Hi, I’m Joe V. The V is for Vadeboncoeur, but no one ever really calls me that (except my business card). That card also calls me the Global Director of Product Development, Marketing and Creative Design for Trek Bicycle. Yep, I am sometimes not really sure what all that means either. I do know that I dig bikes, oatmeal, motorcycles, burritos, the weird things I see along the way, my family and my job. I get to travel the world helping make great bikes, so it’s a pretty great gig.
Wikipedia says - Chaos theory is a field of study in mathematics, Chaos theory studies the behavior of dynamical systems that are highly sensitive to initial conditions, an effect which is popularly referred to as the butterfly effect. Small differences in initial conditions yield widely diverging outcomes for chaotic systems, rendering long-term prediction impossible in general. This happens even though their future behavior is fully determined by their initial conditions.
I like the concept of Chaos theory in general. It's fun. I like it because Dr. Jeff Goldblum used the concept of Chaos Theory to prove why Jurassic Park would not work. In the end, after one of his co-stars got eaten by a dinosaur while sitting on a toilet his theory proved correct - Jurassic Park didn't work (I've been there, there aren't any dinosaurs there). But, that was just one of the great movies that Jeff Goldblum played in. Of course he was in that movie The Fly, that was pretty stupid. But, he was in the movie Earth Girls Are Easy, which totally rocked. He was also in history's greatest movie, Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension. In almost any book, that makes him just about the coolest actor of all time. If only he had also been in The Gods Must Be Crazy would his legacy be better. Unfortunately, I do not think that Jeff Goldbloom has ever been in a movie about cycling, but he would definitely approve of my version of the chaos theory for cyclists.
I mean, Earth Girls Are Easy and Buckaroo Banzai, geez? The chances of Jeff Goldblum ever toping being in movies like those ever again are exactly 1236.7 to 1.
Of course that has nothing to do with how the Chaos Theory can be applied to cycling. But, let me try.
When you leave your garage in the morning to go for a ride, you make 2 subtle decisions. First, what time to depart. Assuming that you would not go out before 7am, and not after 18:00, that means the odds of leaving in any given minute during that time are 660 to 1. Second, which direction to go. Since most of us can only go left or right at driveway, we are going to assume a 50/50 choice usually based on wind, time of day or if you have heard any Husker Du music lately. Those 2 decisions set up a whole series of events, and are a little like the hairs on the back of your hands. A series of events that leads to what routes you ride, which turns you make and exactly what road you will be on when the moment happens.
You know exactly what moment I am talking about. You are on a little used road. You have not seen a car in either direction for miles. Up in the distance you see the first car coming your direction. It looms on the horizon, and slowly you realize that it is a BIG truck going really fast. It is taking up a huge part of the road on the other side. You glance behind and see an SUV coming from the other direction. OMG, they are going to meet at exactly the moment they pass you. All 3 of you will be trying to occupy the same section of the road at exactly the same time. The highly accurate probability for that happening is pretty much exactly 13,567,891 to 1.
I know you have seen it, it happens every time you ride. 2 vehicles meet at exactly the moment they are passing you. Never fails. Chaos Theory - The Cyclist Version. I think I need a coffee or some oatmeal or something like that.
I rode for 3 hours on Saturday, and 4 hours on Sunday on the road. I think that this scene played itself out at least 5 times on both days. How can that be? What kind of probability is that? I so not know that number, my calculator does not have enough numbers on it to figure that out. I need to go and figure out what movie Jeff Goldblum is going to be in next.
Which way will you go when you leave the driveway tomorrow?
This week I found a wrinkle in the time space continium.
Just like the best science fiction movies, I woke up one day and it was 5 years ahead into the future. Madonna had given us world peace, Lance Armstrong had won the Ironman Triathlon multiple times, cars no longer run on dead dinosaurs, it is commonly known that the burrito is the perfect food, converse shoes can now be had with a road SPD clipless version so that you never have to remove your perfect shoes ever again and of course almost nobody uses a blackberry any longer as the concept of buttons is just so passe (of course you do not really have to go to the future to know that most of that stuff I just listed is actually going to happen).
No, what I discovered this week is that the designers at Trek actually own their own black hole in the space time continuim that allows them to travel back and forth to the future at will. I am actually reading a Stephan King book about there being a time fold below a diner in Maine, but that one only takes you to the past. Sure that could make for some good party tricks like going back and making some money on a sports event, but the future - that is so shinny.
The Trek designers actually travel to the future on a regular basis to figure out what things are going to be available for cyclists in the future. They do that, just so they can wow me with their knowledge of the future.
We brought these manuals back from the future.
Seriously, this week we held an innovation summit at Trek. It was sort of a science fair like in high school, but way way cooler. It was presentation after presentation for a whole day of designers showing the future thing they were working on, or how they had learned from the past to create an alternate future. (There is that space time continuum again). Heady stuff.
I saw things that you could not imagine. Things that will make your and my cycling so much better and more fun in the future. Lighter, faster, stronger, bam!
Here are some of the things that I saw.
- Bontrager Trifecta
- The ones we didn't do
- The Four Letter Word.
- For innovation to happen it takes a village
- Bert and Ernie were part of someones presentation.
- Wouldn't it be cool if...
- If you want to kill an idea real fast, then take it into an exec's office. (I think this was really saying, do not show it to Joe)
- The word Yaw was used several times in presentations.
- Air pumps
- Shop stools
- Really extensive use for a high speed camera. I have got to get myself one of those.
- Adapt our race simulator for customers.
- One day today's high tech will look stupid. Get used to it.
- We have a guy on staff named Neo. I think he invented the Matrix or something.
- Get an accidental photo taken by the press of your new thing. That creates an actual crease in the time space continium.
- Hey new guy, run these 143 different airfoil shapes through the CFD
- Quote Issac Newton in your presentation like it is your brother.
Keith Bontrager was at the innovation summit. Gary Fisher was there also. These guys know a little bit of something about innovation.
I would really like to tell you more about the future, but I would of course have to kill you if I told you more. I have told you that before. You really must stop insisting that I tell you all about the future.
Out. Go home. Maybe go ride your bike. Have some Oatmeal, you will feel right as rain in no time, don't mind the vase you are going to knock over on your way out.
Bicycles are cool. You probably did not know that. Or, you are on a pilgrimage to try to figure that out. It IS a question after all, and a quest. What things are cool, and what things in life are not. Hangnails are not, nor are utility bills. We all know that burritos are cool or Pearl Jam is cool (duh, are you all daft or something?), or Oatmeal is far superior to waffles. Unless, of course we are talking about Belgian Waffles - those things rock. I wonder if there is a way to combine Belgian Waffles and Oatmeal into the most superior of breakfast foods? Some of us even suspect that celebrity worship is cool (that would be wrong of course). Although, Pearl Jam is kind of a celebrity so that is hard to reconcile. But, if your radio dial is sort of stuck on Pearl Jam radio, it is kind of hard to deny. You do realize that Pearl Jam radio plays Pearl Jam 24/7 (unless they are playing Mother Love Bone or another Pearl Jam derivative - but who is counting), didn't you?
From where I sit, it is all related. Eating your 20th burrito for the year and the fact that bicycles are cool. Way better than something like a unicycle, as they only have 1 wheel. (Although I was in Madrid one time and saw a unicyclists on one that was about 3 meters tall...I had to admit that was pretty cool.)
This is not a rental laptop I am typing on, this is privately owned.
So, since you are wondering what you are doing here reading this, I will not delay any longer. Here are my top 7 of the well documented 87.6 reasons that bicycles are cool.
1. Tan lines. Good tan lines are sort of a badge of honor. Like shaving your legs, or owning a heart rate monitor. It lets everyone know that you are a cyclist. It allows you to see another cyclists in the grocery store and give the little head nod, "Yep, I see you cyclist dude or chick, I am with you." Even though you may look like an easter egg in a swimsuit, it is a price that is worth paying. Score 1 for cyclists.
2. Shit Cyclists Say. Enough said.
3. Jens Voigt. There really has never been a cooler person. He is a cyclist, so there you have it, cyclists are cool people and cool people are cyclists. Good god man, there is actually an app for sale at iTunes that allows you to play a bunch of cool things that Jens has said in interviews over the years. Go download it, and amaze your friends with your knowledge of all things Jens. Not only will the glow of cool that is Jens rub off on you, but you will be keeping Apple in business as they are not making enough money off of iTunes these days. Does anyone even buy CD's any longer?
4. Porlandia. It might be just about the funniest show there has ever been. I know that is a stretch to say that it makes cyclists cool. I do not really care, it's funny and I wanted to find a way to get that point across. In fact, you might actually assume that this whole blog post is just so that I could give a plug to the show Portlandia. Might be. I am not saying.
5. Bike Racing. I actually come from the school of "If It Has Wheels, It Should Be Raced". It is a small school, one that most people have not heard of. Just outside of Somewhereville. I respect anything with wheels being raced, from lawnmowers to Nascar to GP motorcycles to rollerblades to... You get the picture.
But, bike racing tops them all. The sight of Aaron Gwin shredding a downhill or Fabian Cancellara attacking the cobbles, is the making of legend. There really isn't anything cooler. Some people have tried to tell me that there are other things cool in the world. There probably are, but they are frankly for other people.
6. My garage. There are exactly 24 bicycles in my garage. The only reason there are not 25, is no more hooks (I am kind of a neat freak about my garage). I think a person should have lots of bicycles. You might think that I am boasting, but I am not. In fact, I have friend that has 30 bicycles. I have another friend that has 6 in his living room. Having 24 in your garage is nothing.
But, bicycles are the kind of thing that you just cannot have too many and you can fit quite a few of them in pretty small spaces. Just think if I had 24 motorcycles and the size of garage that would require, not to mention the size of garage that would be required if I had 24 cars (not sure who would actually want 24 money pits, but hey...). I could actually identify with having a garage of that size, but keeping the floor clean would be too much work.
7. It is hard to frown while riding a bicycle. You can frown big time in an automobile, I know - I've done it. But, unless you have just fallen down and are riding yourself back home to go to the doctor to get stitches, you generally do not frown when riding a bicycle. Even if you were riding to get stitches, you generally are not going to be frowning about that ride a week later. Trust me, I have gotten plenty of stitches and plenty of casts on broken bones, I continue to frown about a few different car rides.
So there you have it, bicycles are cool, they get you outside, you meet cool people, you learn to blow a snot rocket, you can collect lots of bicycles and they will make you happy. I think that pretty much proves it, a bicycle is a way better present than a football.
I've got heroes. You wouldn't necessarily know it by looking at me. You might find yourself saying "wow, a good looking guy with your hairline has heroes?" Oh yeah, is what I can say. I mean, if I had invented something really cool like that stuff that makes the water run right off your windshield of if I could find a way to make the perfect oatmeal in half the time - and patent it - then I would be a hero also. Maybe I would not even feel the need to continually read cheap novels on airplanes.
If you think about it the perfect oatmeal is out there somewhere. Sometimes you are not even thinking about it and you combine just the right amount of oats, water, almonds, walnuts, berries, peaches, organic yogurt...gets me excited just writing that all out like that. Lately, I have been combining the oats with an egg and Cinnamon. You just drop the egg in when the water is pretty much gone, and then a grop of Cinnamon and there you have it. Near perfection.... I just wonder though, what if you put the peanut butter right in there also? hmm...
But, I digress. It is so easy to get carried away. When is that National Oatmeal Day again?
Oh yeah, heroes. Not that goofy show either. Although, there was a girl on there that could throw herself out of a window and get just horribly mangled on the ground. Arm bent around her back the wrong way, collarbone pushed out there her skin, neck broken and head pointing in the wrong direction, leg twisted around backwards etc... Really gruesome looking. But, she would just straighten herself out and be right as rain. Kind of Oracle like. It was pretty cool. Almost made the show worth watching, but it went downhill from there.
I do have a serious list of heroes though, and even some brushes with greatness on my part.
Here is my version of all of that.
1. Eddy Merckx. That is easy to say, I know. "I like that guy from Belgium who won alot. You know, the guy with the slobber coming out of his face while he annihilated his competition. You know, the guy with his name on the bike". Anybody of my age in cycling will say Eddy Merckx and then kinda look up at the sky and go all dreamy about cold Belgium training days and attacking over and over at the Giro. Eddy would tell you he was going to win that day, and then go crush his competition flat, twice - just to make his point.
2. Roger De Coster. "The Man" If you are only into cycling and reading this, you might not know who Roger De Coster is. But, Roger is affectionately known as "The Man" in the motocross world. You see, I grew up with anything 2 wheels. I raced motocross as a kid, and bicycles all through my college years. Roger was the stuff of legends. He won at a time when the sport was a European only sport, but then also won when it was becoming an american sport. He still is known as The Man.
I have my own story about those 2. I was a kid in high school, living in Belgium. I was just off a few years of racing motorcycles and just getting into bicycle racing. It was 1978. I was playing tennis in a tournament in Belgium (that is a story in an of itself), I was playing on one court, and on the court right next to me was Eddy Merckx playing a match with Roger De Coster! Holy crap. 2 of my lifelong heroes right there next to me. It was the greatest moment of my life (give me a break, I was like 17).
Fastforward about 25 years. Trek and Eddy Merckx are trying to put together a deal. I flew over to visit Eddy at his place in Belgium, then he and I hopped a plane to Italy to visit his suppliers. I WENT TO ITALY WITH EDDY MERCKX! I mean pinch me - jesus. I was riding along in a car with Eddy Merckx - in Italy! If I would have died right then, it would have been on a huge huge high. But wait, it get's even better. (Bring it around Joe).
Eddy drives about 120 mph everywhere he goes, to top that off he has like 3 cell phones going all the time. He can rapid fire switch between English, French, Flemish and Italian. We stayed at a little hotel in northern Italy that they knew him when he walked in. We had dinner at a restaurant, where they knew him when he walked in the door. He is Eddy Merckx after all. On the 2nd day, I told him about playing tennis next to him on the court in Brussels in 1978. He got a kick out of that. He got such a kick out of it, he dialed up Roger De Coster on the phone and we spoke to him while bombing around in northern Italy. Ok, that is just too cool for words. I have a huge smile on my face, just writing all that.
But wait, it get's even better. Sometime later, I was at an Annaheim Supercross race and my friend Zapata introduced me to Roger De Coster. Holy looping of my life in circles batman. I am so going to play that Kevin Bacon game this weekend. Just a couple of Andy Warhol moments.
I have more heroes, but it all kinda pales from here.
3. Rain Man. You know, because he was right. Those places do suck.
4. Anyone that can ride a wheelie or a manual. Yep, if you can - you're my hero. I am convinced that it is genetic. You are either born with the wheelie gene or not. You will see a person that can ride a wheelie and they can be about 10. They are just able to do it. One handed, seated, standing, talking etc... I always wanted to be able to ride a wheelie. I still cannot. I should have chosen my parents better.
5. Fulton beer company. I really dig the IPA. Just thought I would throw in some random commercialism. I did just enjoy one though.
The girl at the pub in Minneapolis airport that sold me this called it an "Indian" beer.
6. That kid that can play the guitar like Jack Johnson. Surely you have seen that. There is only one thing that I wish that could have done in my life almost as much as a professional cyclist or professional offroad motorcycle racer (ya, there is a 2 wheel theme there). I wish I could play the guitar. I would so like to rock a bunch of slits in my jeans and a Slash top hat. Plus, I could play guitar with Fergie singing with me. Duh.
7. The guy that made the video "Marcel The Shell With Shoes On". It is pretty much the coolest most pointless video of all time. It makes you think.
8. Mr. YouTube. Oh how much entertainment and enlightenment can be provided.
9. Gary Fisher. Thank god for all his whackiness. I don't really know if he invented the mountain bike or if some random dude in Germany did. Whoever did thank you, but we should all thank Gary for inventing the mountain bike business. Without him, we would all be playing golf or something like that.
10. Honey Badger.
11. Mr. Peet. Without him, mornings would be alot less amped up. I travel. Traveling has it's ups, it's downs and it's just plain old is. There are lots of downs, like no Oatmeal and no bicycles. But, think of how you feel when you see the Peet's coffee sign. You can find a Starbucks just about anywhere. But, Starbucks is not special. Mr. Peet provides the special all that for us.
Sometimes things just happen that are pretty weird. Sometimes they are actually beyond strange and could even be called bizarre. We have security on our computer system at work. When we upgraded from abacus's to computers back in the stone age (remember, I am actually older than dirt), I was asked to create a password. I started with the password “xxxxx” on my email account.
We have a stupid system there that makes you change the password on a regular basis. I don’t even know how often (all too frequently is all I know). Seems like you just are getting to where you have it changed everywhere, and you are being asked to change it again. Geez. Being of limited brain capacity, I just could not be bothered. So, I did what any of us would have done,I added a 1 to the back of my password when I was told to change my password, giving me “xxxxx1”.
I have been adding 1 to the previous number ever since (xxxxx2, xxxxx3 and so on), every time I have been prompted for years. Yes, I am that lazy, and that unconcerned with my computers security. I am now on “xxxxx50”, and I am 50. There must me some sort of law of probabilities that affects that. And I do not mean like speed limit laws.
Weird.
I think it might even be science. At a minimum it’s a math thing, and math is hard.
Surely this is a holiday on the level of Christmas, or way more than my birthday or even more than National cold cereal day.
National Oatmeal Day is exactly 2.24 times better than Trekworld. National Oatmeal Day is nearly 4.32 times better than my birthday. National Oatmeal Day is much better than Christmas, precisely 2.67 times better.
If you are a betting person, you are probably thinking that I am totally screwing with the math here. Especially, given that I have said that Flip Flops are better than my birthday and I made a previous statement about the value and endorsement of daily burrito eating (exactly √45.63÷6.1 times better, but you have to divide that by the number of days since your last burrito to get an exact number - math is hard).
So, enjoy your oatmeal day. Go ride your mountain bike or your road bike or your motorcycle. In other words, eating oatmeal is best celebrated by riding something with 2 wheels. 4 wheels is so gauche.
I sure would like to have a babel fish right now. If I did have one, I would not be practicing falling down and trying to miss the ground right now. Which as hard as that sounds, is actually easier than trying to kiss your elbow, or to change a date code on a recording. Of course, if I did have a Babel Fish right now, I would not actually be writing this blog entry. The unanticipated side benefit of me not writing this blog entry right now would be that you would not be wasting your time wondering what randomness was going to come out of my computer next.
Wait, don’t hang up yet. I will try to bring it around.
I have written that Airlines are less than an intelligent business. I am not going to pick on them again, now. But, I have a beef to pick with languages (I can pick on vegetables if you would prefer. Equal opportunity heckler.) Today, I am going to unequivically show you that languages are stupid.
Consider this. A Dutch person does not really look any different than an American. In fact, many of us Americans are Dutch by heritage – even if we do not really know what a dyke is. (That is not a wire cutter, btw.) I have seen a windmill though, and I do like those waffle cookie things. I mean, have you tried those? Geez, I think I could eat about a dozen in one sitting. In fact, that is why I enjoy my boxes of Honey Stinger waffles. They make me feel like I am wearing wooden shoes. Not the kind that you would use to try to walk on water with either.
But I digress. People look like each other. Head perched on shoulders, hair mostly growing on top of their heads (not me, but other people do have hair). Most people wear some sort of shoes on their feet, most like sushi, only a few are left handed… you know, basically the same. Yet, somehow we all do not speak the same language. Arthur Dent is not the only one with that problem.
Presumably language developed differently because people did not travel. No holidays on the beach, no mountain climbing trips to the peaks etc.… They kind of lived in one spot, and only interacted with people around them. They mostly did that because there were Saber Tooth Tigers that would eat them if they ventured too far from their village, or their spouse would assume they were running out on them. They developed a way of communicating that was unique to their little village. You know, someone called a rock a rock and others in the next valley over called it a zaug. (I made that up.)
Well we stuck with that. Kind of like we stuck with the stupid Fahrenheit system. The Europeans laughed when they gave it to us, then promptly ran off and created a new system. Now, we cannot tell if it is really hot or cold when we go for a business trip or a holiday outside of our village. But even beyond all of that silliness, we still stick with some things that just do not make sense.
I feel that spelling the name of a place different than the locals in that place spell the name of the place is well just stupid. Think about it, people in Munich call their city Munchen. (Actually, they put some dots over the e that I cannot figure out how to make my computer do.) Well I frankly like the word Munich better than Munchen, but that is not the point. The people there choose to spell it that way, who am I to just randomly decide that I am going to spell it differently. There are countless examples of this in the English language.
But, do not assume that we Americans are the only ones who do not get it. ALL languages seem to do this. In Dutch, the name for the city of Paris is spelled Parijs. In French, the name for the country we call Germany and Germans call Deutschland is refered to as Allemagne. What kind of sense does any of this make? As I have looked into this for at least 3.6 minutes, I have decided that this is really one of the silliest things I can look up via google today. (This is even sillier than Camelot is, and the decision we all witnessed with that was to not even go there.)
See, that is the official map of Deutschland. Doesn't say Germany or Allemagne anywhere on it. Done.
So you see, it is really quite a universal problem. We should all just be using the words for a place that the natives of that place call it. It is fine to pronounce it according to the language you speak, but changing the spelling for who knows why, just does not make sense. (The only exception to this would be if you are spelling in a language that uses a different alphabet than the original language does.) But, same alphabet should equal same spelling. Same and same.
What is a zaug anyway?
So this is my rant for today. Maybe tomorrow also. Of course, we will never know, as I will be enjoying dehydrated breakfast cereal hour tomorrow about this same time.
I do not actually know how I got on this. I meant to write about how languages do not really matter anymore. Everyone speaks english. I was going to go on to talking about the future product development meeting that I was in this week in Holland. I was going to talk about electric bikes and european city bikes and bike paths and... Oh well, I will save that one for another day. In the mean time, just remember flip flops are better than almost all other types of shoes (Converse would be about the only exception.)
Adios Amigos - Baby. I'm just waiting for the worms.
Sometimes I feel my life is out of control. It's not a normal thing, just sometimes it hits me that the record player is on 78speed when it should be on 33speed (I realize that I just lost most of the people that are reading this - trust me, it means that things are playing so fast that I cannot really understand the lyrics).
look familiar?
There are lots of factors that make me feel that way, my job is fast pace sometimes, my kids are adults spread all over the world, I have a new puppy at home that is terrorizing the house and already runs everything, I am not riding my bicycle enough, my motorcycle is dirty, the camper stands half remodeled in the driveway, there are 4 different house projects left half completed... See what I mean?
This blog entry is about a bunch of loosely (I mean really loosely) related topics. Most of these are keeping me up at night. No Caffeine necessary.
Steven Tyler is now a judge on American Idol
Here in the USA, there is a show called American Idol. (I think it was actually stolen from the UK). I know the show has been around for a while, but since I do not actually know where the remote is for the television at home, I have not ever watched the show. Reading the latest copy of Rolling Stone magazine via Zinio informed me of the depths that the Aerosmith front man has fallen to.
I find myself daydreaming about what that must be like. Steven Tyler, huge mouth nearly swallowing a microphone, scarves flowing off the microphone stand, snarling and telling the contestant they suck. But I am reading that he is actually nice to the contestants. I guess I need to give it a test ride.
This is how most of us think of Steven Tyler.
In addition to this heresy of Steven Tyler on American Idol, while at the dentist office the other day (wilting under the barrage of talk and questions from the hygienist while she has her hands in my mouth. How stupid is that, btw...? - but I digress). While sitting in the dentist chair, I heard a Motley Cru song playing on the Classic Rock station - followed directly by an Elton John song. Jeez. What has the world come to?
Yep, its pretty much like that.
People are buying/riding hardtails in USA
What is going on here? For a long time, we have been convinced that the hardtail was dead in the USA. Interestingly, the Europeans and Asians have never stopped buying them. But in the US, the percentage of people buying hardtails has continued to drop. For example, Trek offers quite a few more hardtails outside of the USA than it does inside the USA. (Buy a plane ticket and take an empty bike bag if you are chasing a high end hardtail from a US zipcode). But, amazingly, people are now buying hardtails in the USA. Granted, they are all 29'ers, but they still have stiff rear ends. Sometimes the future is not much different than the past.
Is this dehydrated breakfast cereal hour, or is this Cleveland?
Or, this section could be called "If this is Tuesday, it must be Belgium." This past week, I literally went to Belgium for a day. It was not for a happy experience, but it was important. John Burke and I went to the ceremony for Wouter Weylandt. If you have read other stuff from me, then you know that the passing of Wouter was a tragedy that is hard to describe. John put up a nice little blog entry about the day, so I will not try to repeat that.
I will just say that the ceremony was excellent. The ceremony was held in the huge church in the center of Gent, Belgium. The church is one of those fantastic old churches in Europe that normally is the keystone of your tour through the city. There were easily 1000+ people there, and every single person was offered the opportunity to file through the church, pay their respects to Wouter and his family and take home a card to save and remember Wouter by.
Wouter had a lot of friends.
I'm thinking of shaving my legs
I love bike racing. If you haven't figured that out yet, I love it. I watch it a lot, I listen to audio presentations, I read twitter feeds from racers, teams and races. I spend a significant amount of money to support it, I am responsible for the race department etc... Yet, I consider myself too old to be serious about doing it myself. I ride a lot. Almost every day, that I can. On the weekends I ride with and get smoked by the racer groups. I try and try, but I just am not as fast as them. Maybe if I shaved my legs?
That would probably make me feel like a cutter.
Kinda makes you want to go and rent the movie again. eh?
I have a single speed Fuel EX
I have a bunch of friends that ride SS. I have had them, but in general they are built on hardtails. In spite of the renaissance of hardtails that I noted before, I just do not do hardtails. God made FS bikes, so why should I avoid them? So, I built a SS on a Fuel EX frame. It is a compromise, but it works. The suspension does what it is supposed to do, in the same way that it does when you have gears. Nice. But, I have to make note that there still are not any gears to use to help get up that hill. Given the fitness and age point above, I find myself looking for a button on the right side. I find myself in the middle of the hill wondering exactly what I was thinking when I bolted this all together without any shifters.
So maybe in the end I bolt some shifters onto the bike. At least one.
Arnold Schwarzenager is in the news for a baby out of wedlock
I don't really have anything more to say about that.
Do you walk to work, or do you carry your lunch?
I know that sentence makes absolutely no sense. Sometimes other things don't make sense to me either. It is the spring of 2011 - Yesterday I was at a sales meeting about how things are going with a few 2011 markets, today we are showing international distributors the 2012 lineups, later in the week I will be at a meeting to finalize the 2013 product development plans, early next week I will be at a R+D meeting which is more about 2014 and beyond.
I want tickets to the Pearl Jam show at Alpine Valley
Yep, favorite band, playing at the end of the summer at the outdoor festival Alpine Valley. Sounds like beer, sunburn, bee stings, long bathroom lines and Eddie Vedder belting it out. Cannot wait.
cheers.
Joe
This picture has nothing to do with much else in this post, but I like it nonetheless.
I know you are thinking. What the..? Have the Trek guys gone bonkers? Do I really want to read this? Yes you do, that title is meant to catch your attention. Worked, eh? Bear with me, it will all make sense.
In spit of the lack of oatmeal involved, this past week has to rank as one of the most amazing since I have had this job. There have been a lot of really great things that I have been allowed to do with this job, but of all of those - this story has to be at the very top.
If you have been following along, you know that I have been building up to do the Paris Roubaix (Hell of the North) bike race. It has been something that I have wanted to do for a long time. The allure of the pave, cobbles buried in the ground at a million different non level angles, roads built centuries ago and left to deteriorate through wars and winters that cannot even be counted, the pain, the danger etc… I was looking forward to all of it.
I spent 62.5 hours this past month watching old footage of the race. (I know, my wife kept track. I'm a little bit obsessive.) There were years when it was a slog though the mud, and years where it was a dust bowl. This year was to be fast, dry and warm. Our race was the day before the pro race. We would do 140k of the pro race and it would include 18 sections of cobbles.
Friday was bib pick up day and sign up at the expo etc… After that, we went for a ride. Last year at the TDF, I ran across Liam and his dad Bill, as they were riding a bunch of the stages at the tour and documenting it all. They are big Livestrong supporters and have done an amazing job documenting their riding exploits while they are fortunate enough to live in France. You can check out their stories at www.fathersontour.com.
They were up in northern France for the Challenge as well, so we all went out for a little shake down ride in the fields of the St Quentin area.
That is Liam in his trademark Livestrong jersey. He is a madman. (Michael from Trek stands in with him)
After a nice little shakedown ride, we had some dinner and all retired to our rooms to try to get ready for the next day. I was left to myself to struggle with trying to remember how to change a sew up if I flat (have not done that in a long time), how do you manage across the cobbles, how fast would it be, do I have enough miles yet… It was not a good night of sleep.
My steed for the ride. Leopard Trek cobbles set up.
Huge phat tubular wheels and tires.
The team bikes all had these stickers on the top tube. Tells them when the pain is coming.
Getting some advice on the starting line from Nick our country manager in France. (I am so out of my league there).
After a nearly sleepless and nervous night, I can tell you this much – the cobbles are indescribable. There is nothing like it, and I mean nothing. I cannot even begin to describe just how rough they are. It is not like riding a rough dirt road. It is not like a piece of bad pavement that I think I have on one of my routes. There really is no way to prepare yourself for just how rough it is. At kilometer marker 50, we entered on a fast left hand turn into the first cobbled section. Section 18 of 27 for the pro race.
Immediately, your whole body starts to rebel against the beating it is taking. Your head shakes, your arms convulse almost uncontrollably. The pain coming through your wrists, feet and but is felt immediately. The sound coming out of your bike is frightening. Your mind tells you that surely the bike is going to shatter at any moment. You find yourself terrified that your wheels are going to just crumble at any moment. When that pack entered that first section, there were bottles flying everywhere, bodies on the ground, riders careening off into the grass and fields - chaos.
All the advice that I had gotten, flashed through my head – stay on the tops, do not slow down, ride the crown in the middle of the road, stay loose, do not slow down… Of course, 25 meters in, I failed and went for a down shift. With the loss of just 2kph, the bike starts to buck and shake so violently there is no way to hold on. looked for the path on the side and became dejected and sucked the gutter. We all learned to love the gutter in that first section.
More than one person told me afterward, that they did not think they would be able to make it after that first section. Then the advice began to come back to me. “Rest during the smooth parts, go like hell during the rough". A funny thing happens during the race, you start to figure it out after the first few sections. By the 3rd or so section, you are able to ride the tops and stay loose and pedal like hell when your in it.
Here I am doing a much more credible job getting over the top. You cannot imagine how rough that is at speed. This is the only picture that I have that I do not look like I am in horrible pain.
Of course there is a big chunk of time in the middle where you actually start to enjoy the brutality and pure beauty of it all. I can tell you right now that the guys that do this for a living are absolutely nails. This is not for the faint of heart. The penalty for getting it wrong is really really high, as in this years pro race there were alot of pro - some that had even won the day before - who did not finish the race due to crashes. In our race, the ambulance was out on course a lot.
Here is a really good description of all the cobble sections that I saw, from Podium Cafe.
Our group all finished. One busted up head from a crash, one broken wrist from a crash a few flats – it was the most incredible day any of us had ever had on a bike.
Pro Race Day
The next day we watched the pro race. We got up early, and made our way to Compiègne, north of Paris. (I know, it is called Paris-Roubaix, not Compiègne-Roubaix, why doesn't it start there? Trust me, it is ok that it does not start any farther away.) There is the usual pro race circus at the start, and the race really doesn't officially start anyway until they get out of town.
The pros go fast, really fast. They average more than 45kph for the first couple of hours, and then they hit the cobbles. You cannot believe how violent a pack of riders is when they go across the cobbles together at nearly 50kph. The video below tries to show that, but only does a mediocre job of that.
This is the pack coming by on section 15. Still all together, the race had not blown apart yet.
On another section of race, I watched a bottle bounce out of someone cage and then bounce along on the road in the middle of the pack. It was basically a huge rock bouncing along, just waiting for someone to hit it and take the whole peleton down. Magically, no one did. They are all pounding away in a pack like the video, they cannot see past the rider in front, there is dust everywhere, they are fatigued and yet no one went down. Wow.
If you watched the race, you know the results. It is hard for that result to tell the whole story. Fabian Cancellara is the most amazing athlete ever to ride this race, or any other spring classic for that matter. But, one of the great things about racing is the strongest man doesn’t always win. There is more to racing than that.
Paris-Roubaix is such a spectacle. It is the most beautiful race ever. I hope it never changes. After the race, I asked Ben King what he thought of it. His answer, “That is the most amazing thing ever. I cannot wait to do it again.”
That is why "Hell", is actually quite beautiful. I will definitely be back.
Ben King after the race.
I spent the day with Francesco Moser in the car chasing the race. He is no longer a racer, but he is still a hero. He does not speak much english, but his French is a bit better so we communicated that way. He was one of my childhood heroes, so that was amazing all by itself.
I am not sure what these 2 thought the Leopard Trek truck was doing there, but I am pretty sure they did not think it was a bike race.
