a subset of a subset of society (e.g., the more cutting-edge members of the cycling crowd), we must ask ourselves:  can a somewhat useful but chiefly British term be used innocently by an American  without opening the door to accusations of affectation?  Or to put it more simply, is it twee to say “kit”?

How efficient is “kit”?

The key to solving this riddle, I think, is to weight the utility of “kit” against the inescapable fact of being a cultural vanguard by using it in the U.S.  If the utility is bulletproof, the word is bound to gain wider adoption and will, over time, cease to be a cultural signifier.

So how useful is “kit”?  There’s no question that it’s convenient, being a single syllable and such a short word.  But where language is concerned, let’s not confuse convenience with efficiency.  Yes, “kit” is easy to write and easy to type, but having written a blog post called “Down with Convenience!” I can’t bring myself to care about ease alone.  After all, saving labor is also the justification for going out in public dressed in the sweatpants you wore to bed, which practice I totally disapprove of (unless you’re a gorgeous UC SantaBarbara coed who makes all attire look great).

The point of language is to express yourself with precision, and educated people can be precise without being verbose.  That’s the whole point of having a large vocabulary.  It is more efficient to use the word “twee,” for example, than to use a paragraph worth of words to explain exactly why it bothers you when college grads get written up in the local style magazine for their online storefront selling locally-made macramé caddies for their college roommate’s deluxe line of handmade, gluten-free moleskin notebooks.

So does “kit” do a significantly better job than “jersey and shorts,” “bike clothing,” or “overdue Voler order”?  Not necessarily.  As Trevor points out, there isn’t a single, unified meaning of “kit,” since we all have different stuff; thus, it’s not nearly as useful a word as “jersey.”  On the other hand, as another correspondent rightly pointed out, “kit” does uniquely connote “one (dashing) matching ensemble,” in a way “bike clothing” does not.  Indeed, I never heard (or used) the word “kit” until it became common for bike clubs to order all their clothing—including socks, arm warmers, vests, and even gloves—from a single manufacturer so it can be customized with colors and logos that create a uniform.  If I throw on a pair of plain black shorts from company X and a plain blue jersey from company Y, that’s not really a kit.

So, perhaps “kit” is useful … but is it useful enough that we should use it, even at the risk of sounding like poseurs?  My answer is, we don’t need to determine this at all:  we can slip between the horns of the dilemma and trot out a totally new word, devoid of wannebe-Euro overtones, that is as precise—or more precise—than kit.

A perfect word?

During the e-mail debate, correspondents did trot out alternatives to “kit.”  (Speaking of precise words, maybe “debate” isn’t the perfect word for that protracted correspondence.  At  a post-ride refreshment stop, one of my teammates described it as an “e-mail shit-storm,” for which I chided him, because my thirteen-year-old daughter, herself a budding cyclist, was present.  Another teammate said, “Right, you shouldn’t call it that.  It was more of a shit-tornado.”  Did my daughter say, “Thanks for the visual on that”?  No, I beat her to the punch.)

“Strip” was proposed, along with “livery” and “clobber.”  The benefit of these is that, being virtually unknown in U.S. cycling parlance, they won’t send any untoward cultural signals.  But the use of “strip” as a noun doesn’t even appear in my six-inch-thick Webster’s unabridged dictionary.  The guy who suggested “strip” is the New Zealander, whose Collins English dictionary (likely published for the New Zealand market) defines strip as “the clothes worn by the members of a team, esp a football team.”  The downside of “strip” is that, being unknown here, it’s useless except as a private joke. 

Similarly, I’ve often promoted my brother’s favorite term, “ABCs,” an acronym for “Angry Biker Clothes,” but to understand this, you have to know the term “angry biker,” meaning any uptight, aggro racer-type, but of course this term isn’t widely known outside the Albert family.

But wait!  There was one term thrown about in the e-mail thread that I really like, notwithstanding the fact that it was both introduced and rejected in a single parenthetical aside:  “(No, MB, costume doesn’t count! )”

What’s wrong with “costume”?  The more I contemplate it, the more I like it.  At face value, bicycling clothing fits within the basic definition of costume (“a style of dress characteristic of a particular country, period, or people”).  It’s true that other definitions bleed over (e.g., “an outfit or disguise worn on Mardi Gras, Halloween, or a masquerade”), and it’s also true that “costume” makes us think of superheroes.  This isn’t necessarily inaccurate, though; after all, if you took the typical Lycra cycling getup and added a cape, you wouldn’t be far from Superman or Batman (other than the lack of boots).

If you think about it, the sense of an outfit worn to a masquerade fits perfectly, because the vast majority of us cyclists really are just pretending.  Our participation in the sport, though perfectly valid and worthwhile, is really just our best facsimile of the professional peloton.  Club racers invariably have this aching desire to look just like the pros, even if we fully grasp the vast distance between them and us.

You may argue that, in light of these ideas, using “costume” would be a form of self-mockery.  I would agree—but then, sometimes self-mockery is a good thing.  Consider the song “Yankee Doodle.”  This song, as we all know (and as neatly described by Wikipedia), “was sung by British military officers to mock the disheveled, disorganized colonial ‘Yankees,’” until “the Americans embraced the song and made it their own, turning it back on those who had used it to mock them.”

Likewise, by using a term that mocks our own pretentiousness, we bicyclists beat others to the punch.  Who are these “others”?  I can think of plenty:  the non-bike people who think we look silly and/or act overly self-important; the casual bike people who laugh at our aspirations toward Euro-cool; the bike club curmudgeons who rescue us when we start to velominate. 

Brits and Kiwis, along with Americans who are lazy and/or blasé, can keep on saying “kit,” but I’m going with “costume” from now on.

37 Velominati Rules You Can Ignore

Introduction

This is my second of two posts on The Rules, a set of cycling-related standards put forth by Velominati.com.  I bother to write about The Rules in part because I feel that bicycle road racing has a recruitment problem.  In the mid-‘80s when I was a junior in Colorado, turnout was great—routinely we’d get like sixty kids in a race.  Now, in many cases, there are scarcely enough juniors to have a race, even at major events like the Nevada City Bicycle Classic.  Also, the three teams I rode for during my college years had trouble recruiting women even back then.  So when popular websites like Velominati’s suggest that the roadie realm is a bunch of (adult, male) elitists, I feel like somebody ought to step up and assure the newcomer that a lot of us are actually pretty laid back.

Several Velominati fans have commented, below my first post on this topic, that I’m missing the point and that I have no sense of humor.  Well, I doubt that the point of Velominati’s site is that these Rules are entirely facetious and the entire thing is a great big spoof.  If that were the case, a seasoned cyclist like me would disagree with all of The Rules, not just 37 of them.  Moreover, if humor were the only goal of The Rules, we wouldn’t have such straightforward, clearly non-tongue-in-cheek items as Rule #18, “No baggy shorts and jerseys while riding the road bike.”

I suspect that the point of The Rules is twofold:  to inform and to entertain.  It’s evidently meant to be fun to read, while imparting a body of knowledge about the culture of road cycling.  The fact that I don’t find much of it funny doesn’t mean I have no sense of humor.  After all, I laughed out loud at the Ronnie Johns “Harden the Fuck Up” video that Rule #5 links to.  I also chuckled at Rule #34, “Mountain bike shoes and pedals have their place:  on a mountain bike.”  Beyond velominati.com, I can even enjoy a comic declaration I totally disagree with, provided it’s sufficiently funny, as in the case of George Carlan’s diatribe against guys named Todd.

The Rules list strongly resembles a similar list from many years ago, “The Official Euro Cyclist Code of Conduct,” by Dom Guiver and Mike Flavell, except that those guys seemed to be making fun of themselves, and their directives were, in many cases, obviously facetious (e.g.,  “[long] hair shall be neatly slicked back in maximum euro-styling, and helmet SHALL NOT be worn” and “a gold pendant on a very long, thin chain bearing some sort of religious icon is STRONGLY recommended for mountain races”).  In contrast, the overall effect of the Velominati rules is that of actual advice from unapologetically elitist self-declared authorities.

When I asserted this in my previous post, a few Velominati fans told me to lighten up.  Their suggestion seems to be that because The Rules are all in good fun, nobody should object to anything.  The problem is, it’s really hard to tell when a rule is meant as a joke vs. an actual directive.  If something is not obviously funny, it’s not obviously a joke, and we are entitled to think it’s meant seriously.  (It’s a bit like one of my kids insulting the other, and then, when I chastise her for it, saying, “C’mon, I was just joking.”)

This post (like my other one) is for cyclists who have read The Rules and don’t like them, and/or are feeling intimidated by a sport that, as Velominati portrays it, holds its participants to exacting standards.  This post is for cyclists who disagree with some of The Rules and might like being let off the hook.  And finally, it’s for my friend Mark, who originally sent around the link with the comment, “We need to annotate this list … Dana?”

37 Velominati Rules you can ignore

Here is the list of Velominati rules I knowingly break—not due to a rebellious streak, but because I simply think they’re wrong.  Please don’t construe my list as an endorsement of the idea that cyclists need to meet a uniform standard … as far as I’m concerned, other cyclists can do as they please (outside of obvious misbehavior like running over pedestrians as they pursue downhill Strava  records).

Rule #1, Obey the Rules.  This is needless; the idea of obedience is built-in to the notion of rule.  I think it would be an improvement to change this one to, “Take the following Rules with a grain of salt.”

Rule #3, Guide the uninitiated.  Per my previous post, other riders’ behavior is their own business and I don’t want the job of telling strangers they’re doing it all wrong.

Rule #5, Harden The Fuck Up.  This was funny in Ronnie Johns’ video.  It’s less funny when aimed at a reader whom the Velominati folks have never met, and who a) may already be plenty hard, or b) may not care to make the sport a personal pissing contest.  I went further into this in my previous post.

Rule #6, Free your mind and your legs will follow.  This is just blather.  Any good cyclist knows that this sport requires brains.  And “Do all your thinking before you start riding”?  The idea of Velominati acolytes thoughtlessly drifting along, lost in reverie (“wrapped in the sensations of the ride”), is somewhat  frightening.  Yes, much of cycling becomes instinctive and automatic, but decisions still need to be made.

Rule #7, Tan lines should be cultivated and kept razor sharp.  In my book, any behavior associated with suntans—with the notable exception of protecting your skin—is narcissistic.  And yes, narcissism is a bad thing.

Rule #9, Riding in bad weather means you’re a badass, period.  Not everybody who rides in bad weather is a badass (some do it just to show off), and conversely, not all badass cyclists are eager or even willing to ride in bad weather.

Rule #11, Family does not come first, the bike does.  I suspect this is facetious, but it’s not very funny, and certainly isn’t right.  If an amateur cyclist, such as one in the Masters, wishes to bail on his family every weekend to go race, that’s his or her business, but to mandate it is ridiculous.

Rule #12, The correct number of bikes to own is n+1.  No, that’s not always the case.  For me, five is plenty since I don’t ride track or cyclocross.  Also, what about people who can only afford one or two bikes?  Are they not allowed into this sport?

Rule #13, If you draw race number 13, turn it upside down.  As Daniel Coyle describes in his excellent book Lance Armstrong’s War, superstitions can vary from rider to rider.  I have no problem with the number 13 and would want to wear it right-side-up, to make sure the officials can read it (as opposed to giving me a DNF).  Declaring that something should be done a certain way, just because some cool athlete does it, is getting into slippery territory.  Should the Velominati guys, in accordance with Rules #2 and #3, go tell Rohan Dennis—winner of the Mount Diablo stage of the Tour of California—that he pinned his numbers on wrong?

Rule #14, Shorts should be black.  This is silly because the majority of pro teams have non-black shorts today.  Meanwhile, my club’s jerseys are orange, which I love, but which wouldn’t look good with black shorts (i.e., would be too much like Halloween).  We wear navy blue shorts.

Rule #17, Team kit is for members of the team.  In general, I don’t try to impersonate someone on another team.  But I received a sweet long-sleeve Rabobank jersey for Christmas years ago and reserve the right to wear it, with my non-Rabobank shorts. 

Rule #18, Know what to wear, don’t suffer kit confusion – No baggy shorts and jerseys while riding the road bike, no lycra when riding the  mountain bike.  Pure malarkey.  I’m not going to put on my cycling clothes just to return a video.  And mountain bikers have been wearing Lycra for at least a couple decades.

Rule #19, Introduce yourself … it is customary and courteous to announce your presence.  I have never required this of any random Joe joining our club ride, and have never been so formal in joining a random rider or group on the road.  I’ve also never witnessed such formalities, in over thirty years of club rides.  Sure, I’ve had a paceline disrupted by an unskilled interloper, but the best way to deal with that is just to ramp up the pace until he falls off.  And if he doesn’t?  Well, good on him!

Rule #23, Tuck only after reaching Escape Velocity.  Since I reserve the right to recover during descents (see my comment on Rule #93), I’ll tuck when I please.  And by the way, the velominati.com photo of the “LeMond tuck”?  That’s not even a tuck.  Look at Taylor Phinney soloing in that Tour of California stage … that’s a tuck.  There are plenty of great photos of LeMond tucking; why didn’t the Velominati guys find one?

Rule #24, Speeds and distances shall be referred to and measured in kilometers.  Look, the Americans I ride with mostly use miles, and so do I.  That doesn’t make us “Neanderthalic,” as the Velominati suggest.  (Meanwhile, “Neanderthalic” isn’t even a word.)

Rule #25, The bikes on top of your car should be worth more than the car.  This is only true for juniors in really crappy cars.  And the Velomati guys’ “relatively more expensive” caveat is slippery:  where do you draw the line?  How many bikes are we talking about?  Is a $40,000 car okay with a $3,000 bike?  Their “put your Huffy on a Rolls” example is neither funny nor helpful.  I could agree with a more definitive guideline:  “If you drive a 2010 Nissan Elantra with upgraded rims, but your bike is a 1995 Novara Trionfo, perhaps you should reassess your priorities.”

Rule #30, No frame-mounted pumps.  This is just plain stupid.  I don’t like seeing pumps poking out of pockets because I’m afraid they’ll fall out, and I don’t use CO2 canisters because they’re not eco-friendly.  Prohibiting Zéfal pumps and insisting on Silca is like requiring VHS over Betamax.  And the Velominati-sanctioned method of mounting a pump in the rear frame triangle is wrong.  You don’t prop it on the quick-release skewer, because that’s not secure enough.  You take a big file and put a notch in the pump handle that slots right over the dropout.  But of course you can’t do this on most modern frames anyway (or are we all supposed to be riding ‘80s-era steel frames too?).  One more thing:  the authors spelled “canister” wrong.

Rule #33, Shave your guns.  As a mandate, this doesn’t have much backing among the cyclists I know.  I did a blog post awhile back on leg shaving by cyclists, for which I did a survey of around 50 of my male cycling pals.  Of these, 93% either used to race or still do, and ten are (or were) Category 1 and/or professional riders.  Only 14% of these surveyed riders shave their legs year-round, and 45% never do.  (Meanwhile, 52% indicated they couldn’t care less if other cyclists shaved their own legs.)  My other issue with this rule:  calling your legs “guns” is like kissing your flexed biceps non-ironically.  Pretty sad.

Rule #39, Never ride without your eyewear.  I sometimes do a short ride at dawn.  I don’t need the UV protection, and I don’t suppose the few riders I see at that hour are scandalized from a sartorial perspective.  So who exactly is affected when I break this rule?

Rule #41, Quick-release levers are to be carefully positioned.  As I said in my previous post, I point my levers straight back because I think it looks cool.  As for how others orient theirs, I couldn’t care less and neither should you.

Rule #45, Slam your stem.  Maybe if I did yoga I could change my position to meet the maximum stack height prescribed by this rule.  A marginally cooler-looking bike isn’t worth back pain, at least for those of us who ride our bikes instead of parking them at cafés in the mistaken belief that passersby will admire them.  Meanwhile, a low-rise stem with more than 2 cm of stack height looks way cooler than a high-rise stem positioned directly on the top race of the headset, though this latter configuration would be technically permissible according to The Rules.

Rule #49, Keep the rubber side down.  Are you going to tell me a junior cyclist who can’t afford a bike stand or wheel truing stand isn’t allowed to flip his bike over to true the wheels?  Should this sport be restricted to those who can afford their own truing stands (or can afford to pay a shop to maintain their bikes for them)?

Rule #50, Facial hair is to be carefully regulated.  This rule should explicitly exclude women and juniors; because it doesn’t, I’m led to believe the Velominati folks forgot all about them.  Meanwhile, not shaving on the morning of a race doesn’t have anything to do with virility, as suggested by the Velominati writers.  As a junior I was plenty virile despite being too young to shave.  The reason you don’t shave the morning of the race, as everybody knows, is that you want to avoid the sting of sweat in razor burn (a pointless addition to the suffering you’re already doing).  As far as the prohibition of beards and moustaches, I really don’t think this has anything to do with cycling.  If I desire to grow some facial hair, even for the express purpose of looking like an idiot, that’s my business (see my previous post about the compatibility of iconoclasm with cycling).  In this photo I’m also visibly breaking Rule #14, Rule #33, Rule #45, and Rule #74.

Rule #56, Espresso or macchiato only.  This kind of epicurean fussiness has nothing to do with cycling, as I detailed in my previous post.  Prior to reading The Rules I’d never even heard of a macchiato.  I prefer NoDoz to coffee anyway.

Rule #58, Support your local bike shop—never buy bikes, parts, or accessories online.  Never?  Really?  I do support my local bike shop, by sending them business and by buying basic stuff there, but it’s ridiculous to expect a serious cyclist to do none of his or her shopping online.  Look, if you know exactly what you want, you know how to install and adjust it yourself and have the tools you need, and you don’t have a trust fund, you’d be crazy to buy all your stuff at a bike shop.  Excepting the ten years during which I worked in bike shops, I’ve bought major bike parts mail-order since about 1982 and I sleep well at night.

Rule #63, Point in the direction you’re turning.  What a pointless bit of advice.  If a car is well behind me, yeah, I’ll signal by extending my right arm.  But if a driver is creeping right up on me, he or she won’t see a right-arm turn signal (because my body will eclipse it).  So then I use the left arm bent-elbow signal.  Do these Velominati guys actually think about any of these directives before issuing them, or do they just write down whatever random idea pops into their heads?

Rule #68, Rides are to be measured by quality, not quantity … declaring “We rode 4km” would assert that 4000m were climbed during the ride with the distance being irrelevant.  I’ve never heard a ride described this way.  Why would the Velominati guys require a behavior that absolutely nobody, outside of their own weird little clique, actually does?

Rule #70, The purpose of competing is to win.  I think this was true in the case of Eddy Merckx, but most other racers use some races for training, and know they aren’t always in contention.  I think it’s perfectly fine—admirable, even—to enter a race that you know you can’t win.  How else are you going to improve?  Is the Velominati strategy to carefully select only the smallest of ponds?  This rule is just macho posturing.

Rule #73, Gear and brake cables should be cut to optimum length.  Well, isn’t this a pointless tautology?  Shouldn’t all things be done in the optimum way, by definition?  But actually my main issue is with the text of the rule, which includes “Right shifter cable should go to the left cable stop and vice versa” and the associated directive that cables should “cross under the downtube.”  Yeah, I’ve come across this before.  You occasionally see a complete moron setting up a bike that way.  It’s pointless.  As a bike shop mechanic I never encountered a colleague who did that.

Rule #74, V Meters or small computers only.  Not having heard of a V Meter, I took the bait and clicked the hyperlink.  A V Meter is a bike computer with a Velominati sticker obscuring the display.  This violates Rule #57, No stickers, and Rule #78, Remove unnecessary gear.  It’s also so precious I think I’m going to hurl.  Meanwhile, large computers (e.g., Garmins and power meters) are very common on pro racers’ bikes.

Rule #78, Remove unnecessary gear – When racing in a criterium of 60 minutes or less the second (unused) water bottle cage must be removed.  Once again, no actual cyclist would ever do this, not even a pro cyclist with a full-time mechanic.  On the other hand, at least this rule used the term “water bottle cage” instead of calling the bottle a “bidon” as the Velomati Rules website does in a dozen other places.  “Bidon” is shameless affectation of Euro-cool.  I believe it is a very small minority of English-speaking cyclists who ever say “bidon.”  (I thought this might be a British thing, but the British announcers, on Eurosport and also in the recent Tour of California coverage, all say “bottle,” as does the Brit on my bike club.)

Rule #85, Descend like a pro – all descents shall be undertaken at speeds commonly regarded as “ludicrous” or “insane” by those less talented.  This advice is irresponsible.  Descending at speed isn’t a talent—it’s a skill and should be developed gradually with no pressure from bloviating bloggers.  And the bit about “the inner leg canted” for balance and aesthetics?  I think they wanted the word “bent,” and anyway hanging your inside knee is the mark of a novice.  Once you know what you’re doing, you keep that knee in for better aerodynamics.  (I learned this from Dale Stetina, not some website.)

Rule #89, Pronounce it correctly.  Pronouncing “Tour de France” correctly is no problem.  But I think it’s best if my fellow Americans and I say “Tour of Flanders” instead of “Ronde van Vlaanderen.”  Why?  First, I dislike such showiness, and second, there’s nobody around to correct our mispronunciation.

Rule #90, Never get out of the big ring.  Okay, clearly this one is meant as a joke.  I guess I can’t fault the Velominati fans for getting a big laugh out of this, any more than I could fault a young child for laughing at “Garfield.”

Rule #91, No food on training rides under four hours.  I’m so glad I don’t have to ride with these guys and help them get home after their blood sugar crashes.  This advice is empirically bad, no matter what Johan Museeuw said.  (Besides, he was talking to an individual … perhaps that person had more fat to burn than a typical cyclist.)  It’s also curious that an exception is made for hard rides over two hours.  Well, if you’re not riding hard, aren’t you in violation of Rule #3?

Rule #92, No sprinting from the hoods.  Watch any mountaintop finish in a pro race and you’ve got a pretty good chance of seeing a guy sprinting while on the hoods.  The Rules authors could have so easily made an exception for uphill finishes, but they didn’t.  Why not?  Sheer laziness?  I think it’s also odd how they make a special exception for Saronni in the ’82 world championships.  How come when one rider, like Fabian Cancellara with Rule #13, does something that the Velominati guys like, that behavior becomes a rule, whereas when another rider does something forbidden by The Rules, like Saronni here or Pantani in Rule #50, he’s merely an exception?

Rule #93, Descents are not for recovery.  If you don’t need to recover on a descent, perhaps you didn’t go hard enough on the climb.  Moreover, this seems like irresponsible advice for these Velominati guys to give to readers of varying skill level.  A rider in my area died trying to set a downhill KOM on Strava.  “But we’re just joking, get a sense of humor!” the Rules fans might say.  I reiterate:  this excuse might work better if the rule were actually funny….
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