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.
I am not Belgian. Let's just get that part straight. I do love it there - I think. I lived there once, for 2 years. I was a kid though. I remember it, but I was 16-18 years old. There are other things that are more important to a 16 year old than the lore of bike racing and how Belgium is the center of that universe.
But, I lived there. I lived on a cobbled street even. I would love to say that I knew from then, just knew that a cobbled road and all the greatness that goes along with that would be super important to me in the future. Alas, I was just a kid. 16 and stupid.
Now of course, just the mention of Belgium and I get all goose bumped for the thought of crosswinds and cobbles and epic racing. Yow. It is only 10ish months till next years race season starts and we are back in Belgium.
In the mean time, here are the last pictures from our Roubaix trip this year.
That is it.
More good stuff coming to this space soon though. Stay in touch.
Joe
Nothing really to report about that, just that I went there. I had an evening to fill. I am not much of a car person, they have 4 wheels and take up too much space on the road. But, I did have Oatmeal for breakfast this morning.
As I said, I am not much of a car person. (They are nice to get from point A to B if it is raining or snowing.) But, I kinda dig pictures and thinking about the product development that was required at the time to make the thing go. Wow, how times change. I suppose that means the bikes that we think are so cool and futuristic now will some day be pretty pedestrian and dated looking.
Without further adu, here is my photo essay.
The front of the place is a little nicer than what you would expect for a car museum. I guess it is Belgium and things are a bit older than the things in the USA.
Turned out to be a cool old hanger that was stuffed full of a bunch of different cars, from a bunch of different era's.
I guess the pedal electric/moped bike thing is not really a new idea.
This is a Bugatti. Look closely at this one. Drink it in. The next photo will surprise you.
This is a Ford. Notice how similar it is to the Bugatti above? Man how times change. Bugatti is still cool, Ford is...well, Ford.
There is a retro car waiting to get out in this one. Seems that some car designer should be studying this to figure out how to come out with the modern version.
Bang Bang Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, our fine four fendered friend.
I am pretty sure you could fit more lights on the front of this one.
I want a steering wheel like that.
The first SUV. I think they have gotten a bit more refined though.
This one is kinda cuddly.
Always, no never, no always end your blog entry with a picture of a Pacer. It is not too big, doesn't take up too much space, and if it really sucks you can blame it on AMC.
Out. I will find some better things to write about soon, I promise.
JV
Crosswinds. They are not like hills.
The crosswind saps your energy unlike a climb does. A climb is something that presses on you, pressing you down and standing in your way. Gravity becomes stronger on a climb. It is a bit like when you are pumping a tire up, the last 10 psi are much harder to push the handle down than the first 10psi. When riding on a climb, it is like trying to lift something heavy and bigger than you to the top shelf in the garage while standing on a ladder – over and over again. It is hard, it can go horribly wrong, but if you are lucky and maintain your balance you get the heavy bag to the top of the shelf. When the task is all said and done, you are tired and your back is sore, but after you rest and recover you will be fine. After the climb, you will even be stronger.
Generally speaking, the best climbers will have a really slender build. The Schlecky’s will probably tilt at about 55kilo (less than 140lbs). Climbers are long limbed, and small muscle. If you cross-sectioned a climber, you would see no fat and lungs that go to the knees. They breath rarefied air so much, that the insides of their lungs are pink – pure. They count calories, they talk about carbon bikes and wheels. They turn really small gears at an impossible cadence. They count the grams of weight in their shoes. They do their offseason and preseason training on slopes at stupid high altitude. Some of us are like that, only just not superhuman versions.
A classics rider is not like that. They are carved into a mass of sinew, veins, sunken eyes, narrow shoulders and a huge ass and legs – typical of a survivor of the toughest game on two wheels. A classics rider is more likely to tilt at 85+ kilo (180lbs). A classics rider revels in a crosswind. A classics rider has a face that is hardened and pocked. A classics riders face probably has scars from hitting the ground while ripping apart a cobble section of parcours at 50kph. A classics rider probably is not French speaking, or if they are they speak it with a growl. A classics rider probably speaks Flemish and knows the difference between a Flanders flag with red claws and one without. Flemish is the ancient, semi illusionary dialect of a downtrodden people who revere cyclists as symbols of cultural pride. A classics rider is a Vlaamse-Man.
Belgium is the center of the universe for a classics rider. It has impossibly steep climbs, that are probably cobbled over. Not only does Belgium have cobbles, Belgium has the other consistent item that makes a classic not the same as a climber’s race. Belgium has crosswinds. Unlike a climb, a crosswind does not make you stronger. A crosswind pulls you down. A crosswind tears at your skin, biting and clawing your body back into the gutter. Down down and down, tearing and ripping. A crosswind is a pack of zombies tearing at your legs and calves and arms and shoulders. A crosswind is blood thirsty. After a day in a big Belgian crosswind, you will not feel like it made you stronger. A day in a Belgian crosswind rips you apart and leaves you for dead.
Those Dutch kids are hard as nails. That is what a crosswind is like.
I weigh a buck 55 with my cycling kit on. That is not the super light gazelle pulled rubber band of the climber, but it is a long long way from the Vlaamse-Man.
So I found myself this past weekend on my 5th cobbled ride. I found myself riding the Paris Roubaix course for the 2nd time in a week. And, of course I found myself with a bunch of 185lb guys, in the rain with a huge wind trying to get to the velodrome in Roubaix. Ugh… It hurt. I found myself arriving at the velodrome, “with no one in the photo”, but not in the good way. Not in the way that you want to have "no one in the photo". I had been left for dead on section 5 going toward Roubaix, and I was arriving much after everyone else had. It is amazing just how slow you can go when the curtain has dropped on your reserves. Black.
I had battled gallantly and made the selection down to 15, then 10 then 6. But, when in a group of 6 it is really hard to hide from the demons of the crosswind. You bounce around trying to stay out of sight of the crosswind, but eventually he finds you. And when he does, he just keeps biting and tearing. Eventually enough of your muscle is gone that when he again finds you, he hits bone. When he does, your done. You fall off the pace so hard that you can hear your ass dragging on the road. That was my tail end on the road.
I was out of food and out of water. I got lost. I found the route again. I hugged the gutter on the road, I rode the path on the side of the cobbles. I blew sky high on the little rise into the headwind near the 10k to go point. It was raining and it was windy, really windy. I was shattered, but I battled on to Roubaix and eventually found my way there. I found the velodrome, and a beer in the café.
A beer never tasted better. What the hell am I doing in Belgium? I love this place, but I am definitely not a classics rider.
Below is a short video to show you what my 2 weeks were like there. Bikes, beer, cobbles, bike racing...Ah.
Out (I cannot wait till next spring),
Joe
Those are not cheese curds!
You really cannot stand. There is not enough traction. But, you cannot really sit, the pitch is so great, the cobbles so rough. So, you sit and then you stand and then you sit and finally you stand. You try to think of Fabian and the huge power that he is putting down while pushing ever forward. Your heart rate is all the way to max. In fact, your bouncing of the rev limiter. It is pounding in your chest, your throat and your head. Your going Full Gas, yet your just barely moving. Squeak.
Push on the pedals. Left, Right, Left, Right...Squeak. It happens a few times. Slowly, you realize that it is rhythmic. If you shift it is still there. You try standing, it doesn't really help. Your shoulders are rocking. You push on the shifter again, but there is nothing left. In the back of your head, you can hear Mr. Scott, "I cannot give you any more captain".
You slide forward, you slide back. The saddle position does not seam to help. Squeak. What is that squeaking sound? The hill seems to go on forever. How in the world do the pro's push such a gear up these climbs? Wow, those barricades are tight. Squeak. Imagine how it must be during the race. A tunnel of sound with what would feel like the whole country on the side of each climb. Squeak. Imagine what it would be like to be at the front of the field, pushing the pace up the Koppenberg.
It is impossible. Squeak. The cobbles are impossibly rough. I have ridden mountain bike rides that were way way smoother than this. Squeak. The sound slowly starts to dawn on you. It sounds as if some one is running along behind you, noshing cheese curds with their teeth. Only, there is no one behind you and no running in evidence.
Finally, WHAT IS THAT SQUEAK? Slowly it begins to dawn on you...That is the tire loosing traction and sliding under power as it comes up off the cobble for just a split second. OMG. It is the coolest sound ever. Squeak. You love that sound. It will become your first revelation about the spring classics.
I have always known that spring classics in Belgium were special. But what I did not know about was the waffles. I did not realize that the waffle was going to be such an important piece of my spring classics lore in Belgium. It is a perfect ride food. Small, round, can be prepackaged, has little pockets that you can fill up with things (syrup, peanut butter, bananas...). It is perfect. I buy them by the dozens. They are mine.
Turn your computer sideways to see that one. You bet, waffles provided the horsepower.
The waffle and the cobbled spring classics are somehow related. The waffle and spring classics are tied together in some sort of parallel universe I think. I do not think that one can exist without the other. It is like the waffle was originally made on a really hot day by pouring batter on the cobbled road. In fact, that is my story - that is how they came to be. It is the story of laurent the waffle kid and the cobbles. Of course he lost his life in the storming of the castle when the large bunny came flying over the wall and King Arthur screamed "Run Away!!!"
The King weekend of the spring classics is Flanders and the Queen is Roubaix. It is amazing how different the regions are, yet how the races over the cobbles have come to signify everything great in cycling in my mind.
Dorks looking at their phones instead of the square.
This year, we organized a trip of 10 or so of us to go and ride the Flanders course, race the citizen Roubaix event and then rush to a pub to watch Flanders with a bunch of Belgians. Our intention was to cheer for Cancellara while they of course would be cheering for Boonen. Everyone knows at this point how that turned out.
We all were smiling in the morning.
It has been an epic trip. We rode the cobbles of Flanders. If you do not ever go anywhere else in pursuit of your cycling fantasies, you need to come to Flanders. Flanders is the absolute galactic center of cycling. I wrote that before, so I think you already know that. The races are legendary. There are bike lanes everywhere. It is a part of the world that is in love with bikes and bike racing and bike racers. You have to see it to believe it. Oh, and there is beer.
Then, we went to St. Quentin to ride the citizen Paris Roubaix race. Northern France is and has always been pretty dismal. The name "Hell of The North" kinda says it all. I always thought it was because of the cobbles. The Inner Ring did a great write up just the other day telling us all what it really means, check it out.
The start. We were cold.
The race is 5 hours of bashing your brains out over cobbles. It is 5 hours of being convinced that there is no way your bike and your wheels and your body can hold it together. You enter the cobbles at an impossible speed, which turns out is in fact impossible to hold over the length of the cobble section. You end up with a huckabuck experience and your retinas nearly detached from your brain.
You better have a healthy back, neck and wrists just to give it a try. I do not want to think about what would really happen if your bike came apart in the middle of the section. You have to run really big tires, I ran FMB tubulars which say 27 on them but they are probably bigger than 30mm. Run some really stout bottle cages, because anything wimpy will just self destruct somewhere along the way. Run double gel bar tape, it feels way to big but trust me - you will love it later. Don't worry about the cycle computer, even if it continues to work you will not be able to read it. Tape your wrists, make sure your glasses fit really tight, pile on the chamois creme of choice (Raffa stuff is the best), get rid of all your watches and jewelry as it will just bother you somewhere along the way.
Oh, no matter how bad you think the Arenberg forrest is, trust me - it's worse.
I rode the cobbles this year. I tried not to ride the gutter. That was a mistake.
In the end, there just isn't anything better. I'll be back.
Out,
Joe
Follow the Yellow Brick Road.
Liz on the Koppenberg.
The obligatory top of a climb shot. Eickenberg.
My steed for Roubaix.
This was the constant reminder that there are a lot of cobbles still to come.
Still smiling at the finish.
Less carnage than last year, but still some blood and a couple of stitches.
Frites, beer and Flanders watching in a cafe in Kortrijk. It filled up by the end, and we had to cheer loudly for Cancellara in a room full of Boonen fans.
She's blond and bitter.
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?
Out,
Joe
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.
JV
Sometimes seeing the future makes you feel funny.
