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

Introduction

In my last post I explored the difference between a) being a cycling fascist, and b) helping the reserved novice avoid some behavioral pitfalls that could cause embarrassment.  In short, I described how to avoid looking like a “Fred.”  Nobody wants to be this guy (except maybe this guy):

Rather than positioning myself as an authority, I surveyed 37 of my veteran cycling pals to see which behaviors are totally normal and acceptable; which are borderline (as in “I wouldn’t do it...”); and which are (in the survey’s words) “laughably Fredtastic.”  My last post covered all but the top ten most egregious behaviors; this one explores the very most frowned-upon.

Before we get started

I want to emphasize that I fully support the novice (or expert!) cyclist who doesn’t give a rat’s ass what is “done” and what is not, and cheerfully flies in the face of convention.  This post may help that sort of cyclist enjoy his rebellion more; after all, there’s no joy in unknowingly transgressing.  Moreover, this study shows how much wiggle-room exists, since there is somewhat limited consensus among those surveyed about cycling DOs and DON’Ts.

Also, I’m going to use “he,” “his,” and “him” throughout this post, simply because “he or she,” “his or her,” and “him or her” are too clunky.  Can a woman be a Fred?  Yes.  Have people tried to create a gender-specific term (e.g., “Freida”) for a female Fred?  Yes.  Did the below photo accompany a blog post called “Bicycling:  Are you a Fred?”  Yes.  Would the person shown below be welcome on a group ride with my club?  Yes, yes, yes.

Survey results – the top ten

(To see the 10th through 20th most frowned-upon behaviors, and to see a tabular summary of the behaviors that didn’t make the top 20, click here.

10th Most Fredtastic:  screwing up rotating paceline

When I was first compiling the questions for my survey (which were based on my own observations, my Internet searches on the topic, and consulting my bike pals) somebody rightly pointed out that fashion missteps are only part of the puzzle; poor technique can be every bit as damning.  Perhaps we should go easy on technique, though, since the intricacies of this sport can take a long time to learn (whereas it ought to be pretty obvious which is the front of your helmet and which is the back).  One respondent remarked that poor skills “are totally correctable and the responsibility is on us old schoolers to educate the newbies.”

On the other hand, it’s perfectly reasonable for the novice to brush up on his skills before joining a group ride.  What is to be done, though, when the skill in question can only be learned by riding in a pack?  The rotating paceline is a perfect example—it is impossible to learn this on your own.  (If you’re not familiar with this term, click here.) 

You may find it perplexing how little slack the respondents gave to the novice who screws up the rotating paceline.  Nobody found this acceptable, 39% tagged it as borderline, and 61% chose laughably Fredtastic.

I think this harsh judgment derives from just how frustrating it is when you’ve got, say, ten riders who are this close to achieving a gloriously efficient paceline, but there’s one guy who just doesn’t get it, and the whole thing gets gummed up and instead of blissfully pouring everything into the pedals and really hauling ass, everybody has to be making constant adjustments.  It doesn’t take long to identify the person who is cocking things up, or which of the many possible mistakes he’s making: 

• Surging when at the front of the fast line, making the whole line adjust, so the guy at the back, moving over from the slow line, has a devil of a time;
• Swinging too  far out to the side;
• Failing to slow down slightly after moving over to the front of the slow line;
• Getting to the front of the fast line and then unconsciously matching (instead of slightly exceeding) the speed of the guy at the head of the slow line, thus stalling out the rotation;
• Getting to the back of the slow line and somehow forgetting to move over to the back of the fast line, causing widespread disorientation;
• Perhaps due to being lazy, weak, or unfocused, randomly letting big gaps open ahead of him, which introduces a rubber-band effect to the whole line;
• Failing to keep out of the way of the rotating riders when he’s given up doing his share and is sitting on the back.

Frankly, once the novice rider has achieved a comfort level with riding in close quarters, the rotating paceline actually isn’t that difficult a concept.  When I see somebody fouling up the paceline, I myself have little patience (though, like the others, I bear the frustration silently).

A nice counterpoint to all this was provided by a respondent:  “If someone screws up a paceline, the bad is on you for not going fast enough. In fact, screwing up a paceline is a good way to thumb your nose at a bunch of slow riders.”

9th Most Fredtastic:  water bottle behind saddle

Do a Google image search on “worldtour cycling time trial.”  You won’t see a single photo of a bottle mounted behind the saddle.  This is partly because of UCI article 1.3.024 bis:  “Bottles ... may only be located on the down and seat tubes on the inside of the frame.”  Do the pro cyclists chafe at this?  No.  That rule didn’t exist until 2013, before which time pro cyclists never used rear-mounted bottle cages anyway.

Think about that.  Some of these guys are willing to do an awful lot just to go faster.  They’ll tolerate headaches incurred by sleeping in oxygen-deprivation tents; they’ll take dangerous and illegal drugs; they’ll thaw and inject previously frozen blood; and they’ll do a five-hour ride, then guzzle a ton of fizzy water, pop a few sleeping pills, and try to sleep through dinner, to lose weight.  That all these pro cyclists refused to use a rear-mounted bottle, even back when it was legal, says either a) there isn’t actually much aerodynamic benefit to this; b) it’s inefficient trying to access a rear-mounted bottle;  or c) they still have some pride.  Whatever the case, nothing looks more tri—and less roadie—than a rear-mounted bottle.

The survey results confirm this:  two respondents (~6%) found this bottle placement acceptable; 31% said borderline; and 64% said Fredtastic. 

I think I know the two guys who said this was okay ... they’re real jokers who like to steal water from triathletes, so they don’t have to carry their own.  Yes, I made that up.  The real explanation may have to do with my survey question, which included handlebar-mounted bottles, which used to be popular (i.e., in the 1930s).   Maybe we’ve got a couple retro-types in the group.

A final note:  UCI 1.3.024 bis also states, “It is forbidden to place an empty bottle (without any liquid) on the bicycle.”  I guess this is why racers always discard their empty bottles:  they’re just following the rules!  Since fans get to retrieve these discarded bottles, it’s a win-win.

8th Most Fredtastic:  aero bars

Okay, that same Google search shows that virtually all WorldTour cyclists use aero bars during time trials.  So why is it that only 5% of my panel found aero bars acceptable on club rides, while 32% said borderline and 62% said Fredtastic?

Well, racing a time trial with these bars is one thing (we might tell ourselves we have to, because our competitors are), but why would you ever train with them?  What’s that you say?  “Practice”?  Who needs to practice?

In 1990, on the night before the collegiate national championship team time trial, my UCSB teammates and I finally got around to installing the aero bars on our funny bikes.  These were the über-cool kind of TT bike (now illegal) that had a smaller front wheel and down-sloping top tube.  We’d only ridden these bikes once (in the conference championship TTT), and that was just with the bullhorn bars.  Four of us had never tried aero bars on any bike.  So, after mounting the aero bars, we took one short test ride, in the dark, through downtown Palo Alto.  Given that we rode the bikes flawlessly the next day, winning the TTT, the single, brief test run was (by definition) all the practice we needed.  So why would anybody need to train with these bars on an ongoing basis?  You might as well have a sign around your neck saying, “I have a confidence problem,” or “I am a slow learner.”

I guess the other problem with showing up to a club ride with aero bars is that, since nobody else is using them, you might appear to be seeking some kind of equipment advantage.  Notwithstanding the fact that some roadies train on deep-dish carbon wheels, we’d all like to pretend that on training rides we prefer a level playing field.

7th Most Fredtastic:  big puffy jacket

I see people on fancy-pants road bikes with standard-issue Lycra bike shorts and then these big poofy nylon jackets, like an inverted MC Hammer.  This kind of jacket looks way too warm and there’s no way it’d scrunch up small enough to stuff in a jersey pocket, or even in the Fred’s oversized seat bag.  Experienced cyclists know to wear thin layers and constantly make adjustments (zipping, unzipping, scrunching down arm warmers, stowing things, etc.) instead of alternately suffocating and freezing.

6th Most Fredtastic:  not holding line

It’s understandably unnerving when somebody two inches ahead of you, or right next to you, wobbles around on the road, drifts due to inattention, or chooses the wrong line through a curve.  It seems irresponsible to join a group ride without having mastered the basic skill of riding in a straight line.  Perhaps that’s why a quarter of the panel called this failure borderline, 3% called it normal, and 72% said Fredtastic.

But you know what I’ve encountered more often, and which is also totally annoying?  It’s when one rider, usually in a race, yells at another for this infraction.  This is the most common criticism I’ve heard in the peloton and seems to be the rough equivalent of a motorist honking his horn. 

Usually, it’ like crying wolf:  I’ve heard this accusation far more often than I’ve seen it warranted.  During one collegiate cycling season, I fielded this complaint several times—even though in the years before and the years after, and even during USCF races that same year, I never heard boo.  Did I have a four-month lapse in skill?  No, it’s because that spring, using my brother’s student ID, I was racing for the tiny, virtually unknown Cuesta Community College Pedalers (CCCP).  Little teams like that always end up taking the brunt of riders’ frustrations:  “Goddammit, hold your line, Cuesta!”  I have it on good authority that no less accomplished a bike handler than Davis Phinney used to get this kind of verbal abuse when he was on Austro-Daimler and AMF, but never heard another peep once he joined 7-Eleven.

5th Most Fredtastic:  nervous, erratic riding

It’s not hard to see why nervous, erratic riding would bother people.  Nobody found this acceptable, 19% said borderline, and 81% flagged it Fredtastic.

Cycling, after all, is a social sport.  A two-hour ride with one pal is basically “My [Rolling] Dinner With André,” and a three-hour ride with the club is basically a three-hour cocktail party, as stoplights and such reshuffle the group so everybody gets to chat with everybody else.  Who wants to be next to the guy who is wobbling around, slamming on the brakes during descents, surging on all the climbs, and/or generally exuding the wrong vibe?

4th Most Fredtastic:  fanny pack etc.

The fully category here is “fanny pack or anything tied around the waist.”  Yes, people really do wear fanny packs while cycling.

The panel was pretty judgmental on this one:  a whopping 84% said it was Fredtastic, and 14% said it was borderline.  Only one person approved it.  I think that was me.  You see, when I ride with my daughter, I end up schlepping her stuff.  Sometimes this stuff includes—gasp!—a thick long-sleeved extra jersey (as un-stowable as a big puffy jacket).  I do a balancing act between showing my daughter the ropes and indulging her comfort, not wanting to sour her on the sport as she adjusts to it.  Meanwhile, the un-stowable garment isn’t so silly when you have someone to carry it for you; as my daughter wrote in her Grizzly Peak Century report recently, “Everyone needs a Sherpa!”  Since the jersey won’t fit in my pocket, I tie it around my waist.  If necessary, I’ll continue this practice when my daughter starts joining our club rides.

That said, I’d never ever own, much less wear, a fanny pack, on the bike or anywhere else.

Okay, are you ready for the podium?

3rd Most Fredtastic:  knee-high socks

I can only speculate on the mental illness that would cause a cyclist to wear knee-high socks, but I think we can divide this (thankfully small, but ominously growing) population into two categories:  those who are having a little carefree fun, and those who actually think they’re getting physiological benefit from their socks.

Let’s start with the first group.  Obviously, tall socks have a market:  those whimsical, fun-loving fashion vanguards.  Consider these:

Meanwhile, audacious socks are a perfect way for a cycling rebel to have some fun; consider this tale about Floyd Landis deliberately tweaking his competitors in his first road race by wearing tall, loud argyle socks.

But there’s a darker side to knee-high socks:  the whole “compression sock” notion.  Some actually believe that these socks will help you recover, etc. and you’ll actually be a better cyclist.  Usually this fallacy only destroys your post-ride wardrobe, but some people (I hesitate to call them cyclists) are now wearing them while training, or (gasp!) even while racing.

Please, somebody write in and tell me the above picture was Photoshopped.  I vomited mentally when I discovered it.  Fortunately, tall socks are confined to the idiot fringe of road racing, and I’m sure the offensive rider shown above was punished severely by the peloton.  (As a former pro once told me, it’s very difficult to help someone win a race, but very easy to make him lose.)

Needless to say, my panel had little patience for this tall-sock silliness; only 16% found it borderline, and everybody else rightly tagged it Laughably Fredtastic.

2nd Most Fredtastic:  underwear under cycling shorts

When I proposed this as a category, one teammate replied, “This is a myth. Perhaps you recall it from a waking dream as an undergraduate studying absurdist literature but it never happened.”  This was quickly countered by another guy:  “Underwear under Lycra DOES happen!  On a Cal cycling team ride circa spring 2001, a young female newbie was clearly wearing underwear under her Lycra.  She was also wearing a sweater tied around her waist.”

Obviously, it doesn’t make much sense to do this, since the so-called chamois has been specially engineered to wick away moisture, keeping baby drier (to quote a diaper commercial).  Why would you introduce a clammy cotton layer?

And yet, I myself have known three riders in favor of underwear under cycling shorts.  Many years ago, a teammate of mine trained with underwear but left it in the dresser on race day.  When I cheekily asked her why, I was brushed off with the comment, “It’s a woman thing.”  I never argue with that line of reasoning.

Four riders in our group ruled this behavior “borderline,” but everybody else said it was Fredtastic.

By the way, when researching a recent post I discovered that the yuppie/hipster website Coolhunting sells cycling-specific underwear.  Clearly, the assault on cycling’s image just never lets up.

Speaking of which, it’s time for our gold medal winner!

The Number One Most Fredtastic:  arm warmers with sleeveless jersey

It is in fact not terribly uncommon to see a cyclist wearing arm warmers and a sleeveless jersey at the same time.  (And no, I’m not talking about a sleeveless under-jersey plus a sleeved jersey.  Stop quibbling.)  Of all the behaviors in my survey, I think this is the most laughably Fredtastic of them all, so I was pleased to see this position reinforced by the panel.  A whopping 92% found this Fredtastic, 5% borderline, and just one renegade deemed it acceptable.  (Maybe that’s the smartass who was [hypothetically] quibbling about the under-jersey.)

This disapproval isn’t a matter of some cycling-specific fashion or tradition, and doesn’t pertain to the great cultural divide between road cycling and triathlon.  Nor is it a technically complicated matter, or anything safety-related.  It’s just a basic matter of the most obvious common sense.  Either the weather is cool enough for arm warmers, or it’s hot enough for a sleeveless jersey—it cannot possibly be both.  But since this logic evidently does elude some newbies, I’m going to break it down as simply as I can:

Of particular note here:  there is no box saying “Wear sleeveless jersey with arm warmers,” because there is simply no use case for this.  And yet, people do employ this combination.  Puzzling over whether there was some flaw in my decision tree, I consulted with my wife, who (though an accomplished cyclist) has no use for roadie culture.  After some thought, she said, “What if you have really nice shoulders?”

Aha!  Paradigm shift!  I had been operating under the unconscious assumption that function, comfort, and/or the prevailing fashion of the sport were driving people’s choices.  But what if the larger, weirder world of non-cycling fashion—that produces everything from tramp stamps to shredded jeans to giant women’s sunglasses to huge, ornate hats—were asserting itself?  Intrigued, I did a little Internet research and came upon “The Great Arm Warmer Debate.”

I didn’t really find this much of a debate.  The blogger herself, a cyclist named Shannon, has decided this combo is okay, and two out of three of her respondents agreed.  (The other reader comment was just praise of Shannon’s phrase “cyclist version of knee socks.”)  So this so-called “debate” was really more of an online love-in.  But it was illuminating:  here is a cycling cohort utterly unconcerned with things like function or tradition, who blithely occupy a kicky, fun universe and don’t identify as rebels.  And I have to admit, Shannon does have nice shoulders.

Maybe veteran cyclists like me are just bitter because our biceps are too wimpy to hold up our arm warmers unless we have elastic-trimmed sleeves to help out.  Or maybe our body fat is so low we can’t take cold shoulders in stride.  Perhaps we’ve suffered so much through this sport, we feel we’ve earned the privilege of scorning the unenlightened.

Or, maybe we’re just right.  Judge for yourself!

What We Talk About When We Talk About “Kit”

NOTE:  This post is rated R for mild strong language.

Introduction

You might not actually care if cyclists use the word “kit” to mean “those silly Lycra clothes we bikers wear.”  Frankly, I don’t much care myself.  But I do care how we approach language in general; how we choose the words we use; and what impact we can have on how the vernacular evolves.  If you love language—and don’t like it eroded by indiscriminate usage—then you should read this post.  It’s the third installment in a series about “kit,” and you can read the first installment here and the second here.

In this essay I rebut an argument from my friend W—, which you haven’t read.  Yeah, I know that’s awkward, but I don’t wish to quote W—’s entire e-mail.  So I’ll quote his most salient points, college-paper style.  If nothing else you’ll get a nice crash course here in identifying logical fallacies.

Straw man

W— begins his argument by stating, “Your whole argument boils down to this: ‘I don’t like Cool Hunting and the things they promote on their website; therefore, use of the word “kit” to mean cycling clothing is invalid.’”

This is a blatant example of what is called the “straw man” fallacy.  This argumentative technique involves erecting an inferior version of your opponent’s argument that can be easily knocked down.  Straw man fallacies can be effective, particularly when the audience doesn’t have the original argument at hand.  I’ll save you the trouble of looking at my earlier posts:  here is a distillation of what I wrote.

• When we use a word, we participate in all its connotations whether we like it or not.
• Using a word can subtly pressure others to adopt it; one teammate admitted, “‘Kit’ still sounds dumb to me, but I use the word because I think I am supposed to.”
• Perhaps “kit” is useful, but we can avoid sounding like wannabe Euro types by using a different term.
• “Costume” is a better word for bike clothing, because so many of us cyclists are poseurs. By using a term that mocks our own pretentiousness, we beat others to the punch.

The above points are from my first post.  That is, I made them before W— even pointed out to me that the website Cool Hunting uses the term “kit.”  How could my whole argument boil down to my reaction to a website I hadn’t yet seen when I made it?

In my second post, I made these points: 

• Cool Hunting’s use of the term “kit” does not, in my opinion, validate the word whatsoever. 
• Word choice is a matter not just of utility but of taste. The members of my bike club avoid “bidon,” despite knowing what it means, because we don’t like it. That “bidon” has a following doesn’t sway us.
• The elasticity of language and the basic ability of a word to convey meaning should not be trotted out as blanket justifications for adopting new usage.
• There is ample precedent for refusing to adopt popular expressions (e.g., “at the end of the day,” “step up our game,” “swing for the fences,” “incent”).

W—’s argument is a straw man fallacy because he has falsely claimed that one of my points is representative of all the others.  It simply isn’t. 

Meanwhile, W— hasn’t even represented my argument correctly as regards Cool Hunting.  I didn’t say Cool Hunting’s use of “kit” is invalid; I simply said that Cool Hunting’s use of “kit” doesn’t, by itself, validate widespread adoption of the word.  That is, I’m not going to start using “kit” just because some website does, especially when it’s a dorky website selling needless, overpriced, twee crap to hipsters.  W— either misunderstood what I meant by “validate,” or he’s quibbling.

Allow me to further clarify my position on “valid” vs. “validate.”  Here’s an analogy.  In the South, people often say “y’all.”  I find this a highly useful (i.e., valid) term, because it’s the only plural sense of “you” that exists in English.  However, the meaning it conveys is perhaps insufficient to validate my own use of the term, because “y’all” is not typical Californian vernacular and my use of it can be puzzling to people.  (I sometimes can’t resist its utility; this has caused others to think I was from the South or was pretending to be.)

By the way, there’s something you should know about Cool Hunting (this isn’t part of my argument, but is just a warning):

The red herring fallacy

Three paragraphs of W—’s e-mail pertain to arguments against “kit” advanced by our teammate Trevor, who started this ball rolling by questioning my use of “kit.”  Trevor attacks the notion that this term is specific and clear enough to be valid.  This is an entirely separate argument from mine, and for W— to respond to Trevor’s argument (in an e-mail addressed to me) is to commit a “red herring” fallacy.  When he writes, “Remember, the argument is not about what words you like or don’t like to use, it is about the correctness of the term ‘kit’ to refer to cycling clothing,” he’s refuting the wrong argument. My argument has always been about whether or not we ought to support “kit.” I’ve gone after its connotations, not its value as a conveyer of meaning.

As you probably already know, a red herring is an argument that seems reasonable, but doesn’t actually address your opponent’s argument.  (In my household it’s known as “red lobster” because my young daughter once goofed when rattling off a list of logical fallacies.)  A red herring can be an intentional effort to distract the audience from the subject, or an unintentional loss of focus.  W—’s red herring is a slide toward straw man, as it conflates Trevor’s argument with mine. 

Here’s an analogy.  Suppose both my kids hate spinach.  Suppose Lindsay says, “Spinach is gross because it’s slimy.”  And suppose Alexa says, “I hate spinach because it tastes like shit.”  To say, “Alexa, you’re forgetting that uncooked spinach on a salad is quite crisp” is to attack the wrong argument, conveniently ignoring what Alexa actually said.  (Take note:  I find “tastes like shit” to be a powerful and valid phrase, but not one that I’d allow my kids to actually use.  Again, utility is not the only criterion by which to judge linguistic choices.)

W— invokes another red herring when he links to this article about the origin of the word “bike,” joking that there may have been “some bike club back in 1882 or so whose riders had a raging argument about how ‘impossibly stupid’ and ‘twee’-sounding it was to refer to a bicycle as a ‘bike.’”  But the article he cites doesn’t concern any objection to “bike,” certainly not on the grounds that it was affectation of any kind.  If the British had adopted “bike” many years before Americans, and those Americans who adopted it also used silly words like “bidon,” maybe W— would be getting somewhere.  But “bike,” according to the article, is an Americanism.

Argumentum ad populum

W— contends that “it is correct, normal—and in fact quite common, even among non-Kiwi, non-Brit, non-Euro English speakers—to use the term kit to refer to a cycling jersey and shorts. None of your criticism of Cool Hunting refutes that. And in fact their usage serves as proof that even a non-cycling specific website with national/international reach uses the term in the way I describe.”  W— goes on to describe a survey he did among participants in the Port of Oakland ride, asking what they call bike clothing.  The result:  “8 out of 10 serious responses were ‘kit.’  These are real, living users of the English language.”  (I wonder if it’s really fair to throw out non-serious responses; after all, isn’t the court jester typically the voice of reason in Shakespeare?  And “real, living users” somehow makes me think of the signs outside strip clubs saying, “See and talk to live nude girls!”  Is this parenthetical aside a red herring?  Absolutely.  Will the phrase “nude girls” bring traffic to my blog?  I hope so.)

An argumentum ad populum fallacy is made when the popularity of an idea is represented as evidence of the legitimacy or veracity of that idea.  Sometimes it’s tempting to assume something is right simply because so many people believe that it is.  (Here’s a doozy of an argumentum ad populum:  “Cigarettes are great!  After all, 40 million Americans can’t be wrong!”)

Whether W— commits this fallacy hinges on what he means by “correct” where word choice is concerned.  So I’ll quote him again; he reiterates that “kit” is “correct English usage, in common parlance in the USA, at least among bikies.”  So for him, “correct” means “in common use,” and I hope I don’t commit my own straw man fallacy by paraphrasing his argument thus:  “People do call it ‘kit.’  Get over it.”

So, his “everybody’s doing it” argument works okay if you construe proper usage as “talking the way everybody else talks.” If we accept “conveys meaning” as the be-all and end-all of language, then W— isn’t really committing a fallacy here.  But of course we shouldn’t accept “conveys meaning” as the true calling of language.  That’s where the next fallacy comes in.

Naturalistic fallacy and the is/ought problem

The Scottish philosopher David Hume wrote, in A Treatise on Human Nature, “I have always remarked, that the author proceeds for some time in the ordinary way of reasoning, and establishes the being of a god, or makes observations concerning human affairs; when of a sudden I am surprised to find that instead of the usual copulations of proposition, is and is not, I meet with no proposition that is not connected with an ought or ought not.”

Building on this, the British philosopher G.E. Moore introduced the term “naturalistic fallacy” and warned against drawing moral or qualitative judgments—the ought—from empirical observation—the is.  Notions like Social Darwinism, the validity of unrestrained capitalism, eugenics, Ayn Rand’s Objectivism, and so forth are all committing the naturalistic fallacy.  This fallacy lurks behind many a defeatist approach, such as, “If the great grey owl can’t handle a little habitat displacement, maybe it just wasn’t meant to be.  Fate favors pigeons.  Get over it.”

As language goes, the naturalistic fallacy promotes the assumption that the way words end up being used is the same thing as how words ought to be used.  So a  person may reason, “If enough people call a lectern a podium, well, I can too!  If teenagers are throwing around words like ‘twerk’ and ‘vape,’ well, maybe I should too, to show how youthful and with-it I am!  And, I can always use ‘their’ as a third-person singular possessive pronoun (e.g., ‘each person must have their own ticket’), since everybody else does it.  It has become correct, by definition!”  Okay, fine, talk like that.  But don’t assume everybody’s going to like it, or that everybody should.

What does this have to do with “kit”?  Well, W— keeps pointing out examples of how “kit” is used.  I’m trying to make the case that perhaps it ought not be used.  Not because “kit” is as foul as “YOLO” or “artisanal,” but because I think we (i.e., my bike club, and the readers of this blog) can do better.

The do-gooder problem

As for as I know, “the do-gooder problem” isn’t an established category of problem, like a logical fallacy is.  But I feel the need to address a whiff of egalitarian, all-together-now spirit in W—’s argument:  again and again, he equates “correct” with “normal” and “common.”    Thus, when a person like me seeks to fault all these good, common, honest people who are just gettin’ it said, the only way they know how ... well, this may come off as elitist.

To combat the possible PR issue here, I’d like to make a distinction between “elite” and “elitist.”  In my opinion, the desire to do something really well (i.e., better than the average person does) doesn’t make you elitist.  It may make you elite (if you’re successful), but being elite is not itself being elitist and is not a character flaw.

You know that viral YouTube video “Shit Cyclists Say”?  I won’t lie—I’ve heard a lot of those lines from my teammates and I’ve used a few myself—but our general level of discourse is much higher than this.  During bike rides, I’ve had fascinating discussions about economics, public key encryption, net neutrality, glaciers, human nature, and—yes—language.  We don’t judge—though we may debate—and we set a high standard for one another.

This high standard comes through in our members’ race reports, which are consistently funny, food-centric, and well-written.  One member even took a page from the celebrity playbook and enlisted a ghost writer to help burnish his report.  Even something as basic as the name of our training race has been subject to continual revision:  “Hammer Ride” became “Haimer Ride” (based on an e-mail typo) before being renamed “House of Pain” which (perhaps because it wasn’t original, or perhaps because it was too brash) was changed to “Domicile of Hurt” (the acronym being implicit).  This still wasn’t good enough so it was then changed to the delightfully redundant “Domicile of Yurt.”  It’s this spirit of constant innovation that makes me think we EBVCers (and you, elite reader of blogs) could be leaders in the linguistic realm instead of blithely adopting whatever trendy lingo we come across.

So, to reiterate:  “kit” is a valid term, perhaps not completely precise but nonetheless useful (unlike “irregardless” and “biweekly”).  I don’t care who uses “kit,” and I won’t call you out for using it, and I plan to use it myself from time to time as a safeguard against dogmatism (though anybody who knows me will automatically fill in the air quotes, like he or she presumably does every time I insert a pregnant pause before uttering the word “Internet”).  But, recognizing that we can choose to accept or deflect memes, I encourage you to second-guess “kit.”  Sure, it’s a word; sure, it’s valid—but is that really enough?

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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Velominati's “The Rules” - Brilliance or BS?

NOTE:  This post is rated R for mild strong language.

Introduction

My bike club has a group e-mail list and we often get into long chains of messages on bike-related topics.  After all, most of us have been riding and/or racing for decades and have strong opinions.  Recently my friend Mark e-mailed around a link to “The Rules” on a bike-geek website called velominati.com.  There was no message text, but the subject line read, “We need to annotate this list … Dana?”  I glanced through the list of rules and knew right away there would be much to say on this topic.  Maybe too much.

Well, too much for the e-mail list, anyway.  Some guys love the endless message cycles, at least some of the time, but others hate them at least half the time, due to Inbox bloat.  Besides, as I discovered when I delved deeper into The Rules, they need to be thoroughly rebutted, and this rebuttal should be as widely accessible as the list itself.  This isn’t a matter of a few rules needing some tweaks, but a fundamental problem of the authors’ approach, as I shall describe.

(In this post I won’t go through and annotate The Rules one-by-one, even though that’s what my teammate originally proposed.  Rather, I’ll save that for a future post.)

A quick aside about the name Velominati:  in this post I will refer to the authors of The Rules as “the Velominati guys.”  I reckon I’m supposed to just call them “the Velominati,” as I would with “illuminati,” but I refuse.

The rules at first glance

At first blush, The Rules look like fun.  There are clear-cut mandates in this list about a variety of topics that get debated on my club, such as sock color, whether cycling shorts need to be black, and whether or not the little knurled lock-ring on your inner tube valve should be discarded.  The Rules list covers aesthetic matters that deserve to be covered, like the orientation of quick-release levers and the need to keep your bars level.  There’s a decent amount of wit involved, like Rule #51, “Livestrong wristbands are cockrings for your arms.”

So I figured, okay, this is kind of like a style guide in “GQ” magazine, a compilation of little sartorial pointers.  Not the kind of thing I normally pore over, but if somebody is seeking to fit in better with the elite cycling crowd, I don’t have a problem with that.  But when I left off skimming the list randomly and started reading from the beginning, right away I had a bit of a problem with Rule #3, “Guide the uninitiated.”  Who am I to tell some novice that he or she is doing something wrong?  I don’t want that job, and probably a lot of novice riders couldn’t care less about tan lines being razor sharp or the right way to position their sunglasses.

But it wasn’t until I got to Rule #5, “Harden The Fuck Up,” that I started to get a bit riled.  Now I see that this isn’t just a list of aesthetic do’s and don’ts, but a document that’s going to cast aspersions on how hard people should ride.  Since the writers can’t know much about their potential audience, I guess they figure everybody needs to harden the fuck up.  So they’re on the brink of calling readers like me poseurs, which is a pretty bold move  when they’re giving advice about how, when hanging around a café after your ride, “having your cap skull-side tipped jauntily at a rakish angle is, one might say, de rigueur.”

Then, right after “harden the fuck up,” they get into psychobabble territory with Rule #6, “Free your mind and your legs will follow,” and how you should “wrap yourself in the sensations of the ride – the smell of the air, the sound of the tires, the feeling of flight as the bicycle rolls over the road.”  These guys need to make up their minds:  are they trying to be George Carlin, Tony Robbins, or William Wordsworth?

My friend Trevor, whose cycling credentials are impeccable (he not only won three collegiate national championships, but two in one day), responded to the Rules list by saying, “I took a lot of crap in high school for having shaved legs and being seen on my bike in ‘spandex’ pants (always black), but I was never embarrassed.  That list is an embarrassment.”

He’s onto something, and I’m going to help explain exactly what.

The poseur paradox

Consider the photo below.

That’s me with my friend Dan.  He’s got a visor on his helmet, in blatant violation of Rule #35, “No visors on the road.”  Is he ignorant, in need of the Velominati link?  No, of course he already knows most roadies would frown on the visor.  But he doesn’t care.  Look at what else he’s wearing:  a national champion jersey.  Yes, in keeping with Rule #16, “Respect the jersey,” he did win that.  Now, should any reader of The Rules, in keeping with Rule #3, feel obligated to point out the visor faux pas to Dan?  Not at all.  First of all, it’s none of any reader’s business, and two, Dan would probably rip the guys legs off, or at least could.  (Perhaps that’s why he had the visor in the first place … as a taunt.) 

What about me?  As a friend, could (should) I tell Dan to ditch the visor?  Yes, but only because a) that’s what friends are for, b) I have a matching national champion jersey (we won them together in the Team Time Trial), and c) if Dan tries to rip my legs off, at least I can give him a run for his money.  Authority is earned on the road, not through bluster and fancy prose.  (There:  I’ll make that my Rule #1.)

Not that being an accomplished cyclist gives me the ride to give pointers to just anybody.  On my bike, the quick-release levers point straight back (in violation of Rule #41, which says this is only okay for time trial bikes—never mind I’ve been doing this since before time trial bikes existed).  If anybody gazing upon my bike decides my skewer orientation looks cool and wants to copy me, great—but the fact that nobody does bothers me not at all.  Why I should I mind if my bike looks cooler than everybody else’s?  And why should I mind if some ignorant person thinks my bike looks silly, especially when, chances are, that guy is having trouble holding my wheel?  It’s kind of a “speak softly and carry a big stick” approach.

In contrast, the philosophy of the Velominati folks seems to be, “speak brashly and swing your big dick.”  They seem to think that by striking an air of authority and machismo, and employing great emphasis, they can achieve instant credibility.  Consider Rule #9:  “If you are out riding in bad weather, it means you are a badass.  Period.”  That’s completely untrue.  When I lived in Boulder (where they have real winters), it was a running joke that a certain breed of poseur only rode in bad weather, to show off.  You’d see guys on rainy or snowy days, in their fancy cold-weather gear, whom you’d somehow never see out riding when the weather was nice. 

I’ve certainly done my share of riding in miserable conditions (and have described recently in this blog what a pointless activity that is), but I’ve never had the experience described in The Rules:  “Those who ride in foul weather – be it cold, wet, or inordinately hot – are members of a special club of riders who, on the morning of a big ride, pull back the curtain to check the weather and, upon seeing rain falling from the skies, allow a wry smile to spread across their face.  This is a rider who loves the work.”

My goodness, what pretty prose!  And what a bullshit notion.  Yes, there are riders who love the work, but they’d love it more in good weather.  The rider that Velominati.com describes here loves the idea of braving the elements, and conflates the idea with the reality.  It’s self-deception born of narcissism.  Sure, any solid professional will ride in bad weather if he has to, but I’m sure he grumbles about it and he’s right to do so.  And if, say, he does better in the rain than his rival, he might be happy about that. 

Lance Armstrong wrote, of the first Tour de France mountain stage in 1999, “When I woke up that morning in Dax, was raining yet again, which I considered perfect attacking weather, mainly because I knew the others didn’t like it… ‘It’s a good day for me,’ I thought.”  This, to me, seems far more credible than what the Velominati guys have to say.  And when Lance fricking Armstrong has more credibility than you, you know you’ve got a serious problem.

What would the Velominati guys say to me about my refusal to ride in the rain?  “Harden the fuck up,” of course.  But they’d be off-base.  When it’s raining I ride the trainer because it’s a better workout, and I can suffer due to effort alone, which gives me more benefit than needlessly enduring painfully cold fingers and toes.  I’ve done trainer rides long enough that, mid-ride, I had to change not only my sweat-soaked shorts but my shoes.  For complicated reasons involving stress release, I’ve had trainer rides so hard I couldn’t stand up in the shower afterward.  So I don’t need anyone telling me to harden up.

Ironically, just about anybody could make modifications to his equipment and his behavior such that he’s in compliance with all of The Rules (especially since “Harden The Fuck Up” is pretty hard to police).  And the mix of ideological and sartorial rules would suggest that adherence to The Rules would make him not just a more stylish cyclist, but a more “real” cyclist.  But in my experience, the “real” cyclists—such as the ones who actually achieve great things—aren’t so focused on any of this trivial stuff. 

I have a friend whom I see on the road from time to time, who has great form, and rides a great bike, but who wears an off-brand helmet from the ‘90s that was a piece of crap when it was new.  I’ve actually fantasized about doing an intervention, such as asking to see his helmet for a second and smashing it on the ground (like John Belushi did with that dude’s guitar), but only because helmets have a functional lifespan and his old helmet might not provide good head protection.  If my friend doesn’t care how he looks, I shouldn’t either.  And yet—and this is the crucial point—this guy is one of the most successful cyclists I’ve known.  He rode for the 7-Eleven pro team back in the day.

I am in violation of thirty-seven of The Rules.  And yet, I know in my heart I’m plenty legit as a cyclist.  Thus, I find it absurd that this band of foppish writers, and whatever acolytes they’ve acquired, would judge me and find me lacking.  But that’s not even what bugs me.  What bugs me is that the Velominati have this idea that cyclists have to toe the line, to adhere to any code of conduct at all.  To Trevor’s point, I came up in this sport embracing the role of the rebel.  Not a cool, admired rebel like James Dean, either—cycling made me a social outcast.  In the early ‘80s, I had black shorts, a wool jersey, a single bottle cage, used a Silca pump with a Campagnolo head, and had even snapped the visor off my helmet—in short, I was obeying The Rules.  What did I get for my troubles?  A self-satisfied Velominati feeling?  Hell no.  I was mocked by my peers, who routinely cast aspersions on my masculinity due to my shaved legs, my tight shorts, and my helmet. 

I tolerated the abuse because that was just part of what it meant to be a cyclist.  (I think that experience was universal among cyclists; after all, Dave’s iconoclasm is what made “Breaking Away” such a charming movie.)  And yet now I’m supposed to let these fancy-talking Velominati guys bully me because I like my navy blue shorts, prefer expressing distance in miles to kilometers, and can’t be bothered to shave my legs?  Yeah, right.  To do as I please, without obsessing over my image, is entirely consistent with my approach to the sport for more than three decades.  (By the way, Bernard Hinault himself broke at least one rule—I’m thinking of Rule #36, regarding cycling-specific eyewear—and looked very good doing it.)

But wait, there’s more

Remarkably, the assertion of poseur-ish codes of conduct isn’t even the worst thing about The Rules.  The biggest problem is that there’s a Neanderthal sensibility lurking beneath this list.  I’m talking about the unwritten rule, both implicit in The Rules and directly suggested, that cycling is for men only.

Skeptical?  Consider this.  Within the (incorrect, pointless) rule about how to signal turns, Velominati acknowledges that the audience for The Rules is international:  “This one is, presumably, mostly for Americans.”  That is, since this rule doesn’t apply to the entire group, they go ahead and say so.  But check out Rule #50:  “Facial hair is to be carefully regulated.”  No mention is made of the women to whom this rule obviously doesn’t apply.

Of course that’s not enough to make my case on, so consider also Rule #11, “Family does not come first.  The bike does.”  Is there room to construe this as meaning a wife could put her bike before her family?  Not likely, since this rule is based on an interview in which cycling legend Sean Kelly rags on his wife for leaning on his car, and—when challenged—doesn’t deny that his bike (and his car) come before his wife.

There are other examples.  Rule #29, “No European Posterior Man-Satchels,” doesn’t mention non-man-satchels.  Rule #33, “Shave your guns,” makes no mention of the fact that most women do this anyway.  Rule #61, “Like your guns, saddles should be smooth and hard” doesn’t make any allowance for the reality that in most cases women legitimately need a bit more padding.  It really does seem as though it never occurred to the creators of The Rules that women ride bikes too.  For a group that purports to have all the answers, this omission seems remarkably unenlightened.

This isn’t just a problem for female cyclists, though.  Readers of velominati.com shouldn’t let The Rules be a bad influence.  Although male cyclists aren’t generally babe magnets, a great many of us have wives or girlfriends, and these women—who, after all, have to put up with our stick-thin bodies, our constant blathering about bike gear and race lore, and the sheer amount of time we spend out on the road—deserve our respect.  Not grudging respect, either—I mean that they’re the main people we should be worried about impressing … not our fellow cyclists.

Here’s a little story to illustrate what I’m saying.  Two of my teammates, a married couple, were doing a mountain bike tandem race together.  Mike (a very good rider who has punched my ticket almost as many times as we’ve ridden together) cramped up terribly and had to climb off the bike.  Sprawling on the ground, he apologized in advance to his wife Alyshia for losing the race.  Alyshia, though she stands about five-foot-nothing, has the kind of Command Presence I’ve always admired—she’s the kind of person you hope will take charge if there’s ever an earthquake or something.  As Mike recounted in his e-mail report to the group, “Alyshia had a very diplomatic response:  ‘The race isn’t over yet.  Please, harden the fuck up.’”  Inspired, perhaps, as much by her fighting spirit as the prospect of his wife no longer finding him studly and awesome, Mike remounted, resolved to push past the pain, and they went on to pass everybody back up and win the race!

So how does Alyshia’s exhortation match up with Rule #5?  Far, far more impressively.  When a website says to harden the fuck up, that’s just more disconnected Internet blather.  When a spouse says it, suddenly it has some teeth.  Similarly, when another of my teammates (also a darn good cyclist, one of our best) told his wife he was thinking of shaving his legs, she replied, “Please don’t.  The hair on your legs is almost the only masculine thing about you!”  (What makes this comment great is that, far from being ill-spirited, she’s actually paying him a tacit compliment:  “I know you’re secure enough to laugh at yourself.”)

Of course society is rife with retrograde macho bullshit, but cycling is supposed to be progressive.  Its image is of a modern, forward-thinking mentality.  To succeed at this sport requires a much more enlightened approach than, say, the shot-put or the hammer throw (which is why rules like Rule #93, “Descents are not for recovery,” are so annoying—if you don’t need to recover on a descent, maybe you didn’t go hard enough on the climb, and need to harden the fuck up!).  So why do these Velominati guys seem to want to embrace an Andrew Dice Clay ethos, and suggest that male chauvinism is part of the sport?

“Lighten up,” they might say.  “We were just joking!”  To which I’d say, sure, masculinity and femininity can be joked about, and sometimes walking a fine line can enhance the humor.  But you better get it right, and it better be funny, or else you’re suggesting there’s something intrinsically funny about a hierarchy that puts men at the top.

Rhetorically, the Velominati guys are like a bad group of hackey-sackers:  you see them start up, and you head over to watch, maybe you’ve even got your hopes up, but they can’t keep the damn thing up for more than a few kicks.  You keep hoping they’ll hit their stride, but they don’t, and it’s pathetic.  The Velomanti guys’ declamatory haplessness is harmless enough where stem height or tan lines are  concerned, but begins to chafe when they try to delve into the intersection of cycling and machismo.

Wait, I’m not quite done

Since I’m on the subject, I’d like to bring up a fundamental disconnect between the archetypes of the ideal cyclist and those aspiring to match them, at least in form.  It’s clear that the Velominati guys base much of their ethos on the example set by old school bike racing heroes (Merckx, Kelly, Sean Yates, and Marco Pantani are named).  These were all working-class guys who happened to get fairly rich and famous by being really, really fast.  I doubt they spent much time worrying about their image.  To the extent they achieved studliness, they did so effortlessly, not by carefully mimicking others or poring over lists of rules.

You think Merckx was caught up in macho posturing when he allowed this photo to be snapped? 

The rules about hardening up and riding in bad weather strike me as tacked on, to offset the reality that the Velominati guys are ensnared in a hipster, yuppie ethos.  They can afford n+1 bikes (Rule #12), all of which cost more than their car (Rule #25), and they actually care what angle they wear their cap at (Rule #22), use highfalutin terms like “bidon” when a simple word like “bottle” will do, and have a rule (#56) about only drinking espresso and macchiato.  They remind me of the Roger Moore James Bond, with his bow ties, his silly witticisms, and his epicurean tastes.  (The latest Bond movie reboot was wise to break with all this.  My favorite line in “Casino Royale” comes when Daniel Craig’s Bond, rattled after losing $10 million at cards, asks for a vodka martini.  “Shaken or stirred?” asks the bartender.  Bond snaps back, “Do I look like I give a damn?”)

My overall impression of The Rules is it’s all a bit too self-aware and twee, far closer to “Portlandia” than to, say, the dairy farm that Sean Kelly rose from.  The cycling giants of old wouldn’t have hung out in coffee shops drinking this:

They’d have made their own coffee, probably instant, and if anybody told them they therefore weren’t real cyclists they’d have laughed.  Drive, talent, luck, and tenacity made them great athletes, not a bunch of silly rules about what to ride, what to wear, and how to behave.

And one more thing?  Merckx, Kelly, et al wouldn’t have called their legs “guns.”  Trevor is right.  That list is an embarrassment.

Update

My second (and final) post on this topic, “37 Velominati Rules You Can Ignore,” is here.

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