Meat or cheese?
Finally, he sees a gap between the yellow dot and a distant white house close. Speed and colour all but certify that the shape is another rider, not a runner, in this brightest of sports. More even than those for running, cycling jerseys, jackets and helmets leap out in the highest voltage yellows, high-frequency magentas and radioactive blues. Cycling socks usually collar the ankle in bands of colour, if not some flag or image, reggae or tartan, cartoon or psychedelic, while the jogger pounds on in mute white. In part, these jolts of colour are designed to awaken the sleepy eyes of drivers, to be anything other than asphalt grey, minivan blue or evergreen.
Cyclists have an honour roll of the fallen, riders killed by drivers, firm legs crumpled by tired eyes. Thousands of kilometres ahead of him on the Trans-Can, near Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, Dugald Christie, a BC lawyer, was struck down on his third cross-Canada ride to campaign for better legal aid. Australians lose their Olympians to drivers; Amy Gillett and Darren Smith were wiped out on training runs. Mark told Andrew that urban bicycle couriers annually ride a silent midnight vigil for their fallen.
Henry Ford is credited with inventing the assembly line. He didnât. He adapted the assembly line from the disassembly line of the slaughterhouse. Carcasses, then cars, strung on a line.
But more than just safety brightens cycling clothing. Every squirt of primary colour is also an homage to cyclingâs industrial origins.
The near nudity of runners is surpassed only by swimmers. For cyclists, colour squirts into their clothing to thank test tube and lab, to flag this enduring fusion of a natural skeleton to an engineered one. The only earth tone on a cyclist is mud.
Lab, indeed. Snorting above his curved handlebars and breathable gloves, he switches his cycling computer over to its stopwatch. If he had a sextant or some kind of calibrated looking glass, he could clock the seconds the other rider takes to travel between two points and then calculate his speed. Or hers.
Shrewd fatigue finally tables a debate, solemnly lists the casualties of his pointlessly chasing Yellow. What does this three-kilometres-an-hour leap in pace and pulse yield? What does it cost? Why are you faster for someone else? And your pace â if it ainât broke, donât fix it.
Fatigueâs a saboteur poisoning the ear, an isolationist. Yellow and I could chat route and chafe, swap tales of flats and broken chains.
Have you ever been without patches and used a fiver to keep yourself going? Money in lieu of a patch? Why not a piece of your map? Money is stronger.
Or we could build a communal meal.
My chili and your .
. . please donât have chili. Maybe he (she) has vegetables. A starburst red pepper. A buttery avocado. Does he (she) know that âpannierâ originally meant âbread basketâ? Companion. Company. Weâll break the bread we carry. (Keep your Nutella buried.)
These bright marbles roll in a green bowl. Peak to uneven peak, this valley stretches for nearly ten kilometres. On flat land, free of the panniers, one pedal stroke, one plunging shank, would roll Andrewâs frame roughly two metres. Here on the New Brunswick highwayâs curling ribbon, fully laden, spilling down one hill, falling back the next, heâll sink left then right more than five thousand times to end this valley.
Who doesnât want to be faster? Riding trails in Kingston or Halifax, he had been certain that some guys rode just to hunt out a race, ears cocked for a distant rustle in the leaves or the zip of fat tires along dirt. Every three or four weeks some single rider or, even more ominous, a silent pair, would find him unawares, sliding noiselessly into the bottom of a narrow switchback climb or shooting a pocket of coaster. These grandsons of men who were paid to sweat now paid to do it.
Their unannounced races started with nothing more than a
Finally, he sees a gap between the yellow dot and a distant white house close. Speed and colour all but certify that the shape is another rider, not a runner, in this brightest of sports. More even than those for running, cycling jerseys, jackets and helmets leap out in the highest voltage yellows, high-frequency magentas and radioactive blues. Cycling socks usually collar the ankle in bands of colour, if not some flag or image, reggae or tartan, cartoon or psychedelic, while the jogger pounds on in mute white. In part, these jolts of colour are designed to awaken the sleepy eyes of drivers, to be anything other than asphalt grey, minivan blue or evergreen.
Cyclists have an honour roll of the fallen, riders killed by drivers, firm legs crumpled by tired eyes. Thousands of kilometres ahead of him on the Trans-Can, near Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, Dugald Christie, a BC lawyer, was struck down on his third cross-Canada ride to campaign for better legal aid. Australians lose their Olympians to drivers; Amy Gillett and Darren Smith were wiped out on training runs. Mark told Andrew that urban bicycle couriers annually ride a silent midnight vigil for their fallen.
Henry Ford is credited with inventing the assembly line. He didnât. He adapted the assembly line from the disassembly line of the slaughterhouse. Carcasses, then cars, strung on a line.
But more than just safety brightens cycling clothing. Every squirt of primary colour is also an homage to cyclingâs industrial origins.
The near nudity of runners is surpassed only by swimmers. For cyclists, colour squirts into their clothing to thank test tube and lab, to flag this enduring fusion of a natural skeleton to an engineered one. The only earth tone on a cyclist is mud.
Lab, indeed. Snorting above his curved handlebars and breathable gloves, he switches his cycling computer over to its stopwatch. If he had a sextant or some kind of calibrated looking glass, he could clock the seconds the other rider takes to travel between two points and then calculate his speed. Or hers.
Shrewd fatigue finally tables a debate, solemnly lists the casualties of his pointlessly chasing Yellow. What does this three-kilometres-an-hour leap in pace and pulse yield? What does it cost? Why are you faster for someone else? And your pace â if it ainât broke, donât fix it.
Fatigueâs a saboteur poisoning the ear, an isolationist. Yellow and I could chat route and chafe, swap tales of flats and broken chains.
Have you ever been without patches and used a fiver to keep yourself going? Money in lieu of a patch? Why not a piece of your map? Money is stronger.
Or we could build a communal meal.
My chili and your .
. . please donât have chili. Maybe he (she) has vegetables. A starburst red pepper. A buttery avocado. Does he (she) know that âpannierâ originally meant âbread basketâ? Companion. Company. Weâll break the bread we carry. (Keep your Nutella buried.)
These bright marbles roll in a green bowl. Peak to uneven peak, this valley stretches for nearly ten kilometres. On flat land, free of the panniers, one pedal stroke, one plunging shank, would roll Andrewâs frame roughly two metres. Here on the New Brunswick highwayâs curling ribbon, fully laden, spilling down one hill, falling back the next, heâll sink left then right more than five thousand times to end this valley.
Who doesnât want to be faster? Riding trails in Kingston or Halifax, he had been certain that some guys rode just to hunt out a race, ears cocked for a distant rustle in the leaves or the zip of fat tires along dirt. Every three or four weeks some single rider or, even more ominous, a silent pair, would find him unawares, sliding noiselessly into the bottom of a narrow switchback climb or shooting a pocket of coaster. These grandsons of men who were paid to sweat now paid to do it.
Their unannounced races started with nothing more than a
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