Bike messengers have been the subject of a few books and movies and dozens of newspaper and magazine articles, and now with "Urban Flow, Bicycle Messengers and the City," a PhD dissertation that has been published as a 240 page book.
Jeffrey Kidder was languishing in graduate school at the University of Georgia, not sure if he was really doing what he wanted to be doing, when he read "The Immortal Class, Bike Messengers and the Cult of Human Power," the highly acclaimed book by Chicago messenger Travis Culley. He was so infected by Culley's enthusiasm for the job, he quit school and went to New York to take up the profession. Before he left a professor suggested he make a master thesis of the experience. He wasn't sure if he would or not, though he plunged into the job taking "copious field notes" and regarded himself as a "researcher." This was in 2002 and he was 25 years old.
He thoroughly lived the life, spending a year on the job before returning to school to work on his thesis. Four years later he continued his research for ten months in Seattle. Then he did a final stint of messengering in San Diego while earning a doctorate at the University of California, San Diego. He is presently an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Northern Illinois University.
His research also included reading whatever he could find on the subject, even a "Chicago Tribune" Sunday magazine article from 1991 that featured me. He limits himself to just six quotes from "The Immortal Class," though only four are listed in the index. The book also is a year off on its publication date, giving it as 2002, rather than 2001. Otherwise there was little to find fault with in this quite readable and insightful portrayal of the world of bike messengers. Kidder may not have the literary flair of Culley, but he is a polished writer having worked as a journalist in Boston before trying graduate school.
He does lapse into high-falutin scholarly prose from time to time, almost requiring a decoder to understand, but it is largely a most entertaining account of what it is like to be a messenger. Even though only five per cent of messengers in New York, and not much more elsewhere, are women, for some reason that he does not explain he uses the slightly distracting "she" rather than "he" when he needs a pronoun to refer to the generic messenger.
He doesn't shy from profanity when quoting messengers, using the f-word 18 times, a little less than half of the 44 sprinkled throughout Culley's book, but significantly fewer than the 98 in the very gritty and authentic "Nerves of Steel," by Rebecca "Lambchop" Reilly, published in 2000, a book he also references a couple of times. He refers to Reilly as a "folk historian." Unlike "The Immortal Class," her book is not easy to find. Similar to Culley she got her start in Chicago. She went on to messenger in eight other cities. Her book includes a legendary incident involving me when the most hated bicycle cop in Chicago at the time, "Hollywood Jack," crashed into a pedestrian when he was chasing after me.
Kidder divides messengers into two categories--those who are doing it simply as a job (occupational) and those who do it because they love it and it defines them (lifestyle). The majority are in the latter category, as was I. I'm presently on sabbatical, but the book had me hungering to be back out there on the streets riding like a man possessed. I am one of the microscopic minority to have stuck with it more than ten years, truly loving it and making it my life. Few even last a year, many quitting soon after they start, not realizing how demanding a job it is. Kidder too was initially overwhelmed by how exhausted and hungry it left him, often konking out at the end of the day even before he could finish his dinner.
But he stuck with it and grew to love it and its culture and the messengers he came to know. He continually refers to the job as "fun" and "play" and not just play, but "Deep Play," the title of one of his chapters. The prime objective of his research, "the sociological puzzle" he wanted to solve, was "why messengers find meaning in a seemingly menial occupation." His conclusion was that messengers have "creative control" over their work, making it seem more like play than work.
Perhaps the most remarkable aspect he discovers of the "job" is that messengers love their vocation so much they duplicate it on weekends racing in alleycat races that simulate their work day. It is unfathomable to think that people in other occupations would want to spend their weekend playing at their work. The phenomenon is a constant theme of his book. He alludes to how dangerous these races can be, as is the job, but he doesn't mention the fatality in a Chicago alleycat race on a Sunday morning when a racer flew through a red light, curtailing them here for a few years.
The alleycat races support another of his theses that messengers appropriate the city for their own use. It is their space and they live by their own laws, defying traffic signals and other behavioral norms. They regard themselves as outlaws able to do whatever they want even doing graffiti or drinking on the job.
The delight messengers have for riding hell-bent in an urban environment and wanting to do it even when they're not being paid truly defines the lifestyle messenger. When I visited a messenger friend in New York, I was thrilled to go out and ride with him for a day, to experience what it was like to messenger in the Big Apple. When a messenger friend from London visited me in Chicago, the highlight of his visit was tagging along with me for a day on the job. The pay may not be the best, but that's not what attracts people to the job. It is their love of biking and the freedom from an office environment the job allows and the sense of community it gives them. It may not be the most respected of professions, but if I were ever to expand upon my Confessions and write a memoir of my own, I would call it "Proud to be a Messenger."
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Friday, February 17, 2012
"Hell on Two Wheels"--A Torrent of Tears
Abundant evidence supporting the supposition that bicycle racing is the sport of tears can be found in "Hell on Two Wheels," by Amy Snyder, a recently published book about the 2009 Race Across America (RAAM), a race known as the most extreme test of endurance in the world. The winner invariably completes the 3,000 mile race in less than ten days, averaging not much more than an hour of sleep per day.
Riders are driven to tears of agony and tears of triumph in their sleep-weakened state all along the route from San Diego to Annapolis, Maryland. The first race was contested in l982 by four foolhardy souls. There were 28 solo riders in the 2009 edition, four of whom were women. There were another 150 riders competing as part of two-person, four-person and eight-person teams, though Snyder did not have the space to write about them. Of the 28 solo riders fifteen finished. Only 200 riders have completed the route, 26 women. There is no prize money. The winner receives the same medal as every finisher.
The book abounds with instances of riders and their support staff breaking into tears as they struggle and as they succeed and as they find inspiration from friends and relatives to keep going. Crying is such an integral part of the race that two of the book's photographs depict racers overcome by their emotions, thrilled at accomplishing something they put so much effort into.
Patrick Autissier, a 47-year old French rider, confessed that he cried more than he had in the previous twenty years as he faced the realization that he couldn't go on less than 600 miles into the race. His wife too is brought to tears.
Snyder reports there wasn't a dry eye among Tony O'Keefe's support crew when he tells them he is going to quit a little over half-way. He was a 48-year old Lieutenant Colonel in the Canadian armed forces and most of his crew were hardened soldiers. Months after the race he told Snyder that the experience had opened him so emotionally that he now cried at weddings.
Another military man, 44-year old Jure Robic of Slovenia, who had won the race four times previously, more than anyone, was a prolific crier from his very first race in 2003. He succeeds by pushing himself to the brink of madness and is prone to weeping uncontrollably. As the defending champion in 2005 he nearly quit the race near its completion, even though he was a day ahead of everyone else, sobbing at the roadside unable to remember what his son's face looked like.
The racers often cry from moments of uplift, taking a call from a loved one that gives them some cheer and the motivation to keep going. Christophe Strasser, a 26-year old rookie from Austria, teared up as his crew read him email messages of support after he crested the Rocky Mountains. Several days later "the tears flowed freely" as he spoke with his girl friend during the night. Marko Baloh, a 42-year old Slovenia, "cried like a baby" in the 2006 RAAM 120 miles from the finish when he realized he was going to make it after failing in his first two attempts. When he was hospitalized in the 2005 race, one of his crew members, Allen Larsen, who won the race in 2003, wept at his bed side, so saddened for him.
It is a wonder that anyone would want to subject themselves to such a torment, especially more than once. Even a slow-paced, couple-month bicycle ride across the country can be an ordeal, and is a notable accomplishment. Making it a torturous experience, subjecting the human body to such extremes, seems utterly senseless. The human body is not constructed to endure such an endeavor.
In the second edition of the race Michael Shermer's neck muscles gave out and were unable to hold his head upright. He fashioned a brace to keep going. It was no fluke, as in the following years others suffered the same malady. It was discovered that the neck is not designed to support the head at such an angle that the bicycle riding position demands for as many hours as these racers ride. It is a syndrome that has come to be known as "Shermer's Neck."
Riders now do special exercises to strengthen their necks, but it isn't always enough. Nearly all come equipped with various devices to hold their heads upright in case their neck goes. The Canadian soldier O'Keefe did not. His crew managed to construct a device so he could keep riding, but it restricted his vision. He crashed going over some railroad tracks he didn't see. He wasn't badly injured, but he feared for his safety and decided to quit.
The riders can also suffer extreme nerve damage to their hands. It can take six months or more for them to regain control of their fingers, leaving them dependent on others to dress and eat. Many suffer combat-type psychological damage as well that takes them months to recover from.
Snyder writes at length about the pain and suffering the riders endure and how they manage it. She intimately profiles quite a few of the riders, interviewing some of them in their homes overseas. She drove back and forth along the route during the race and followed the racers' blogs and used the phone to contact every crew at least once a day. She gained as good an understanding of the race and its participants as one could without actually competing in the event. She provides an amazingly well-informed account of the race and its many aspects.
A team of officials patrol the route monitoring the racers, assessing time penalties for going through red lights and other infractions. Robic was assessed a 15-minute penalty at the very start for urinating in pubic rather than going to a port-a-potty. He was given another 15-minute penalty for passing a rider in an inappropriate manner and a final 30-minute penalty for going off course and not going back to where he went astray. The penalties infuriated his crew of Slovenian soldiers so much they started tracking his nearest competitor with a camera trying to catch him violating the rules as well since he was penalty-free. There is a penalty box 50 miles from the race finish where riders must do their time. When Robic had to serve his, it caused quite a furor. Robic wasn't the only racer to accuse an opponent of cheating.
This may not be an event that many people would want to attempt, but it certainly provided abundant material for a fascinating book. And it proved more than ever that the deep emotional stake that bicycle riders invest in an undertaking is quite frequently manifested by a rush of tears coming from nowhere.
Riders are driven to tears of agony and tears of triumph in their sleep-weakened state all along the route from San Diego to Annapolis, Maryland. The first race was contested in l982 by four foolhardy souls. There were 28 solo riders in the 2009 edition, four of whom were women. There were another 150 riders competing as part of two-person, four-person and eight-person teams, though Snyder did not have the space to write about them. Of the 28 solo riders fifteen finished. Only 200 riders have completed the route, 26 women. There is no prize money. The winner receives the same medal as every finisher.
The book abounds with instances of riders and their support staff breaking into tears as they struggle and as they succeed and as they find inspiration from friends and relatives to keep going. Crying is such an integral part of the race that two of the book's photographs depict racers overcome by their emotions, thrilled at accomplishing something they put so much effort into.
Patrick Autissier, a 47-year old French rider, confessed that he cried more than he had in the previous twenty years as he faced the realization that he couldn't go on less than 600 miles into the race. His wife too is brought to tears.
Snyder reports there wasn't a dry eye among Tony O'Keefe's support crew when he tells them he is going to quit a little over half-way. He was a 48-year old Lieutenant Colonel in the Canadian armed forces and most of his crew were hardened soldiers. Months after the race he told Snyder that the experience had opened him so emotionally that he now cried at weddings.
Another military man, 44-year old Jure Robic of Slovenia, who had won the race four times previously, more than anyone, was a prolific crier from his very first race in 2003. He succeeds by pushing himself to the brink of madness and is prone to weeping uncontrollably. As the defending champion in 2005 he nearly quit the race near its completion, even though he was a day ahead of everyone else, sobbing at the roadside unable to remember what his son's face looked like.
The racers often cry from moments of uplift, taking a call from a loved one that gives them some cheer and the motivation to keep going. Christophe Strasser, a 26-year old rookie from Austria, teared up as his crew read him email messages of support after he crested the Rocky Mountains. Several days later "the tears flowed freely" as he spoke with his girl friend during the night. Marko Baloh, a 42-year old Slovenia, "cried like a baby" in the 2006 RAAM 120 miles from the finish when he realized he was going to make it after failing in his first two attempts. When he was hospitalized in the 2005 race, one of his crew members, Allen Larsen, who won the race in 2003, wept at his bed side, so saddened for him.
It is a wonder that anyone would want to subject themselves to such a torment, especially more than once. Even a slow-paced, couple-month bicycle ride across the country can be an ordeal, and is a notable accomplishment. Making it a torturous experience, subjecting the human body to such extremes, seems utterly senseless. The human body is not constructed to endure such an endeavor.
In the second edition of the race Michael Shermer's neck muscles gave out and were unable to hold his head upright. He fashioned a brace to keep going. It was no fluke, as in the following years others suffered the same malady. It was discovered that the neck is not designed to support the head at such an angle that the bicycle riding position demands for as many hours as these racers ride. It is a syndrome that has come to be known as "Shermer's Neck."
Riders now do special exercises to strengthen their necks, but it isn't always enough. Nearly all come equipped with various devices to hold their heads upright in case their neck goes. The Canadian soldier O'Keefe did not. His crew managed to construct a device so he could keep riding, but it restricted his vision. He crashed going over some railroad tracks he didn't see. He wasn't badly injured, but he feared for his safety and decided to quit.
The riders can also suffer extreme nerve damage to their hands. It can take six months or more for them to regain control of their fingers, leaving them dependent on others to dress and eat. Many suffer combat-type psychological damage as well that takes them months to recover from.
Snyder writes at length about the pain and suffering the riders endure and how they manage it. She intimately profiles quite a few of the riders, interviewing some of them in their homes overseas. She drove back and forth along the route during the race and followed the racers' blogs and used the phone to contact every crew at least once a day. She gained as good an understanding of the race and its participants as one could without actually competing in the event. She provides an amazingly well-informed account of the race and its many aspects.
A team of officials patrol the route monitoring the racers, assessing time penalties for going through red lights and other infractions. Robic was assessed a 15-minute penalty at the very start for urinating in pubic rather than going to a port-a-potty. He was given another 15-minute penalty for passing a rider in an inappropriate manner and a final 30-minute penalty for going off course and not going back to where he went astray. The penalties infuriated his crew of Slovenian soldiers so much they started tracking his nearest competitor with a camera trying to catch him violating the rules as well since he was penalty-free. There is a penalty box 50 miles from the race finish where riders must do their time. When Robic had to serve his, it caused quite a furor. Robic wasn't the only racer to accuse an opponent of cheating.
This may not be an event that many people would want to attempt, but it certainly provided abundant material for a fascinating book. And it proved more than ever that the deep emotional stake that bicycle riders invest in an undertaking is quite frequently manifested by a rush of tears coming from nowhere.
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
Bicycle Racing, The Sport of Tears
Laurent Fignon begins his memoirs, "We Were Young and Carefree," recounting his devastating eight-second loss to Greg LeMond in the 1989 Tour de France, when LeMond accomplished the unthinkable, overcoming a fifty-second deficit on the last stage, a fifteen-mile time trial from Versailles to Paris. Fignon, finishing just after LeMond, collapsed to the pavement at the finish line in total disbelief. He was in shock. After he gathered himself together and headed to the doping control he encountered his teammate Thierry Maire.
"Without thinking," Fignon writes, "He threw himself at me and burst into tears. In those welcoming arms I wailed like a child. Long, long sobs. It had never happened in public before."
One of the singular aspects of bicycle racing is the deep emotional investment, unlike any other sport, of the riders to win a race, often an investment of months and years of concerted effort and great deprivation. Succeeding or failing to win a race a rider has put so much effort into can lead to a spontaneous burst of tears--either tears of jubilation or tears of utter despair. It is a sport of "want-to," of how single-mindedly one can focus and devote oneself to getting something they really, really want, and how hard one can willingly push oneself, or "hurt oneself," as Fignon regularly phrases it.
A rider can cultivate an extraordinary depth of motivation by dwelling on the storied history of a race, wishing to join its pantheon of conquerors, finding inspiration in their heroic exploits that time has elevated to legend. The length of a race, the time spent in combat, further heightens one's desire to succeed, to conquer, to justify all the time and effort, all the pain and suffering one has committed to winning. Every moment on the bike increases one's hunger. A race can be six or seven hours long, two or three times as long as most sporting competitions. And a stage race like the Tour de France, going on for three weeks, with all that extra effort and focused attention, truly maxes the thrill of victory or agony of defeat, resulting in volcanic eruptions of emotion.
At times it can be a delayed reaction. Christian Vande Velde, at his recent appearance at the Chicago Garmin store, said that after his Garmin team won the team time trial at last year's Tour de France, when he retreated to the team bus, the full impact of what they had accomplished finally hit him and he was overcome with tears, something he wasn't embarrassed to acknowledge. He knows it is a reflection of how much it meant to him. Tears are something racers are proud to earn, knowing from experience, whether their own or witnessing it in a teammate or fellow competitor, that it is the ultimate emotion.
Laurent Jalabert, a prominent French rider a decade ago who in ten Tours de France won five stages, twice on Bastille Day, and twice won the points jersey and twice the king of the mountain jersey, but never the yellow jersey felt unfulfilled when it came to The Tour. He said, "In the Tour, I never shed tears of joy." Winning the race was his ultimate goal. Though his other successes in The Tour would have thrilled many another rider, he had a higher aspiration. Only that would give him that great joy of tears.
Some riders prefer to keep their tears private, regarding a public display as a chink in their toughness. Jacques Anquetil, the first five-time winner of The Tour, was a man who tried to express a minimum of emotion. His wife revealed though that he gushed tears in the privacy of their car after his monumental achievement of winning the Bordeaux-Paris race a day after winning the nine-day Dauphine-Libere race, an accomplishment that "L'Equipe" called the greatest sporting feat of the 20th century.
Fignon too tried to go about his business with a stoic detachment, admitting his outburst after that 1989 loss was the only time he cried in public in his career. If he were truly embarrassed by the tears, he might have blamed them on his teammate crying first, but he didn't need to do that. Tears are so intrinsic to bicycle racing, they are hard to avoid. Fignon knew, though, he had a special toughness to resist them, as he said he never cried when he was spanked as a kid. He knew nothing about bicycle racing at the time, but looking back, his resistance to spanking revealed he "knew how to hurt," an essential quality for a cyclist. He was not entirely resistant to tears though. He admits that after he was offered his first professional contract by Cyrille Guimard, the preeminent team director at the time, he was so thrilled that he "may have had furtive little tears in my eyes." Tears are an indication one really cares about something, and he truly cared about his cycling.
Twice he mentions other cyclists who shed tears at climactic moments--Pascal Simon, when he had to abandon the 1983 Tour after having clung to the yellow jersey for several stages with a broken shoulder, and also Jean-Francois Bernard after winning the Mont Ventoux stage in the l987 Tour. Fignon went on to win that 1983 Tour, his first of two. And like Bernard he too had tears on Ventoux in 1987, but of a different type. He suffered greatly on the climb, and had to begrudgingly acknowledge he would not be a contender to win The Race. After he climbed into the team bus "well a way from prying eyes, I wept for a long time."
The uber-emotional Mark Cavendish isn't bashful at all about acknowledging his tears, almost flaunting them. His autobiography, "Boy Racer," abounds with mentions of tears of many strains--after winning sprints, over a coach's criticism, over not medaling at the Beijing Olympics, when he proposes to his girl friend and then when he breaks up with her, when he learns his parents are divorcing, for being disqualified in a Tour de France sprint, when he is dropped by the peloton on the first stage of his first Tour de France in 2007, in the hospital at the bedside of a friend in a coma.
Davis Phinney, another emotionally-charged sprinter a couple decades Cavendish's senior, who twice won stages of The Tour de France, also regularly mentions giving vent to tears in his autobiography "The Happiness of Pursuit," even once referring to "squirting some tears," when he had bad luck as a 17-year old in the junior nationals. His book is as much about his battle with Parkinson's Disease as it is about racing. He also writes considerably about his father's fight with cancer, not letting it prevent him from going to France many times to ride the legendary climbs of The Tour de France. The touring company he went with liked him so much that it erected a plaque in his honor at the summit of the Col de Fer. The book culminates with Davis and his daughter Kelsey bicycling to the summit of the Col de Fer to watch his son Taylor, now a prominent young rider, pass in a race. Seeing the memorial and seeing his son he "wept tears of joy and sorrow."
The book also recounts his courtship of Connie Carpenter, a l984 Olympic gold medal winner, who achieved prominence before he did. Phinney repeatedly says she was "out of my league." He drove her to tears once when she visited him in France early in his career, and he was too exhausted to give her enough attention. But that story had a happy ending, as do most of those in the book, one way or another. Davis mentions tears of a type not often described in cycling books--tears over a movie, "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly," a French movie about a distinguished French magazine editor who becomes paralyzed after a car accident and can only communicate with the wink of one eye. Davis could very much relate to him in his battles to fully function.
My recent rampage through cycling biographies also included the memoirs of Bernard Hinault--"Memories of the Peloton" written in 1988. I didn't expect much crying from this hard man and there wasn't. His motto was, "As long as I live and breath, I attack." Attack is his constant refrain, appearing on just about every other page of his book. Such a man makes others cry. One of those he made cry, though tears of joy, was France's national team director when Hinault won the World Championship in 1980 in France. Though Hinault called that day the "greatest day of my life, by far," he acknowledged no tears of joy in his celebration. Calling that his greatest victory is quite a statement, as he won the Tour de France five times, the Giro d'Italia three times and the Vuelta d'Espagne twice. Only Eddie Merckx, with eleven, won more Grand Tours. But it was a victory he had targeted for years. It had been 19 years since the last French winner, Jean Stablinksi, one of his early mentors.
He does admit to crying once on his bike, during his final Tour de France, that legendary 1986 Tour that is considered perhaps the greatest Tour of all time, when he waged psychological war fare with his teammate Greg LeMond, trying to make him a worthy winner, he maintains. He was brought to tears as he climbed the Col de Vars lagging behind LeMond, relinquishing the yellow jersey, that he claims he was only keeping warm for LeMond. It wasn't losing the jersey that had him weeping, but rather a pain in his knee and the comment of a photographer who told his motorbike driver to slow down and stick with Hinault as he looked as if he was going to abandon. "I might have given up but for that photographer's words," he says. But he recovered and the next day he attacked once again and then led LeMond up L'Alpe d'Huez to their triumphant shoulder-to-shoulder finish.
Besides all these biographies there have also been several histories amongst my recent submersion in the world of books on bicycle racing. They too recount instances of racers being brought to tears. Marguerite Lazell's "Illustrated History of the Tour de France," one of a veritable peloton of books written about The Tour in 2003 to commemorate its 100th anniversary, claims Hinault climbed off his bike in tears at the finish of the 9th stage of the 1979 Tour at the Roubaix velodrome, when he finished three minutes and 45 seconds behind Joop Zoetemelk and lost the yellow jersey. He regained it a few stages later, going on to win the second of his five Tours. This incident of tears though was one of a number of questionable assertions she makes.
One of the most egregious was claiming that when the yellow jersey was introduced to The Tour in 1919 midway through its 13th edition it was meant to spur on the racers, as they were lagging. It was the first Tour after a four year hiatus due to World War One and the racers weren't so fit. To think the yellow jersey was immediately a coveted object that would inspire the riders to super-human efforts is ridiculous. Race director Henri Desgrange forced the jersey on the leading rider Eugene Christophe so spectators could more easily identify who was in the lead.
The jersey was at first an object of embarrassment. Christophe said that spectators shouted at him that he looked like a canary and would chirp at him. Subsequent wearers thought it made it too easy for other riders to keep track of them. There is even debate whether 1919 was the first year of the yellow jersey. Three-time winner Philippe Thys claims he was made to wear a yellow jersey in 1913, though no papers from the time can confirm this. There is much to the fascinating story of the yellow jersey that Lazell overlooked.
She does get right another of the oft-recounted episodes in the history of The Tour--the legendary stage in the 1934 Tour when rookie Rene Vietto, who was looking like a new climbing sensation, had to give up his wheel to his team leader Antonin Magne in the mountains and sat on a ledge weeping, waiting for a replacement wheel, watching his chances evaporate. The photo of the forlorn Vietto is one of the Top Ten images in the history of The Tour. Her book includes two other photos of crying cyclists, both of the high-strung French rider Richard Virenque. The first shows tears of shame after he had to abandon the 1998 Tour when his Festina team was caught with a car load of doping products. The second captures Virenque glowing with tears of exaltation after winning the Mont Ventoux stage in 2002.
Both "Pedalare! Pedalare!" a history of Italian cycling by John Foot and Lazell tell the story of two-time Tour winner Italian Ottavio Bottecchia abandoning the 1926 Tour in tears. Foote describes tears of a different sort from a long-time popular Italian broadcaster who would "burst into tears with very little prompting" during his broadcast of the Giro d'Italia. When Eddie Merckx was ejected from the Giro in 1969 with a huge lead for failing a drug test, a charge he heatedly disputed, the next day's newspaper featured a huge front page photo of a sobbing Merckx. Two years later when Gianna Motta tested positive for drugs, he too was photographed in tears in his hotel room. The greatest Italian crier though was Marco Pantani. After he was ejected for having an excessive hematocrit level from the 1999 Giro with only a couple of stages to go holding a comfortable lead, he went home and cried for days, according to his girl friend.
Since Foote's book was largely focused on Italian racers, it ignored the 1988 Giro that Davis Phinney's 7-Eleven teammate Andy Hampsten won. The climatic stage in the snow over the Gavia pass that won the race for Hampsten was so brutal it was known as "The Day That Grown Men Cried." Among those brought to tears of pain were former Giro champions Roberto Visentini and Giusepppe Saronni. Phinney gives a very detailed description of that stage, one that was more a matter of survival than racing.
I can fully relate to tales of tears on the bicycle, as I, as a touring cyclist have had personal experience with them. The effort and full commitment a touring cyclist puts into achieving a goal can effect him in a similar, though milder, manner as it does the racing cyclist. I was shocked that when I began to tell people about that glorious moment when I arrived in Alaska after bicycling over 3,000 miles from Chicago, the last 1.000 on a dirt road, that I would choke on tears and couldn't continue. I had no idea that my efforts had had such an effect on me. I felt triumphant when I reached Alaska and the end of the unpaved stretch of the road, but there were no tears or great celebration at that point. I still had 300 miles to Fairbanks and the end of the road, though the worst was over, and I knew I had essentially achieved my goal. I laid my bike down on the ground, half on the dirt and half on the pavement, for a photo.
I made that ride in 198l, over thirty years ago, but it still has a lingering effect on me. If I'm not careful, I can be overcome by emotion and can't continue when I'm tellinganother about reaching Alaska. No other of my many trips has had such an effect on me, not even my 7,000 mile ride the length of South America battling head winds and banditos and long stretches without food and water, or my ride across Australia including the 750 mile stretch of no towns across the Nullarbor, or my ride across India where I was descended upon by dozens of people whenever I stopped and was blasted by horns by every passing vehicle almost to the point of deafness for thousands of miles, knowing my limits of tolerance were being tested.
The challenges of the Alaskan Highway had me continually on edge--rough roads, clouds of dust, swarms of mosquitoes and flies, prowling bears, long stretches without food and water and motorists continually telling me that they thought they were brave to be driving the road and couldn't imagine attempting it on a bike. Books were written for motorists on how to survive the road. I couldn't have imagined how deeply satisfying completing that ride would be. That welling of emotion always lets me know. They are a badge of honor unlike any other.
"Without thinking," Fignon writes, "He threw himself at me and burst into tears. In those welcoming arms I wailed like a child. Long, long sobs. It had never happened in public before."
One of the singular aspects of bicycle racing is the deep emotional investment, unlike any other sport, of the riders to win a race, often an investment of months and years of concerted effort and great deprivation. Succeeding or failing to win a race a rider has put so much effort into can lead to a spontaneous burst of tears--either tears of jubilation or tears of utter despair. It is a sport of "want-to," of how single-mindedly one can focus and devote oneself to getting something they really, really want, and how hard one can willingly push oneself, or "hurt oneself," as Fignon regularly phrases it.
A rider can cultivate an extraordinary depth of motivation by dwelling on the storied history of a race, wishing to join its pantheon of conquerors, finding inspiration in their heroic exploits that time has elevated to legend. The length of a race, the time spent in combat, further heightens one's desire to succeed, to conquer, to justify all the time and effort, all the pain and suffering one has committed to winning. Every moment on the bike increases one's hunger. A race can be six or seven hours long, two or three times as long as most sporting competitions. And a stage race like the Tour de France, going on for three weeks, with all that extra effort and focused attention, truly maxes the thrill of victory or agony of defeat, resulting in volcanic eruptions of emotion.
At times it can be a delayed reaction. Christian Vande Velde, at his recent appearance at the Chicago Garmin store, said that after his Garmin team won the team time trial at last year's Tour de France, when he retreated to the team bus, the full impact of what they had accomplished finally hit him and he was overcome with tears, something he wasn't embarrassed to acknowledge. He knows it is a reflection of how much it meant to him. Tears are something racers are proud to earn, knowing from experience, whether their own or witnessing it in a teammate or fellow competitor, that it is the ultimate emotion.
Laurent Jalabert, a prominent French rider a decade ago who in ten Tours de France won five stages, twice on Bastille Day, and twice won the points jersey and twice the king of the mountain jersey, but never the yellow jersey felt unfulfilled when it came to The Tour. He said, "In the Tour, I never shed tears of joy." Winning the race was his ultimate goal. Though his other successes in The Tour would have thrilled many another rider, he had a higher aspiration. Only that would give him that great joy of tears.
Some riders prefer to keep their tears private, regarding a public display as a chink in their toughness. Jacques Anquetil, the first five-time winner of The Tour, was a man who tried to express a minimum of emotion. His wife revealed though that he gushed tears in the privacy of their car after his monumental achievement of winning the Bordeaux-Paris race a day after winning the nine-day Dauphine-Libere race, an accomplishment that "L'Equipe" called the greatest sporting feat of the 20th century.
Fignon too tried to go about his business with a stoic detachment, admitting his outburst after that 1989 loss was the only time he cried in public in his career. If he were truly embarrassed by the tears, he might have blamed them on his teammate crying first, but he didn't need to do that. Tears are so intrinsic to bicycle racing, they are hard to avoid. Fignon knew, though, he had a special toughness to resist them, as he said he never cried when he was spanked as a kid. He knew nothing about bicycle racing at the time, but looking back, his resistance to spanking revealed he "knew how to hurt," an essential quality for a cyclist. He was not entirely resistant to tears though. He admits that after he was offered his first professional contract by Cyrille Guimard, the preeminent team director at the time, he was so thrilled that he "may have had furtive little tears in my eyes." Tears are an indication one really cares about something, and he truly cared about his cycling.
Twice he mentions other cyclists who shed tears at climactic moments--Pascal Simon, when he had to abandon the 1983 Tour after having clung to the yellow jersey for several stages with a broken shoulder, and also Jean-Francois Bernard after winning the Mont Ventoux stage in the l987 Tour. Fignon went on to win that 1983 Tour, his first of two. And like Bernard he too had tears on Ventoux in 1987, but of a different type. He suffered greatly on the climb, and had to begrudgingly acknowledge he would not be a contender to win The Race. After he climbed into the team bus "well a way from prying eyes, I wept for a long time."
The uber-emotional Mark Cavendish isn't bashful at all about acknowledging his tears, almost flaunting them. His autobiography, "Boy Racer," abounds with mentions of tears of many strains--after winning sprints, over a coach's criticism, over not medaling at the Beijing Olympics, when he proposes to his girl friend and then when he breaks up with her, when he learns his parents are divorcing, for being disqualified in a Tour de France sprint, when he is dropped by the peloton on the first stage of his first Tour de France in 2007, in the hospital at the bedside of a friend in a coma.
Davis Phinney, another emotionally-charged sprinter a couple decades Cavendish's senior, who twice won stages of The Tour de France, also regularly mentions giving vent to tears in his autobiography "The Happiness of Pursuit," even once referring to "squirting some tears," when he had bad luck as a 17-year old in the junior nationals. His book is as much about his battle with Parkinson's Disease as it is about racing. He also writes considerably about his father's fight with cancer, not letting it prevent him from going to France many times to ride the legendary climbs of The Tour de France. The touring company he went with liked him so much that it erected a plaque in his honor at the summit of the Col de Fer. The book culminates with Davis and his daughter Kelsey bicycling to the summit of the Col de Fer to watch his son Taylor, now a prominent young rider, pass in a race. Seeing the memorial and seeing his son he "wept tears of joy and sorrow."
The book also recounts his courtship of Connie Carpenter, a l984 Olympic gold medal winner, who achieved prominence before he did. Phinney repeatedly says she was "out of my league." He drove her to tears once when she visited him in France early in his career, and he was too exhausted to give her enough attention. But that story had a happy ending, as do most of those in the book, one way or another. Davis mentions tears of a type not often described in cycling books--tears over a movie, "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly," a French movie about a distinguished French magazine editor who becomes paralyzed after a car accident and can only communicate with the wink of one eye. Davis could very much relate to him in his battles to fully function.
My recent rampage through cycling biographies also included the memoirs of Bernard Hinault--"Memories of the Peloton" written in 1988. I didn't expect much crying from this hard man and there wasn't. His motto was, "As long as I live and breath, I attack." Attack is his constant refrain, appearing on just about every other page of his book. Such a man makes others cry. One of those he made cry, though tears of joy, was France's national team director when Hinault won the World Championship in 1980 in France. Though Hinault called that day the "greatest day of my life, by far," he acknowledged no tears of joy in his celebration. Calling that his greatest victory is quite a statement, as he won the Tour de France five times, the Giro d'Italia three times and the Vuelta d'Espagne twice. Only Eddie Merckx, with eleven, won more Grand Tours. But it was a victory he had targeted for years. It had been 19 years since the last French winner, Jean Stablinksi, one of his early mentors.
He does admit to crying once on his bike, during his final Tour de France, that legendary 1986 Tour that is considered perhaps the greatest Tour of all time, when he waged psychological war fare with his teammate Greg LeMond, trying to make him a worthy winner, he maintains. He was brought to tears as he climbed the Col de Vars lagging behind LeMond, relinquishing the yellow jersey, that he claims he was only keeping warm for LeMond. It wasn't losing the jersey that had him weeping, but rather a pain in his knee and the comment of a photographer who told his motorbike driver to slow down and stick with Hinault as he looked as if he was going to abandon. "I might have given up but for that photographer's words," he says. But he recovered and the next day he attacked once again and then led LeMond up L'Alpe d'Huez to their triumphant shoulder-to-shoulder finish.
Besides all these biographies there have also been several histories amongst my recent submersion in the world of books on bicycle racing. They too recount instances of racers being brought to tears. Marguerite Lazell's "Illustrated History of the Tour de France," one of a veritable peloton of books written about The Tour in 2003 to commemorate its 100th anniversary, claims Hinault climbed off his bike in tears at the finish of the 9th stage of the 1979 Tour at the Roubaix velodrome, when he finished three minutes and 45 seconds behind Joop Zoetemelk and lost the yellow jersey. He regained it a few stages later, going on to win the second of his five Tours. This incident of tears though was one of a number of questionable assertions she makes.
One of the most egregious was claiming that when the yellow jersey was introduced to The Tour in 1919 midway through its 13th edition it was meant to spur on the racers, as they were lagging. It was the first Tour after a four year hiatus due to World War One and the racers weren't so fit. To think the yellow jersey was immediately a coveted object that would inspire the riders to super-human efforts is ridiculous. Race director Henri Desgrange forced the jersey on the leading rider Eugene Christophe so spectators could more easily identify who was in the lead.
The jersey was at first an object of embarrassment. Christophe said that spectators shouted at him that he looked like a canary and would chirp at him. Subsequent wearers thought it made it too easy for other riders to keep track of them. There is even debate whether 1919 was the first year of the yellow jersey. Three-time winner Philippe Thys claims he was made to wear a yellow jersey in 1913, though no papers from the time can confirm this. There is much to the fascinating story of the yellow jersey that Lazell overlooked.
She does get right another of the oft-recounted episodes in the history of The Tour--the legendary stage in the 1934 Tour when rookie Rene Vietto, who was looking like a new climbing sensation, had to give up his wheel to his team leader Antonin Magne in the mountains and sat on a ledge weeping, waiting for a replacement wheel, watching his chances evaporate. The photo of the forlorn Vietto is one of the Top Ten images in the history of The Tour. Her book includes two other photos of crying cyclists, both of the high-strung French rider Richard Virenque. The first shows tears of shame after he had to abandon the 1998 Tour when his Festina team was caught with a car load of doping products. The second captures Virenque glowing with tears of exaltation after winning the Mont Ventoux stage in 2002.
Both "Pedalare! Pedalare!" a history of Italian cycling by John Foot and Lazell tell the story of two-time Tour winner Italian Ottavio Bottecchia abandoning the 1926 Tour in tears. Foote describes tears of a different sort from a long-time popular Italian broadcaster who would "burst into tears with very little prompting" during his broadcast of the Giro d'Italia. When Eddie Merckx was ejected from the Giro in 1969 with a huge lead for failing a drug test, a charge he heatedly disputed, the next day's newspaper featured a huge front page photo of a sobbing Merckx. Two years later when Gianna Motta tested positive for drugs, he too was photographed in tears in his hotel room. The greatest Italian crier though was Marco Pantani. After he was ejected for having an excessive hematocrit level from the 1999 Giro with only a couple of stages to go holding a comfortable lead, he went home and cried for days, according to his girl friend.
Since Foote's book was largely focused on Italian racers, it ignored the 1988 Giro that Davis Phinney's 7-Eleven teammate Andy Hampsten won. The climatic stage in the snow over the Gavia pass that won the race for Hampsten was so brutal it was known as "The Day That Grown Men Cried." Among those brought to tears of pain were former Giro champions Roberto Visentini and Giusepppe Saronni. Phinney gives a very detailed description of that stage, one that was more a matter of survival than racing.
I can fully relate to tales of tears on the bicycle, as I, as a touring cyclist have had personal experience with them. The effort and full commitment a touring cyclist puts into achieving a goal can effect him in a similar, though milder, manner as it does the racing cyclist. I was shocked that when I began to tell people about that glorious moment when I arrived in Alaska after bicycling over 3,000 miles from Chicago, the last 1.000 on a dirt road, that I would choke on tears and couldn't continue. I had no idea that my efforts had had such an effect on me. I felt triumphant when I reached Alaska and the end of the unpaved stretch of the road, but there were no tears or great celebration at that point. I still had 300 miles to Fairbanks and the end of the road, though the worst was over, and I knew I had essentially achieved my goal. I laid my bike down on the ground, half on the dirt and half on the pavement, for a photo.
I made that ride in 198l, over thirty years ago, but it still has a lingering effect on me. If I'm not careful, I can be overcome by emotion and can't continue when I'm tellinganother about reaching Alaska. No other of my many trips has had such an effect on me, not even my 7,000 mile ride the length of South America battling head winds and banditos and long stretches without food and water, or my ride across Australia including the 750 mile stretch of no towns across the Nullarbor, or my ride across India where I was descended upon by dozens of people whenever I stopped and was blasted by horns by every passing vehicle almost to the point of deafness for thousands of miles, knowing my limits of tolerance were being tested.
The challenges of the Alaskan Highway had me continually on edge--rough roads, clouds of dust, swarms of mosquitoes and flies, prowling bears, long stretches without food and water and motorists continually telling me that they thought they were brave to be driving the road and couldn't imagine attempting it on a bike. Books were written for motorists on how to survive the road. I couldn't have imagined how deeply satisfying completing that ride would be. That welling of emotion always lets me know. They are a badge of honor unlike any other.
Monday, January 30, 2012
Roger Ebert and the Bicycle
Roger Ebert mentions riding his bicycle growing up in Urbana, Illinois so often early in his memoirs "Life Itself" I had hopes bicycling might be a recurring theme throughout the book. In the book's very first paragraph he cries over a friend's red tricycle that he wants for his own. On the next page he observes his father putting bicycle clips on his work pants and bicycling off to work.
When he's old enough to start riding a bicycle, he'd ride his bike to school, "even in winter." On summer vacations he regarded his bicycle as his "freedom" allowing him to range all over. Among his destinations was the Dog n Suds, where he'd go for the Dog in a Basket with coleslaw, fries and root beer, something he regarded as a "spectacular feast." He'd also bike to an A & W Root Beer stand on his way out to Crystal Lake. When he was older he'd ride his bike around the university campus "studying the students."
He also mentions giving rides on his handlebars to his friend Donald, the lone "colored boy" in his Catholic grade school. It didn't seem out of place to him at the time that a nun said Donald was "just as precious as the rest of you in the eyes of God."
His commentary on the bicycle set the tone for these memoirs, a lot of random observations, not all of which were particularly relevant or well-developed, but that give some insight into the times he's writing about and what left an impression on him. Another typical example was his comment about a high school English teacher who was a bachelor. "It was conceivable he was gay," Ebert remembers, but offers no other reason to think so. Unfortunately, that great seminal moment in everyone's life of learning to ride a bicycle hadn't left enough of a memory to make the book.
He lost whatever bicycling consciousness he might have had growing up by the time he became a movie critic. The only bicycle in cinema reference he makes is to a movie he saw when he was a student at the University of Illinois, "The Immoral Mr. Teas" in 1961. It was the first Russ Meyer movie he saw, not knowing who Russ Meyer was, as Russ Meyer had yet to become a brand. It was Meyer's first commercially successful film and the first of the nudie-cuties, a genre that evolved from the nudist camp films, the first films to sneak blatant nudity past the censors. Mr.Teas is an early-day bicycle messenger delivering false teeth. He encounters various voluptuous women who he imagines completely nude. Ebert says this barely hour long film ran for nearly two years, ten times a day, in a small theater near the campus and was a right of passage for students.
Rather than making it an outing with his frat brothers, he went on his own "hoping to slip in unwitnessed." One might have thought he would have been accompanied by a gang of his frat brothers, especially considering they would serenade sororities with the song "Phi Delta Theta Girl" that included the lyric, "If you were the kind that sold, you'd be worth your weight in gold." His frat experience is another minor confession that he wasn't comfortable with even at the time, eventually moving back home.
Ebert could hardly have imagined when he was watching with bulged eyes "Mr Teas" that he would become a good friend of Russ Meyer and write a screenplay for him--"Beyond the Valley of the Dolls." He devotes a chapter of his book to him, concluding with his funeral. During the preacher's droning eulogy, Ebert's wife Chaz whispers to him, "If you don't go up there and say something Russ will come out of his coffin and strangle you." So he does.
This was one of several chapters on prominent people in film he respected or had a close relationship with. Others who warranted a chapter were Martin Scorcese, Woody Allen, Robert Mitchum, John Wayne, Robert Altman, Ingmar Bergman and Werner Herzog. Herzog is a true favorite of his, a man's whose work he "instinctively identifies with." He says Herzog is the rare film-maker who brought meaning to his life. He laments that all to much of his life "has been devoted to films of worthlessness." He recounts a conversation he had with Herzog at the Telluride Film Festival. Elsewhere, Ebert has called Telluride his favorite film festival, a festival he never missed until he became ill. His enthusiastic endorsement was what inspired me to attend for the first time twenty years ago. Like many who go once, I've never missed another and even joined its staff.
I hoped there would be an entire chapter on Telluride affirming it as the ultimate film-going experience that it is. I was so eager to read what he had to say about Telluride, when I got my hands on his book, I immediately went to the index and looked up Telluride. There was just this one brief mention and with the misinformation that Herzog attends the festival every year. He is a frequent guest, but on occasion he's off filming something and can't attend. The index failed to list one other Telluride reference. In his chapter on his alcoholism he reveals he'd attend AA meetings when he was in Telluride.
I can affirm though that Ebert did not exaggerate when he wrote that he has a great affection for dogs and can hardly resist giving a dog a pet when he sees one. I once crossed paths with Ebert at the Sundance Film Festival. We were walking towards each other down a side street when he came upon a dog in the back of a pick up truck. I was surprised he wasn't in a rush to get to his next screening, as I was, and paused to give the dog a hello and a pet.
He said he had two dogs when he was growing up, Blackie and Ming. He complained that he was restricted as to what he could name his dogs as he'd been told in his Catholic religion class that one couldn't give a dog a saint's name, "such as Max," as dogs didn't have souls. This made a big enough impression on him that he mentions it twice within 25 pages. Its not the only time he repeats himself.
Not as much of the book is about Gene Siskel as one might suspect. He waits until the 41st chapter, three-fourths of the way into the book, before giving him more than a passing reference. But then he pays him full respect. One of his final chapters is on Studs Turkel, who he calls the "greatest man I knew well." He also gives accolades to Chicago columnists Mike Royko and Jon Anderson. I was particularly interested in his comments on Anderson, as he once attended a slide show I gave about bicycling across India and wrote a column about it. Ebert visited London at least once a year and even wrote a book about walking tours there. He tells of going to a strip club in London with Anderson. Anderson was married to a Rockefeller and had the money to indulge in any whim he desired. At one point he called out, "Waiter! Blow jobs for everybody."
Of all the people he interviewed, none was more extraordinary than Dolly Parton, someone Russ Meyer most certainly appreciated. "As we spoke," Ebert recounted, "I was filled with a strange ethereal grace. This was not spiritual, nor was it sexual. It was healing or comforting." He said Siskel had had the identical experience when he interviewed her, and it was something they would refer to from time to time in wonder.
Ebert manages to insert a Mayor Daley anecdote into his memoirs as well. He tells of he and Chaz having dinner with the Mayor and his wife and Robert Altman. Altman was a bit late and arrived with a strong scent of marijuana. Ebert says, "Daley raised his eyebrows at me and smiled." And that is all we learn of their meal together. There may not be as much in depth commentary on cinema or bicycling, or self-reflection, as some would have hoped for, but these memoirs still have much to offer.
When he's old enough to start riding a bicycle, he'd ride his bike to school, "even in winter." On summer vacations he regarded his bicycle as his "freedom" allowing him to range all over. Among his destinations was the Dog n Suds, where he'd go for the Dog in a Basket with coleslaw, fries and root beer, something he regarded as a "spectacular feast." He'd also bike to an A & W Root Beer stand on his way out to Crystal Lake. When he was older he'd ride his bike around the university campus "studying the students."
He also mentions giving rides on his handlebars to his friend Donald, the lone "colored boy" in his Catholic grade school. It didn't seem out of place to him at the time that a nun said Donald was "just as precious as the rest of you in the eyes of God."
His commentary on the bicycle set the tone for these memoirs, a lot of random observations, not all of which were particularly relevant or well-developed, but that give some insight into the times he's writing about and what left an impression on him. Another typical example was his comment about a high school English teacher who was a bachelor. "It was conceivable he was gay," Ebert remembers, but offers no other reason to think so. Unfortunately, that great seminal moment in everyone's life of learning to ride a bicycle hadn't left enough of a memory to make the book.
He lost whatever bicycling consciousness he might have had growing up by the time he became a movie critic. The only bicycle in cinema reference he makes is to a movie he saw when he was a student at the University of Illinois, "The Immoral Mr. Teas" in 1961. It was the first Russ Meyer movie he saw, not knowing who Russ Meyer was, as Russ Meyer had yet to become a brand. It was Meyer's first commercially successful film and the first of the nudie-cuties, a genre that evolved from the nudist camp films, the first films to sneak blatant nudity past the censors. Mr.Teas is an early-day bicycle messenger delivering false teeth. He encounters various voluptuous women who he imagines completely nude. Ebert says this barely hour long film ran for nearly two years, ten times a day, in a small theater near the campus and was a right of passage for students.
Rather than making it an outing with his frat brothers, he went on his own "hoping to slip in unwitnessed." One might have thought he would have been accompanied by a gang of his frat brothers, especially considering they would serenade sororities with the song "Phi Delta Theta Girl" that included the lyric, "If you were the kind that sold, you'd be worth your weight in gold." His frat experience is another minor confession that he wasn't comfortable with even at the time, eventually moving back home.
Ebert could hardly have imagined when he was watching with bulged eyes "Mr Teas" that he would become a good friend of Russ Meyer and write a screenplay for him--"Beyond the Valley of the Dolls." He devotes a chapter of his book to him, concluding with his funeral. During the preacher's droning eulogy, Ebert's wife Chaz whispers to him, "If you don't go up there and say something Russ will come out of his coffin and strangle you." So he does.
This was one of several chapters on prominent people in film he respected or had a close relationship with. Others who warranted a chapter were Martin Scorcese, Woody Allen, Robert Mitchum, John Wayne, Robert Altman, Ingmar Bergman and Werner Herzog. Herzog is a true favorite of his, a man's whose work he "instinctively identifies with." He says Herzog is the rare film-maker who brought meaning to his life. He laments that all to much of his life "has been devoted to films of worthlessness." He recounts a conversation he had with Herzog at the Telluride Film Festival. Elsewhere, Ebert has called Telluride his favorite film festival, a festival he never missed until he became ill. His enthusiastic endorsement was what inspired me to attend for the first time twenty years ago. Like many who go once, I've never missed another and even joined its staff.
I hoped there would be an entire chapter on Telluride affirming it as the ultimate film-going experience that it is. I was so eager to read what he had to say about Telluride, when I got my hands on his book, I immediately went to the index and looked up Telluride. There was just this one brief mention and with the misinformation that Herzog attends the festival every year. He is a frequent guest, but on occasion he's off filming something and can't attend. The index failed to list one other Telluride reference. In his chapter on his alcoholism he reveals he'd attend AA meetings when he was in Telluride.
I can affirm though that Ebert did not exaggerate when he wrote that he has a great affection for dogs and can hardly resist giving a dog a pet when he sees one. I once crossed paths with Ebert at the Sundance Film Festival. We were walking towards each other down a side street when he came upon a dog in the back of a pick up truck. I was surprised he wasn't in a rush to get to his next screening, as I was, and paused to give the dog a hello and a pet.
He said he had two dogs when he was growing up, Blackie and Ming. He complained that he was restricted as to what he could name his dogs as he'd been told in his Catholic religion class that one couldn't give a dog a saint's name, "such as Max," as dogs didn't have souls. This made a big enough impression on him that he mentions it twice within 25 pages. Its not the only time he repeats himself.
Not as much of the book is about Gene Siskel as one might suspect. He waits until the 41st chapter, three-fourths of the way into the book, before giving him more than a passing reference. But then he pays him full respect. One of his final chapters is on Studs Turkel, who he calls the "greatest man I knew well." He also gives accolades to Chicago columnists Mike Royko and Jon Anderson. I was particularly interested in his comments on Anderson, as he once attended a slide show I gave about bicycling across India and wrote a column about it. Ebert visited London at least once a year and even wrote a book about walking tours there. He tells of going to a strip club in London with Anderson. Anderson was married to a Rockefeller and had the money to indulge in any whim he desired. At one point he called out, "Waiter! Blow jobs for everybody."
Of all the people he interviewed, none was more extraordinary than Dolly Parton, someone Russ Meyer most certainly appreciated. "As we spoke," Ebert recounted, "I was filled with a strange ethereal grace. This was not spiritual, nor was it sexual. It was healing or comforting." He said Siskel had had the identical experience when he interviewed her, and it was something they would refer to from time to time in wonder.
Ebert manages to insert a Mayor Daley anecdote into his memoirs as well. He tells of he and Chaz having dinner with the Mayor and his wife and Robert Altman. Altman was a bit late and arrived with a strong scent of marijuana. Ebert says, "Daley raised his eyebrows at me and smiled." And that is all we learn of their meal together. There may not be as much in depth commentary on cinema or bicycling, or self-reflection, as some would have hoped for, but these memoirs still have much to offer.
Sunday, January 15, 2012
A Goldmine of Cycling Books
Thanks to my friend Elizabeth, a most valuable double-barreled cyclist/librarian, I just made the thrilling discovery of a gold mine of cycling books virtually out my back door. She introduced me to the incredible website http://worldcat.org, an archive of the holdings of libraries all over the world. Enter the title of a book and in a moment it reveals where it may be found and the distance from one's location, whether a few miles away or half way round the world.
A year ago "Cycle Sport," a British magazine that is one of my favorite monthly reads, published a list of the greatest fifty cycling books of all time. I'd read half of them and knew of many of the others, but not all. England has a much richer history of books on cycling than America, so most of those I hadn't read were English publications, some of which were translations of the great French cycling books. I wanted to read them all.
Most I could have acquired through Amazon. The price of some scared me off, but also the lack of space on my already overflowing book shelves. I try to limit my book acquisitions to one or two a year. I always have plenty to read, so I was willing to patiently await these books.
When Elizabeth revealed worldcat.org to me when I was visiting her at her library, I instantly began typing in titles from that list. I was overwhelmed with excitement to discover that many of them were miraculously nearby in various suburban and university libraries. I could have enlisted Elizabeth's services as a librarian at Northwestern to acquire any of them on inter-library loan, something she was happy and willing to do. It wouldn't even have been a favor, because as a card-carrying alumnus of Northwestern, I am entitled to such privileges.
But I am above all a bicyclist. I am ever eager to pounce on the opportunity to ride my bike anywhere, especially for something that excites me. One winter I made it a mission to bicycle to every one of Chicago's 75 branch libraries, some twenty miles or more away. That led to my on-going quest to bicycle to the 1,689 Carnegie libraries scattered all over the U.S.
I have had the lingering desire to bike to the many suburban libraries on the outskirts of Chicago. Seeking some of these books would give me that opportunity. Far better, anyway, to go to a book, than have it brought to me. Making the effort to search it out, to pluck it from its shelf, always enhances the enjoyment of a book. I love that moment of spotting and reaching for a title I've long yearned for. Going to a book also provides the chance of discovering other books alongside the one that I have come for that I might want to read.
In my pile of books to read were two of Samuel Abt's books on cycling that I had acquired in the past few months through paperbackswap, an on-line book trading service. Abt has written eleven books on cycling while covering the Tour de France and European cycling for the "New York Times" beginning in 1977. Some of the books are just collections of his stories, but still worth reading. Only one of his books made "Cycle Sport's" top fifty list--"LeMond, The Incredible Come Back of An American Hero." I had already read that and four other of his books, some from the holdings of the Chicago Public Library system.
Though his racing savvy does not match that of his European counterparts, I still read his books, starved as I am for books on cycling, and had a goal of reading all eleven of his books. I gave immediate thanks to Elizabeth and worldcat when I learned that two of the four books of his that I hadn't been able to get my hands on could be found in suburban libraries--one in Park Ridge and the other in Riverside. Of the other two, one was 113 miles away in Bloomington, Illinois and the other 141 miles away in Marion, Indiana, bike rides to look forward to in the future.
I was particularly pleased to have reason to bike out to Park Ridge, as its former library was a Carnegie built in 1909. It still stood, across the street from the new library, now home to an insurance company and a hair salon. And going out to Park Ridge rewarded me with another cycling book I was unaware of--"Eat, Sleep, Ride" by Englishman Paul Howard about riding the 2,800 mile continental divide race from Canada to Mexico. I did not know of this book, though I had read Howard's two other books on cycling--a biography of Jacques that I wrote about last month and a book about riding the Tour de France route, both very good reads.
So I had a very pleasant two days at the Park Ridge library reading these two books. Then it was on to the Riverside library for another of Abt's books. The library was a magnificent, 80-year old, stone chateau of a building, in a small town atmosphere. It was a rare library these days without magnetic strips in its books to guard against their theft. The bike rack had a sign reminding people that they ought to lock their bikes and offering locks inside if one didn't have one. One could sit in a leather chair and read while gazing through a forest of trees upon the Des Plaines River. It was a most tranquil setting, belying the surrounding metropolitan sprawl, another marvelous experience I wouldn't have had if I hadn't biked out for the book.
Though I have cycling biographies of Bernard Hinault to go after in Downer's Grove and Laurent Fignon in Elmhurst and Stephen Roche in Schaumberg and a book on the Spring Classics in Skokie and the Coppi-Bartoli duel in the 1949 Giro in Joliet and a cultural history of the Tour de France at Northwestern and at the nearby Evanston library a translation of "Giants of Cycling" by the great French cycling historian Jean-Paul Ollivier who has written fifty books on cycling, the book I was most eager to read next was "Slaying the Badger" at the University of Chicago. It too was written by an English author I had read before, Richard Moore, whose first book was a biography of the Scottish rider Robert Millar, a former team mate of Greg LeMond who had somewhat disappeared amidst speculation that he had undergone a sex change. The book was worthy of the awards it had won.
A year ago "Cycle Sport," a British magazine that is one of my favorite monthly reads, published a list of the greatest fifty cycling books of all time. I'd read half of them and knew of many of the others, but not all. England has a much richer history of books on cycling than America, so most of those I hadn't read were English publications, some of which were translations of the great French cycling books. I wanted to read them all.
Most I could have acquired through Amazon. The price of some scared me off, but also the lack of space on my already overflowing book shelves. I try to limit my book acquisitions to one or two a year. I always have plenty to read, so I was willing to patiently await these books.
When Elizabeth revealed worldcat.org to me when I was visiting her at her library, I instantly began typing in titles from that list. I was overwhelmed with excitement to discover that many of them were miraculously nearby in various suburban and university libraries. I could have enlisted Elizabeth's services as a librarian at Northwestern to acquire any of them on inter-library loan, something she was happy and willing to do. It wouldn't even have been a favor, because as a card-carrying alumnus of Northwestern, I am entitled to such privileges.
But I am above all a bicyclist. I am ever eager to pounce on the opportunity to ride my bike anywhere, especially for something that excites me. One winter I made it a mission to bicycle to every one of Chicago's 75 branch libraries, some twenty miles or more away. That led to my on-going quest to bicycle to the 1,689 Carnegie libraries scattered all over the U.S.
I have had the lingering desire to bike to the many suburban libraries on the outskirts of Chicago. Seeking some of these books would give me that opportunity. Far better, anyway, to go to a book, than have it brought to me. Making the effort to search it out, to pluck it from its shelf, always enhances the enjoyment of a book. I love that moment of spotting and reaching for a title I've long yearned for. Going to a book also provides the chance of discovering other books alongside the one that I have come for that I might want to read.
In my pile of books to read were two of Samuel Abt's books on cycling that I had acquired in the past few months through paperbackswap, an on-line book trading service. Abt has written eleven books on cycling while covering the Tour de France and European cycling for the "New York Times" beginning in 1977. Some of the books are just collections of his stories, but still worth reading. Only one of his books made "Cycle Sport's" top fifty list--"LeMond, The Incredible Come Back of An American Hero." I had already read that and four other of his books, some from the holdings of the Chicago Public Library system.
Though his racing savvy does not match that of his European counterparts, I still read his books, starved as I am for books on cycling, and had a goal of reading all eleven of his books. I gave immediate thanks to Elizabeth and worldcat when I learned that two of the four books of his that I hadn't been able to get my hands on could be found in suburban libraries--one in Park Ridge and the other in Riverside. Of the other two, one was 113 miles away in Bloomington, Illinois and the other 141 miles away in Marion, Indiana, bike rides to look forward to in the future.
I was particularly pleased to have reason to bike out to Park Ridge, as its former library was a Carnegie built in 1909. It still stood, across the street from the new library, now home to an insurance company and a hair salon. And going out to Park Ridge rewarded me with another cycling book I was unaware of--"Eat, Sleep, Ride" by Englishman Paul Howard about riding the 2,800 mile continental divide race from Canada to Mexico. I did not know of this book, though I had read Howard's two other books on cycling--a biography of Jacques that I wrote about last month and a book about riding the Tour de France route, both very good reads.
So I had a very pleasant two days at the Park Ridge library reading these two books. Then it was on to the Riverside library for another of Abt's books. The library was a magnificent, 80-year old, stone chateau of a building, in a small town atmosphere. It was a rare library these days without magnetic strips in its books to guard against their theft. The bike rack had a sign reminding people that they ought to lock their bikes and offering locks inside if one didn't have one. One could sit in a leather chair and read while gazing through a forest of trees upon the Des Plaines River. It was a most tranquil setting, belying the surrounding metropolitan sprawl, another marvelous experience I wouldn't have had if I hadn't biked out for the book.
Though I have cycling biographies of Bernard Hinault to go after in Downer's Grove and Laurent Fignon in Elmhurst and Stephen Roche in Schaumberg and a book on the Spring Classics in Skokie and the Coppi-Bartoli duel in the 1949 Giro in Joliet and a cultural history of the Tour de France at Northwestern and at the nearby Evanston library a translation of "Giants of Cycling" by the great French cycling historian Jean-Paul Ollivier who has written fifty books on cycling, the book I was most eager to read next was "Slaying the Badger" at the University of Chicago. It too was written by an English author I had read before, Richard Moore, whose first book was a biography of the Scottish rider Robert Millar, a former team mate of Greg LeMond who had somewhat disappeared amidst speculation that he had undergone a sex change. The book was worthy of the awards it had won.
As anyone versed in racing lore would surmise, the "badger" of the title refers to Bernard Hinault and is about LeMond's victory in the 1986 Tour de France over Hinault. The subtitle of the book calls it "The Greatest Ever Tour de France." That designation is usually given to the 1989 Tour when LeMond beat Fignon by eight seconds, but Moore makes a strong argument for the 1986 Tour. LeMond and Hinault were teammates, but also adversaries. LeMond had sacrificed himself the year before when they were teammates and did not attack Hinault in the mountains when he was struggling and was wearing the yellow jersey going for his fifth win.
Hinault was so grateful to LeMond that he told him, "Next year it is your turn," and promised to devote all his energies to helping LeMond win. There was much speculation before the 1986 race whether Hinault would live up to that promise, especially with everyone in France wanting him to become the first person to win The Tour six times. At that point only he and Jacques Anquetil and Eddie Merkx were in the elite club of five winners, later to be joined by Miguel Indurain and Lance Armstrong. Hinault didn't seem to be living up to his promise when he attacked on the first mountain stage and took a seemingly insurmountable five minute advantage. LeMond was devastated by this apparent betrayal.
Hinault was so grateful to LeMond that he told him, "Next year it is your turn," and promised to devote all his energies to helping LeMond win. There was much speculation before the 1986 race whether Hinault would live up to that promise, especially with everyone in France wanting him to become the first person to win The Tour six times. At that point only he and Jacques Anquetil and Eddie Merkx were in the elite club of five winners, later to be joined by Miguel Indurain and Lance Armstrong. Hinault didn't seem to be living up to his promise when he attacked on the first mountain stage and took a seemingly insurmountable five minute advantage. LeMond was devastated by this apparent betrayal.
The Race went back and forth. One of its seminal moments came later in the Alps after LeMond had secured the yellow jersey and he and Hinault rode together up L'Alpe d'Huez well ahead of everyone else. Moore argues their arm-to-arm finish at the summit is one of the greatest moments in the history of all sport.
Moore was a thirteen year old back in England in 1986 watching The Race on television. It was the first time it had been broadcast in its entirety in England. He seems to be living a dream to be able to intimately relive the race, interviewing everyone involved and rereading the many books and newspaper and magazine articles written about it, even a feature in "Rolling Stone."
He personalizes his narrative, describing in great detail his visits with LeMond and Hinault at their homes, giving the impression that he would have been happy to have written this book for the mere pleasure of it and without any compensation. He says it wasn't easy to arrange all the interviews, but the only principal he failed to interview was the team owner, Bernard Tapie, a Donald Trump, larger-than-life character, who spent time in jail for fixing soccer matches after his few years in bicycling. He still manages to give a thorough portrait of Tapie, highly recommending the documentary "Who is Bernard Tapie?"
He personalizes his narrative, describing in great detail his visits with LeMond and Hinault at their homes, giving the impression that he would have been happy to have written this book for the mere pleasure of it and without any compensation. He says it wasn't easy to arrange all the interviews, but the only principal he failed to interview was the team owner, Bernard Tapie, a Donald Trump, larger-than-life character, who spent time in jail for fixing soccer matches after his few years in bicycling. He still manages to give a thorough portrait of Tapie, highly recommending the documentary "Who is Bernard Tapie?"
He offers up one fascinating anecdote after another, even boggling LeMond with his research. He interviewed LeMond with his wife Kathy and includes many of her poignant interjections, letting us truly get to know them. Andy Hampsten was one of LeMond's two English-speaking teammates on that 1986 La Vie Claire team of ten riders. Canadian Steve Bauer was the other. There were five French riders, including Hinault, and two Swiss and a Swiss director, Paul Kochli, another most fascinating individual, a great innovator who was known as "the kooky professor." Moore's visit to his compound full of computers and file cabinets is another of the many highlights in the book.
Moore has a great facility for making his subjects fully open up to him. Hampsten tells him, "I'm going to tell you something I've never told anyone." On a stage in the mountains Hampsten was in a small lead group with LeMond, but not Hinault. Just as the final climb began Hampsten surged ahead to lead LeMond out and to push the other riders to their limit. The others couldn't keep up. LeMond didn't chase after Hampsten, leaving that to the other riders so he wouldn't overly exert himself. When Kochli saw what was happening, he drove up along side Hampsten, as this was before the riders had radio communication with their director, and instead of reprimanding him told him to keep riding hard and to go for the stage win and yellow jersey. He said, "Your two big-headed teammates are bickering over it like its their privilege. The best thing for this team would be for you to take the yellow jersey tonight." Hampsten kind of laughed to himself, as he knew he didn't have the energy to sustain his effort, he was just going for a short spurt to try to shake things up, as he was totally loyal to LeMond.
Moore has a great facility for making his subjects fully open up to him. Hampsten tells him, "I'm going to tell you something I've never told anyone." On a stage in the mountains Hampsten was in a small lead group with LeMond, but not Hinault. Just as the final climb began Hampsten surged ahead to lead LeMond out and to push the other riders to their limit. The others couldn't keep up. LeMond didn't chase after Hampsten, leaving that to the other riders so he wouldn't overly exert himself. When Kochli saw what was happening, he drove up along side Hampsten, as this was before the riders had radio communication with their director, and instead of reprimanding him told him to keep riding hard and to go for the stage win and yellow jersey. He said, "Your two big-headed teammates are bickering over it like its their privilege. The best thing for this team would be for you to take the yellow jersey tonight." Hampsten kind of laughed to himself, as he knew he didn't have the energy to sustain his effort, he was just going for a short spurt to try to shake things up, as he was totally loyal to LeMond.
When Moore told LeMond the story, he was astounded. He wasn't upset, just in awe, commenting, "Wow. Think what that would have meant to Andy." Moore interviewed Hinault before LeMond. As he interviews LeMond, he shares many of Hinault's comments on his version of events, often making LeMond shake his head in disbelief. I was constantly going "wow" myself, feeling as if I was right there with Moore, loving every minute of it, knowing how thrilling it must have been for him getting to talk to all these people who had been involved with this great event.
Moore also interviews Shelly Verses, a young American who was the first woman to serve as a masseuse and soigneur in the world of professional bike racing in Europe working for the 7-Eleven team at that year's Tour before being recruited to the La Vie Claire team. She too is remarkably candid. The year before at the 1985 Giro d'Italia, when she made her first appearance in Europe, all the traditionalists were totally aghast that a woman would be massaging the legs of a team's riders. "What do their wives and girl friends think and who is she sleeping with," everyone speculated.
She was subjected to all sorts of harassment. She said the great Italian rider Francesco Moser came by before a stage and asked her to work on his legs. She didn't know who he was and initially scoffed. When she realized it was Moser, she did oblige him and was mightily impressed by his legs. "They were different to my guys," she said. Hinault too checked her out at that Giro. She learned that he liked cherries, just like Ron Kiefel, one of her American riders. She always tried to have a bowl full to please Kiefel and then would offer a few to Hinault whenever she saw him. "It was our little secret," she said. "It was adorable."
But she was utterly appalled by Hinault's back-stabbing, viper-like treatment of LeMond at the '86 Tour. Moore says that she didn't initially reveal how disturbed she was by Hinault's behavior in their first interview, and felt guilty about it. She emailed him later and said she hadn't been strong enough in her disdain of Hinault's behaviour, comparing him to a virtual Stalin and Hitler and Mussolini.
Hampsten agrees that Hinault wasn't very honorable in that Tour but also says, "I don't think he could have been nicer as a teammate. He was just so frickin' nice." Another ex-teammate, the Dane Kim Anderson, who was the Leopard Trek team director of the Schleck brothers last year, said, "I would die for that man."
The book is a deep mine of juicy observations and telling detail that reveal mountains of insight into the sport of bicycle racing and its gladiators. It was a great, great read and made even greater to be reading it in a carol at one of the premier collegiate libraries in the world. It wasn't easy to gain entrance to the University of Chicago library either. I had to get an Info Pass from the Chicago Public Library stating that they could not procure the book for me before they'd allow me in.
According to worldcat.org the next nearest library with a copy of "Slaying the Badger" is at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, 204 miles away. The book is such an exhilarating read, I would gladly bicycle that far to read it. I wanted to find out who had procured the book for the University of Chicago and give him my heartiest thanks, and also to ask who was responsible for all the other great cycling books in their collection, some in French, Italian, Dutch and German. I'll be back for a history of Italian cycling and a few others. And I also greatly look forward to Moore's next book on cycling.
She was subjected to all sorts of harassment. She said the great Italian rider Francesco Moser came by before a stage and asked her to work on his legs. She didn't know who he was and initially scoffed. When she realized it was Moser, she did oblige him and was mightily impressed by his legs. "They were different to my guys," she said. Hinault too checked her out at that Giro. She learned that he liked cherries, just like Ron Kiefel, one of her American riders. She always tried to have a bowl full to please Kiefel and then would offer a few to Hinault whenever she saw him. "It was our little secret," she said. "It was adorable."
But she was utterly appalled by Hinault's back-stabbing, viper-like treatment of LeMond at the '86 Tour. Moore says that she didn't initially reveal how disturbed she was by Hinault's behavior in their first interview, and felt guilty about it. She emailed him later and said she hadn't been strong enough in her disdain of Hinault's behaviour, comparing him to a virtual Stalin and Hitler and Mussolini.
Hampsten agrees that Hinault wasn't very honorable in that Tour but also says, "I don't think he could have been nicer as a teammate. He was just so frickin' nice." Another ex-teammate, the Dane Kim Anderson, who was the Leopard Trek team director of the Schleck brothers last year, said, "I would die for that man."
The book is a deep mine of juicy observations and telling detail that reveal mountains of insight into the sport of bicycle racing and its gladiators. It was a great, great read and made even greater to be reading it in a carol at one of the premier collegiate libraries in the world. It wasn't easy to gain entrance to the University of Chicago library either. I had to get an Info Pass from the Chicago Public Library stating that they could not procure the book for me before they'd allow me in.
According to worldcat.org the next nearest library with a copy of "Slaying the Badger" is at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, 204 miles away. The book is such an exhilarating read, I would gladly bicycle that far to read it. I wanted to find out who had procured the book for the University of Chicago and give him my heartiest thanks, and also to ask who was responsible for all the other great cycling books in their collection, some in French, Italian, Dutch and German. I'll be back for a history of Italian cycling and a few others. And I also greatly look forward to Moore's next book on cycling.
Wednesday, January 4, 2012
A Review of "On Bicycles"
Here's a review of the book "On Bicycles" I contributed to http://gridchicago.com/ a quite ambitious and wide-ranging transportation website. My review was a little too long, so this includes the final few paragraphs.
George Christensen Critiques Our book “On Bicycles”
By On January 2, 2012 · 2 Comments
For many Grid Chicago readers, George Christensen needs no introduction. A longtime Chicago bike messenger, George is one of Chicago’s best-traveled bicyclists, having toured dozens of countries on two wheels. A movie buff, he attends many of the world’s great film fests as well, and every year he rides the entire Tour de France route. You can read about his amazing adventures on the blog George the Cyclist. When I asked Christensen to write a guest post for Grid Chicago he offered the following review of On Bicycles (New World Library 2011), a new anthology by Amy Walker, to which local author Greg Borzo and I contributed chapters.
‘Tis the season for reading and there is no shortage of bike literature out there these days. The best selection in the city can be found at Barnes and Noble at Webster and Clybourn. Besides a slew of bike magazines, it offers nearly two shelves of books on the bike, covering it all--racing, touring, fitness, mechanics and advocacy.
One that encompasses a range of topics, appealing to perhaps the widest demographic, is On Bicycles: 50 Ways the New Bike Culture Can Change Your Life. An equally appropriate subtitle, as suggested by Where to Bike Chicago author Greg Borzo, one of the book’s 34 contributors, might have been “50 Ways To Leave Your Car.” The book is a collection of 50 articles, 25 by women and 25 by men, edited by Amy Walker, a true cycling evangelist, who wrote nine of the pieces. Walker co-founded the bicycling magazine Momentum in 2001, and served as one of its publishers, editors and writers for ten years.
An article on traveling with a bicycle by Shawn Granton gave a brief description of cycling in seven American and Canadian cities. Here’s what he said about Chicago: “The traffic can be intimidating, but there are scads of bike routes and fun settings of postindustrial decay. And it’s flat.”
George Christensen Critiques Our book “On Bicycles”
By On January 2, 2012 · 2 Comments
For many Grid Chicago readers, George Christensen needs no introduction. A longtime Chicago bike messenger, George is one of Chicago’s best-traveled bicyclists, having toured dozens of countries on two wheels. A movie buff, he attends many of the world’s great film fests as well, and every year he rides the entire Tour de France route. You can read about his amazing adventures on the blog George the Cyclist. When I asked Christensen to write a guest post for Grid Chicago he offered the following review of On Bicycles (New World Library 2011), a new anthology by Amy Walker, to which local author Greg Borzo and I contributed chapters.
‘Tis the season for reading and there is no shortage of bike literature out there these days. The best selection in the city can be found at Barnes and Noble at Webster and Clybourn. Besides a slew of bike magazines, it offers nearly two shelves of books on the bike, covering it all--racing, touring, fitness, mechanics and advocacy.
One that encompasses a range of topics, appealing to perhaps the widest demographic, is On Bicycles: 50 Ways the New Bike Culture Can Change Your Life. An equally appropriate subtitle, as suggested by Where to Bike Chicago author Greg Borzo, one of the book’s 34 contributors, might have been “50 Ways To Leave Your Car.” The book is a collection of 50 articles, 25 by women and 25 by men, edited by Amy Walker, a true cycling evangelist, who wrote nine of the pieces. Walker co-founded the bicycling magazine Momentum in 2001, and served as one of its publishers, editors and writers for ten years.
Book cover
She could have easily written this book herself, but instead enlisted the expertise of a host of authorities: many journalists who have written on bicycling for years along with various specialists including a lawyer, an architect, a professor, a few planners, a mechanic, and an “enchanted unicorn.” Many of the writers are from Vancouver, where Momentum is published, and the U.S. West Coast, especially Portland, but Chicago is represented by not only Borzo, but John Greenfield, a name familiar to those who follow this website.
It is a fine mix of informative journalistic pieces and poetic odes, some that could serve as sermons to be read aloud at congregations of those faithful to the bike. They all share a passion and commitment to the bicycle. Even the more whimsical and wacky pieces offer well-reasoned and convincing arguments why everyone should bicycle more.
The book is divided into four sections: “All the Right Reasons,” “Gearing Up,” “Community and Culture,” and “Getting Serious.” There are practical, informative, advice-laden pieces on subjects such as biking with children, how to behave in a bike shop, cargo bikes, folding bikes and so on. Walker describes herself as someone who likes to bike in the rain and has a chapter on that subject. There is also a chapter by a former bike rebel who writes of the joy of completely coming to a stop at every stop sign she encounters.
There is a good balance between heavily footnoted articles (Kristen Steele had the most with 17), and those that are just breezily entertaining. Nothing was so ponderous, except perhaps the article on internal hubs, that I was anxious for the next article. There were times the writing sent me to Google to find what else the author had written.
John Pucher, a professor at Rutgers University, praised Chicago’s bike rack installment program and the bike station in Millennium Park. Chicago’s supply of bike-parking spaces of 1,121 per 100,000 residents outnumbers most American cities. Portland has 725, San Francisco 466, and New York a measly 75. But they are all measly compared to Amsterdam’s 30,271 and Copenhagen’s 6,960.
However, Chicago lags behind when it comes to bike routes physically separated from motor vehicles, with just two kilometers per 100,000 residents. San Francisco has six and New York three. Once again American cities are quite pitiful compared to Europe. Copenhagen has a staggering 76, Amsterdam 61 and Berlin 33.
Borzo’s thorough article on bike-sharing programs around the world lists a handful of entities in Chicago that offer bike sharing to their employees, tenants and students: the Field Museum, SRAM, the Willis Tower (formerly the Sears Tower), Argonne National Laboratory, the University of Chicago, Saint Xavier University and Loyola University.
An article on traveling with a bicycle by Shawn Granton gave a brief description of cycling in seven American and Canadian cities. Here’s what he said about Chicago: “The traffic can be intimidating, but there are scads of bike routes and fun settings of postindustrial decay. And it’s flat.”
Chicago receives one other mention in a highly entertaining semi-rant on freak bikes by Megulon-5. He traces the manufacture of tall bikes back to the late 1800s in Chicago. They were built for lamplighters to ride to turn streetlights on and off.
The book is mostly a positive screed extolling the virtues of the bike, though there is a certain amount of anti-car rhetoric. Lori Kessler, an architect, in a piece on designing cities for bikes wrote, “Hell isn’t other people, as Jean-Paul Sartre suggested. Hell is other people’s cars.” Another article quoted an American Automobile Association statistic that Americans spend on average $9,641 each year on their cars. Other authors cited the tons and tons of pollutants cars spew. One of the wilder statistics was the amount of space it would take to park all the cars in America–about the size of New Hampshire.
As thorough and as fine a rallying cry as "On Bicycles" is for the bicycle, it overlooks one aspect of the bicycle movement that all such books ignore, the decline of the bicycle in former bicycle bastions such as China and Vietnam and before long Cuba. At one time bicycling advocates held these countries up as prime examples of a people embracing the bicycle. Unfortunately, once those countries began to enjoy some prosperity its citizens immediately abandoned their bicycles and upgraded to motor cycles and then automobiles, defying the supposition that one who has enjoyed the many positives of the bicycle will embrace it for life.
Two years ago I spent two months bicycling three thousand miles all over China. I hardly saw anyone on a bicycle until I reached Beijing, where some vestiges still hold out. The most stunning site I saw during those travels was a French-style bike rental program in Wuhan, a car-clogged city of ten million people. The Chinese government had the sense to try to get people back on the bike, but they weren't succeeding very well. These were people who less than ten years ago were all bicyclists. Instead, they were now all confined to cars creeping along at a few miles per hour while I and one or two others flew by on bicycles. Those motorists should have been abandoning their cars in righteous indignation left and right and flocking back to their bikes. Theoretically, they were a people who knew the sense, if not the joy, of the bike, but unfortunately they had forgotten.
The Chinese are a very practical people, but also as status-consciousness as any, preferring the misery of their proof of success to the sensibility of the bicycle. They are as prone to that all too common misconception that it is nicer to be sitting in the so-called comfort of a temperature-controlled car listing to the radio or talking on a cell phone than breezing along on a bike, getting some exercise and feeling free and not harming the environment. Walker and her gang can make countless arguments trying to reason with such a mentality, but not to much avail.
"On Bicycles" and other such books presume it is enough to give people adequate bike lanes and parking to get them on a bike. There is much more to overcome than that. Thousands get a taste of bicycle bliss during Bike to Work Day and Week. Nearly all rave how much they love it, but hardly any stick to it. David Bryne in his "Bicycle Diaries" said he couldn't convince his teen-aged daughter to bike, largely because she didn't think it was cool. There is a huge perceptional barrier to overcome. That and human nature. Let's face it, people are inclined to sloth and comfort and their present predicament. We who do bike know how practical and logical and energizing and uplifting it is. But that is a personality trait not common to all. Even in the cycling mecca countries cyclists are a minority. The best cyclists can hope for here is to be less of the microscopic minority than we are now. "On Bikes" is a book that can increase our numbers, though probably not by much.
Thursday, December 22, 2011
A Garbage Bag for Christian
For the fourth holiday season in a row Christian Vande Velde made a magnificent Christmas present to his hometown fans of Chicago--a free public appearance talking about his career and life in the peloton.
I haven't missed a one and have been greatly enriched by each. I've reciprocated his Christmas spirit with a gift for him of some Tour de France souvenir from that year's Race that I figured would have a special meaning for him. My first offering was a course marker, a relic that is a prized item for anyone who has been a part of The Tour, whether as a rider or a follower. He was so thrilled by it, I asked him if he'd like another. He said absolutely, so that was a repeat gift one year. Another year my gift was a Tour edition of "L'Equipe," the French daily sports newspaper, with a photo filling its first page of he and Lance battling it out in the mountains. That also put a large smile of delight on his face.
I could have brought him another course marker this year, but I thought I'd surprise him with something different--one of the official green Tour plastic garbage bags that line The Tour route. When I presented him with a course marker the first time, I wasn't sure whether he as a rider would be cognizant of them, as he certainly didn't need them to find his way, as the peloton is led by an armada of gendarmes on motorcycles. But he was well aware of them as their bright day glow background are hard to miss, especially when they come in pairs or trios pointed at an angle warning of a sharp turn ahead.
I was curious if he'd be aware of the garbage bags, as they aren't mounted high like the course markers and are generally hidden from the racers by the throngs of fans lining the course. They are hung on barriers or attached to trees or posts at waist level. But Christian has surprised me over the years by being aware of aspects of The Tour that I suspected would only matter to fans.
I presented the bag to him folded with The Tour logo facing out, and asked, "Do you know what this is?" hoping he'd instantly recognize it by its distinctive soft green color, and reward me with an exclamation of delight as he has in the past. But I stumped him, even as I unfolded it further to reveal what it was. After I explained it to him, he playfully chided me saying, "What's with a garbage bag? Where's my course marker."
"You don't have too many?" I asked.
"Hell no," he replied.
"Okay, next year I'll be sure to bring you some more course markers."
Before I could feel too bad, he held the bag up and showed it to his sister, standing off to the side and said, "Look at this. An official Tour garbage bag. Isn't that cool?"
Then he asked, "Do you know about the garbage disposal zone along The Tour route for the riders?"
"Yes, it's just before the feed zone. Do the riders actually take advantage of it?"
"We sure do. Every one's emptying out their pockets of wrappers and unused energy bars before they load up with more food. You should hang out there. You're always so skinny, you could use the food.
I was standing with my friend Elizabeth, who brought along several bicycling calenders of her photographs for him to autograph. They are a fund raiser for the annual world wide Ride of Silence the third Wednesday of May every year in memory of those killed while riding a bicycle. Elizabeth spearheads the Chicago edition that attracts several hundred riders. Christian wasn't aware of the event, but he turned instantly serious at the mention of the subject. He's known his share of racers who've died over the years, including one in the Tour of Italy this past year in a horrific crash. Christian crashed five times in this year's Tour alone, and is well aware of the dangers of the sport, as are all the racers. He says he has a German teammate who rides with a small block of wood that he taps at any thought of death or close call.
There were only about forty of us on hand for this year's event at the Garmin Store on Chicago's glamour shopping street, Michigan Avenue, the stretch known as the Magnificent Mile. A cold drizzle discouraged all but the most hardy of cyclists of coming by bike. The Garmin representative who introduced Christian asked, "How many people bicycled here?" Only three of us raised our hands. Then he asked, "Who came the furthest?" A guy sitting in front of me spoke up first and said, "I came a mile." My friend Craig said, "I came three miles." When the Garmin rep turned his eyes on me, the only other one to have raised his hand, I said, "I live in Wicker Park, about five miles away." Christian immediately piped up, "That's no surprise. No one bikes further than George."
Christian began by saying how much he enjoys this annual gathering with his fans and being able to spend some of the year in his home town with family and friends, since he spends so much of the year traveling all over the world to race. When he asked for questions there was a hesitancy in his audience, who seemed awed by his presence, allowing me to dive right in.
"Are you back from Hawaii?," I asked.
"No, I didn't go out there this year. My teammate, Ryder Hesjedal, who I always stay with, got married to a girl from Missouri and wasn't there, so I did my December training in San Diego instead."
"Did Ryder still have his camp for paying customers?"
"He did, but I wasn't a part of it this year."
Our informal exchange wasn't enough to give anyone else the courage to raise a hand or speak up so I simply continued, as I could have all night. "Tell us about your team time trial win at this year's Tour. When you were here a year ago you predicted you'd win it."
"I did?"
"Yes, remember I asked if you would assume the yellow jersey afterwards, as you had in the Giro a few years before with the pink jersey after Garmin won that team time trial, and you said it would probably be one of your sprinters and you were right about that too."
"The win was one of the biggest thrills of my career. I broke into tears in the team bus afterwards. I kept remembering how far our team had come in the four years I had been with it and all the effort we put into building the team. It was quite emotional for all of us."
He continued on saying how proud he was of how well Garmin did in the Tour with two other stage victories and defending the yellow jersey for a week and winning the competition for the best team. They put a lot of effort into winning the team victory, which is determined by the times of the first three riders for each team on each stage. Garmin had three strong climbers, Christian, Hesjedal and Tom Danielson. Christian said they had to be very vigilant on certain stages not letting three riders from other teams get too far up the road. "It upset some riders that we were trying so hard for the team victory," Christian said. "Stuart O'Grady chirped at me once, 'Haven't you guys won enough. You ought to give the rest of us something.' But that's not the way it goes"
At last some else spoke up asking, "What language do riders chirp in."
"When I first started riding in Europe in 1998," Christian said, "It seemed that there were more Italians in the peloton than anyone else and that was the dominant language. Now there are lots of English riders with us Americans and the Australians and English and all the Dutchies speaking English and Belgians and a lot of Germans, so you hear more English than anything else"
The next question came from a young man up front who wanted to know,"Did you dig deeper on your team time trail or the Vail Pass time trial at the Colorado race?"
"At Vail, by far. I was standing on my pedals the last three kilometers. I was 17 seconds behind Levi at the mid-point check point and I made up all but half a second of that by the summit. I held the record for the climb for about a minute, until he finished."
Christian had also finished second in the opening prologue of the week-long race that attracted crowds of Tour de France proportions and finished second overall, his best achievement of the year, ending his season on a fine, fine note tht seems to have him inspired to do even better next year.
"What's your favorite race to watch and which is your favorite race to participate in," another asked.
"I love watching the Tour of Flanders. I've raced in it a bunch of times, but I never want to race it again. I'm happy to just load up with snacks and sit and watch it from start to finish on television. And my favorite races to ride are the Tour of California and the recent Colorado race."
Christian went on to say he wouldn't be riding the Tour of California in 2012 though, as he'll be riding the Giro in Italy instead, indicating how serious he is about doing well in this year's Tour de France, as the three-week Giro is much better preparation than the week-long California race. Some years the Giro course is too demanding, as last year, which left Contador weakened for The Tour despite dominating the Giro. But the Giro course this year isn't the killer it has been.
A young man wondered what Christian's thoughts were about collegiate bicycle racing. "I'm all for it," he said. "I didn't have that opportunity and so didn't go to college, as I wanted to pursue the bike racing. That's an experience I missed and I'm not sure if I'll be able to do it after I retire."
Then he mentioned that he went riding earlier in the day with Bo Jackson, the Heisman trophy winner who was a star in both football and baseball, a man who was able to get a good education and also pursue his athletic career.
"How was Bo on the bike?" I interjected, drawing a laugh from the audience.
"Not so good," Christian said. "He weighs about 280 pounds. We were riding on a trail and his bike was sinking into the ground."
A woman said, "I don't know that much about the sport and can't understand how everyone on a team can sacrifice for one rider who gets all the glory."
Christian explained that its hard on some teams with individuals who don't get along so well, but at Garmin he enjoys a great camaraderie and respect with his teammates. "We're all like brothers. We're together so much, sharing hotel rooms and eating breakfast and dinner together, we become very close. I was very happy to sacrifice for Thor at this year's Tour when he was in the yellow jersey and I know he'd be happy to do the same for me. We'll miss him. He was just offered too much money by the BMC team to turn it down. They're printing money over there."
The Garmin rep cut off the questions after half an hour so everyone could go down stairs and line up for an autographed photo from Christian and a one-on-one exchange. No one passed up on the opportunity. If this had been Europe or Colorado or California there would have been several hundred people drooling at this chance. Though I would have loved to have seen such a mob here, I couldn't be overly disappointed that there were only a handful of us, allowing for a truly intimate and relaxed interchange with one of the sport's significant riders. Its a little over six months until The Tour starts in Liege, Belgium at the end of June. It can't come soon enough.
For more photos of the Garmin event see http://flic.kr/s/aHsjxz19Qp
To read about Christian's two previous Garmin appearances, see these posts:
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
