"Ride and Be DAMNED" by Chas Messenger

When I recently read mention of a book entitled "Ride and Be Damned" by someone with the last name of Messenger, I thought, "This could be the ultimate book on cycling." Such a provocative title gave promise of a no-holds-barred rant against all those who condemn cyclists, whether for infringing upon their roads or for thinking that biking is anything other than a trivial recreational activity. 

 When I discovered it had been written in 1998, I figured it had to be some underground cult classic to have evaded my radar all these years. Some quick research revealed it was the fifth and final book by an Englishman with the first name of Chas who lived from 1914 to 2008. His previous books also had most evocative in-your-face titles ("Conquer the World," "Cycling Crazy," "Cycling's Circus" and "Where There's a Wheel") all written in quick succession between l968 and l972. 

 Twenty-six years later, at the age of 84, he offered up "DAMNED", what had to be the final word from someone holding back nothing, spewing out harsh truths so subversive that it had been largely suppressed. As a philosopher once said, "If I told the truth for five minutes I would lose all my friends. If I told the truth for ten minutes I would be exiled from the land. If I told the truth for 15 minutes I would be put to death." A book's worth of unvarnished truth was lucky to find a publisher. 

 Worldcat.org revealed that there was only one library in all of the United States that had a copy, the University of Illinois. Though it would have only been a 150 mile bike down to Champagne, I put my Northwestern alum privileges to use, going the easy route, simply requesting it from this sister Big Ten school, as I have resorted to on occasion. 

 Normally the book arrives in less than a week. This one took over two weeks, adding to its mystique. It was boldly autographed in black magic marker on a page with nothing but the title. For the first time I learned the book's title wasn't simply "Ride and Be Damned," but rather "Ride and Be DAMNED." Yes, this guy meant it. It was an over-sized book of just 151 pages full of dazzling photographs, some filling a page. The foreword by a sportswriter who knew Messenger promised the book was written in Messenger's "familiar racy style" and was a chronicle of the great struggles of introducing actual road racing to Great Britain. 

For over fifty years up until 1942 the powers-that-be largely restricted road racing in Great Britain to time trials, riders going off one at a time, a minute or more apart, barely making their presence felt on whatever road they were riding on. There were no mass start races as had been going on in Europe since before the turn of the century. These time trials were barely races and were virtual underground events with the riders compelled to dress inconspicuously so it didn't appear as if they were engaged in a race. 

Start sheets were headed "Private and Confidential." Even competing in these semi-sanctioned races one was made to feel like an outlaw. It was quite a contrast to what was going on across the Channel, where events such as the Tour de France and Paris-Roubaix and countless other races were wildly popular and a great sensation, the leading sporting events of the time. Finally in 1942 Percy Stallard, someone who had raced on the continent and knew the excitement and magnificence of true road racing, organized a "rebel" mass start race on June 7, l942. And with it was born the British League of Racing Cyclists (BLRC) to promote such racing. 

This book is essentially a history of the BLRC. Up until its formation British racing had been administered by the Road Time Trials Council (RTCC). The two organizations became bitter rivals. The RTCC maintained that "bunched racing is an utterly selfish and irresponsible use of roads" and did everything it could to suppress it. The BLRC felt Great Britain was greatly deprived not to have such racing and fought with ardour for it. 

 Messenger was an active participant with the BLRC during these years. Though the book is a diatribe of a sort, it is more the cranky recollections of someone who had been in the thick of it. His book documents the history of the BLRC in year by year chapters from 1942 until 1959, when finally in 1960 government legislation was introduced making it fully legal for racing to take place on the road. It was a triumphant day for Messenger and his cohorts. "There must have been many ghosts from the past who looked down on the scene and wept," he wrote. 

As evidenced by the many magnificent photos in the book, the racing quickly captured the interest of the public. Crowds in the thousands lined the race courses just as they did over in Europe. But still it was a long battle between the rival race organizations. Time trial advocates would interfere with road races riding in amongst the riders and dropping tacks and nails on the road and turning course markers the wrong way. Police officers were a hindrance as well. One rider leading a race was stopped by a "man of blue" and issued a ticket for failing to stop at a "Halt" sign while his competitors flew on by him. 

There were no road closures, so riders had to observe stop signs and were penalized ten minutes if they didn't. In the early days of road racing the BLRC had very strict rules to insure they did not upset the authorities. Riders were obliged to race single file through towns and could not attack during such stretches to insure they did not threaten the safety of spectators, one of the chief reasons the RTTC was opposed to such racing. 

In the first stage races there was no money to put up racers at hotels. They had to scramble on their own to find a bed or a couch after each stage, sometimes ending up in a hay loft. By 195l the BLRC felt it had arrived when it promoted three major stage races, including the first ever Tour of Britain, attracting racers from the continent. Still, it wasn't until nine years later that legislation was passed making it fully legal. It was a long and hard-fought battle. 

The early pioneers competing in these races endured much. They did feel as if they were DAMNED. Tom Simpson was just getting his start during this era. Even though he won sixteen races as a junior and was clearly destined for greatness, he was suspended six months for failing to stop at a "Halt" sign in a race. He was frustrated enough to nearly give up the sport. But he stuck with it, racing in the 1956 Olympics as a l9-year old, and went on to be Britain's greatest cyclist, the first to wear the yellow jersey in the Tour de France and to win the World Championship road race and two of the sports monuments--Milan-San Remo and the Tour of Lombardy--before his death on Mont Ventoux in 1967 in the Tour de France. 

That short paragraph glorifies him more than Messenger did. Exalting the racers was not the objective of his book. There are no vivid portraits of riders nor accounts of their heroics, as often highlight cycling histories. The focus of this book was solely on the rival racing organizations. Messenger mentions from time to time that if one wants to know more about a certain race to go to one of his other books. 

Though the book wasn't the manifesto I had imagined it might be, I am glad there is such a titled book out there. It was nice to be introduced to Messenger and his work. I am eager to see what his other books have to offer, and if they have as many typographical errors.

The Bike Snob and the Parenthesis

The Bike Snob is the King of the Parenthetical Comment. There are as many as three or four on a page in his latest book, "The Enlightened Cyclist." They define his writing style, generally a snide wisecrack with an element of truth. They are asides that can be a distraction, but comments he can't resist. Sometimes they are pertinent, but often they simply allow him to lampoon some innocent bystander who he has it in for even though the object has nothing to do with the subject at hand.

When he makes the sweeping comment, "We now live in the 21st century," he adds "(Well, excluding people like the Amish, the Taliban and Larry King)." His book has a Biblical theme to it. When he cites Genesis, he clarifies, "(the Bible book, not the band)."

His book regularly takes to task hipsters and the smug, though at times he might be describing himself. When he used the word "oft" he virtually confesses to being among the clan with his parenthetical disclaimer "("oft" is pretentious for "often")."

The Snob was sporting a beard at his Chicago appearance last week despite his frequent flippant remarks about beards in his book. He says people with beards love bicycles. At one point he gives a definition of smugness, a quality all too many cyclists are prone to. Smugness, he maintains, leads to making one feel like an all-powerful wizard, which "could explain why so many smug cyclists wear beards."

It is a shame the book doesn't have an index. Besides making it easy to find the many smug and beard and hipster references, one could be entertained by a quick scan of the wide array of off-the-wall cultural oddities that irk or bemuse him. Along with the Amish and Larry King, one would find mime, Froot Loops, Segway, ring tones, Chicken McNuggets, bamboo bikes, urban bee keeping, ghost bikes, Howard Stern, Oprah, Billy Joel, David Bryne. There are also multiple references to Portland and Critical Mass, targets he never tires of taking potshots at. There would have been 17 movies listed, down from 43 in his first book. There were three movies mentioned in both books--"Jaws," "Saturday Night Fever" and "Pee Wee's Big Adventure," one of his favorite movies of all time.

To a certain extent the book is a response to the response of his first book. He wants the world to know he is not some loud-mouthed, irrational, anarchist preaching the destruction of the automobile and reviling those who do not embrace the bike, as some regard him. Most radio interviewers on his first book tour asked him why he hated cars. He doesn't hate cars at all. "Cars are for the broad strokes and bikes for the detail work," he asserts. He owns a car and drives it embarrassingly long distances with his bike to compete in cyclocross races. On the morning of 9/ll he was all set to drive his dog to the vet to have a tooth extracted. If his alter ego, BikeSnobNYC, knew about that, he'd certainly have some pointed comment.

He tries to be a voice of reason in the battle between cars and bikes. When he sets out on his bike he has two goals, not to get killed and not to get angry. He preaches acceptance of untoward behavior by motorists. He can tolerate Billy Joel, so bicyclists ought to tolerate cars.

He sees much progress in the number of people riding bikes. He thinks we may be at a major cultural intersection with the possibility of cycling finally going mainstream. He encourages cyclists to do as little as possible to antagonize motorists. He has learned to take great satisfaction at stopping at red lights, especially since it can befuddle, if not disturb, motorists and pedestrians.

He knows the cultural transformation is a gradual process. He compared it to a prison break with the prisoners trying to dig a tunnel with spoons. Every time they leave their cells they must take a pocketful of dirt. Every ride a cyclist takes is a pocketful of goodwill promoting the cause of the bicycle. "If we all do our tiny part, we may get to the other side of the wall," he writes.

A Ride with the Bike Snob of New York

Eben Weiss, the notorious BikeSnobNYC blogger, stopped by Chicago on his promotional tour for his second book "The Enlightened Cyclist" a couple of nights ago. His appearance at On the Route bike shop was preceded by a 15-mile ride, mostly along Lake Michigan, from the Tati bike shop in Hyde Park on the city's south side not far from President's Obama's house.

When I arrived at Tati shortly before six the tiny shop was crammed with about 20 cyclists surrounding Eben making awkward small talk. The bearded, burly Eben was wearing a cycling cap such as he advertises on his blog and burdened with a hefty black backpack. With no one having much to say I helped fill in the silences with a brief interchange on this weekend's Tour of Flanders and asking if we'd be passing the President's house. Eben didn't know about the proximity of Obama's house and was delighted that it would be part of his Chicago experience.

We rode double file for several blocks to the lake front bike path with Eben near the front of the pack. I drafted his wheel for the first few miles waiting for the opportunity to slip up alongside him for a chat. We were both riding Surlys with clipless pedals, he the version with couplers so he could disassemble it and pack it for flights without charge and me on my Long Haul Trucker. There was no specific conversational rotation. It wasn't until we passed Soldier Field that at last he was momentarily unflanked by another and it was my turn for a few words.

His first book was so thick with movie mentions that one blurb on the book commented. "You'll probably think he's seen too many movies for his own good." So I began, "Does your latest book have as many movie references as the first?"

He said there weren't. Then I asked if he knew anything about the Hollywood messenger movie "Premium Rush" filmed in New York that was supposed to have been released in August, but has been delayed. He said he had friends who were involved with it but didn't know much about it other than it stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

In his first book he said that the ridiculous "Quicksilver" with Kevin Bacon was the only bicycle messenger movie ever made. I didn't correct him on that figuring that countless others had, but simply asked if he had ever seen "Two Seconds," a much more authentic French Canadian messenger movie from 1998 that was good enough to have played at Sundance. He hadn't, nor was he even aware of it. When I began describing it to him, he thought he might have seen a clip of it on youtube.

Since he'd worked as a messenger in New York, I wondered if he knew a couple of friends of mine from Chicago who had gone on to New York. He said he had only messengered for six months and that was back in l996. He had mentioned in his first book how much he enjoyed being a messenger. I asked if it was the best job he'd ever had, as he had written. At first he said yes, but then corrected himself saying that he really likes writing and would have to say what he is doing now is the best job he's ever had.

His five-day a week blog posts are so prodigiously long and cover such a wide-range of topics I wondered if he published elsewhere other than his monthly column for "Bicycling" magazine. That's it, other than working on a third book, evidently involving his young son, soon to turn two. He said he had written for "Outside" magazine for a spell, but didn't particularly enjoy that experience as its editors kept trying to dictate his writing, unlike "Bicycling" who let him be himself. "That's what is so great about blogging, I can write about whatever I want," he added.

I wondered about his freelancing, as I'd seen a piece of his in "VeloNews" a few years ago as an "At the Back" feature. I told him that when I saw it I was hoping that he might be taking over that column that had been made famous by Maynard Hershon. He was too, but it didn't work out. I mentioned that I too had had an "At the Back" column published in "VeloNews" a year or so after his. That piqued his interest. I told him it was about my scavenging a Tour de France course marker for Christian Vande Velde, and riding out to his house in a Chicago suburb to give it to him and what a genuinely nice guy he was. Then the conversation turned to me and my riding the Tour de France and being a messenger and traveling the world.

That reminded me I had a souvenir from the Tour de France for him, a Festina reflective band he could wrap around his wrist or ankle that I had collected from the publicity caravan preceding the race. He wrapped it around his handlebar.

We were still talking when we reached Wilson Avenue and had to leave the bike path and head to On the Route. There were another couple dozen cyclists awaiting us when we reached our destination a little behind schedule at 7:40. The bike shop didn't have a screen for his presentation, as he said had happened in Madison the day before, so he just used his computer as a prompter for his fifteen minute presentation that centered on bicyclists creating a religion to promote their cause. Not only would it provide them with tax-exempt status, but would also allow them to charge drivers who hit them with committing a hate crime.

Then he fielded questions for nearly half an hour from his very appreciative and mostly male audience. One woman observed that she was in a distinct minority and wondered if that had been true at all his presentations. He didn't really have an answer. Nor did he have an answer when someone asked how many bikes he has and where he stores them, giving a glimpse of his testy side that comes out in his blogging. His posts regularly receive over 100 comments, many of them as acerbic as his writing. I asked if he ever deletes comments that go too far. The only comments he deletes are spam promoting some product. "I didn't even delete comments that identified me back when I was anonymous," he said.

Someone else asked how he managed to avoid repeating himself in his second book. "I used different words," he said, drawing the biggest of his many laughs.

(The Snob wrote about his Chicago experience several days later on April 3. It includes a photo of me shot over his shoulder along the bike path, though there is no mention that the guy in the blue jacket presented him with a souvenir from the Tour de France on the ride. I was never more than half a wheel from him the entire ride. I was so engrossed in conversation with him that somehow I missed the wave that he says "nearly washed us out into the Atlantic or Pacific or whatever ocean it is that's next to Chicago.")

Sheboygan, Wisconsin

Friends: After a winter of biking to distant Chicago suburbs for obscure cycling books, I've expanded my never-ending quest to other states thanks to some sudden summery weather. Last week it was 170 miles to Fort Wayne, Indiana for biographies of Bradley Wiggins and Fausto Coppi. This week it has been 150 miles to Sheboygan, Wisconsin for "The Sweat of the Gods" by the Dutch sociologist Benjo Maso about the myths and legends of racing.

The rides have enabled me to add a handful of Carnegie Libraries to my life list and also get in some good training miles for my ninth annual 650-mile ride from Paris to Cannes in a little over a month. I was treated to a rush of French reveries when I reached the outskirts of Sheboygan and encountered one of my favorite features of bicycling in France--a roundabout. Even though they were invented by an American, they are an extreme rarity here. In 4,000 touring miles over four tours in the U.S. since leaving Telluride and its roundabout last September, it was the first I had come upon. France abounds with them. They serve not only as a traffic facilitator, doing away with a stop sign or stop light at an intersection, but also provide a huge pallet to decorate with flowers or landscaping or sculptures or artwork of some type, often promoting what a town or region is known for (wine, apples, golf, crayons, mushrooms).

I appreciate not only their aesthetic appeal, but also the sense of cooperation they engender--traffic gently merging, no one having to lose momentum. I can time my entry into a roundabout when there is a gap in the flow of traffic, casually joining in as if I were slipping onto a dance floor. They also offer the opportunity to deviate from the monotony of straight ahead cycling, leaning into the turn of the roundabout as gently or sharply as I choose.

If I were the writing type, I would have written a book on bicycling France by now. One of the chapters would be "The Joy of Roundabouts." The variety of their artistic flair has brought me many flashes of delight, especially during The Tour de France when roundabouts on the route are decorated with a bicycle theme, often truly grandiose and breathtaking. The effort the French put into fancying up their roundabouts testifies to their care for prettifying their environment. It is seen everywhere.

As The Tour de France is the ultimate bicycle race and Cannes the ultimate film festival, the Arc de Triomphe on the Champs Elysees offers up the ultimate roundabout. Circling about it one Friday evening with more than a hundred other cyclists on a Critical Mass was almost as thrilling as climbing L'Alpe d'Huez on race day with thousands of others.

America has yet to discover the practicality and the beauty of roundabouts. It was a great battle to install the roundabout to the entry of Telluride a few years ago, but now all heartily embrace it. It flourishes with wild flowers and is a nice introduction to the town, a town without a stop light.

Sheboygan's roundabout wasn't the only evidence of French influence or a French consciousness in this city of 50,000 on the shore of Lake Michigan. The unique preservation of its Carnegie Library was another. The French are very cognizant of their past, and do whatever they can to preserve or honor it. An essential strand of the French character is they "remember." They are happy to slap a plaque on any building that was the birth place or residence of someone who did something out of the ordinary. Many streets are renamed every few blocks to acknowledge someone of significance.

Though Sheboygan had long ago outgrown its Carnegie and replaced it with a much larger library one block away, they had not forgotten it. When it was constructed in 1901, it was the most magnificent building in town. It had deteriorated too much to make it financially feasible to restore. Rather than tear it completely down, its front wall was left standing, complete with the "Public Library" etched over its entry. Its former interior was now a park space and sculpture garden adjoining the town's Art Gallery. It was a most striking site, similar to an ancient Greek or Roman ruin. Of the more than one hundred Carnegies I have laid claim to so far in over a dozen states and several countries, this was the first such relic I had seen.

It was my third Carnegie in Wisconsin on this trip after seeing a few of its sixty-five others on its western and southern borders last November on my ride back from Telluride. I had visited two in Racine the day before. One was the former huge main library, now a historical museum. The other was a much smaller satellite library a mile away, now serving as a car dealership, a most ignominious use of a Carnegie.

The large library that replaced the Carnegie in Sheboygan "remembered" Carnegie, hanging his portrait just inside its entry. It was the usual portrait of him with an open book on his lap. I checked the small metal plate on the bottom of the painting. It said it was donated by the Carnegie Corporation in 1935. I had noticed the same plate on several of these portraits in libraries on my Indiana ride last week. Carnegie made no demands that his name be placed on any of the over 2,500 libraries he funded all over the world, or even to acknowledge him in any way, though most do in some form or another. Carnegie died in 1919. Evidently the Carnegie Corporation received so many requests from libraries for a portrait of him to hang, in 1935 on the 100th anniversary of his birth it offered this standard portrait. I have occasionally seen a different portrait, but didn't think to look closely to see if it was dated as these are. No librarian I have asked about the portraits go back as far as 1935 and, in fact, weren't even aware that their portrait had a date on it.

I was in such a gladdened state from my 150 mile ride and the roundabout and my Carnegie discoveries, I would have hardly been disappointed if the book that had drawn me to Sheboygan was not on the shelf. I still felt a sense of nervous anticipation as I approached the 796.6 bicycling section wondering if "The Sweat of the Gods" awaited me. When my eyes fell upon it, I immediately felt a great jolt of delight. According to worldcat.org the only other library in the United States to have it was 1,800 miles away in Emeryville, California at the end of the Amtrak line sandwiched between Oakland and Berkley. That is a library that I must most certainly visit, as it is the only library with quite a few cycling books of great appeal. It appears to have the best collection of cycling books in North America.

With "The Sweat of the Gods" in hand I plopped down at a table behind a bike-related "Read" poster with the slogan "Inspiration for the Imagination." It was a rare poster that didn't feature a celebrity (Oprah or Shaq or Barack or some movie star). I always scan the walls of every library I visit for an odd or original "Read" poster. One of Chicago's suburban libraries had made mock posters featuring each of its trustees urging its patrons to read. The Sheboygan library had the usual scattering of celebrity posters, but also a bike-related one starring a giant bicycle wheel with the small figure of a young woman laying face down on its tread reading a book and a young man standing on the spokes likewise reading.

I let them peer over my shoulder as I dove into "The Sweat of the Gods." The title was taken from an article written in 1951 by Pierre About for "L'Equipe" about the Swiss champion Hugo Koblet's dominant win in The Tour de France that year, winning by twenty-two minutes. Koblet was known as the "Pedaler of Charm" and was famous for carrying a comb with him at all times so he could tidy up his hair at the finish line of a race. This was in the era before television when racers were greatly mythologized by sports writers into heroic, god-like figures. About wrote that so great was Koblet that his sweat did not smell unpleasant, as "the sweat of the gods contains no urea."

Maso's meticulously researched book abounds with such fascinating anecdotes that I hadn't come across anywhere else in my reading or visits to the many bicycle museums of France. Koblet wasn't the only racer who nurtured his matinee idol looks. Maso revealed that Charles Pellisier in the 1920s introduced white socks to the peloton because they contrasted so beautifully with his tanned legs.

Maso is a clear devotee of the sport unearthing countless such tidbits. Like me, he has been frustrated by many of the inconsistencies he has come upon in his reading. His book traces the history of bicycle racing from its very beginning in 1868 up to 2003 when his book was published. His first chapter quotes a plaque in St. Cloud Park in Paris, a spot that claimed to have hosted the first bike race in France in 1868, won by the Englishman James Moore. Maso says that it was wrong on two counts. It was not the first race in France, nor was Moore the first winner, as there were two races held that day in the park and Moore was the winner of the second.

Moore was given credit for being the first winner, as he went on to have a more significant career than the man who won the first race, as he was the victor in the first long-distance race between two cities, Paris and Rouen, seventy-seven miles apart, the following year.

As he traces the history of bicycle racing he points out other inaccuracies in the lore of the sport. Most histories of The Tour de France claim the first time it sent the racers over a mountain pass was in its third edition in 1905 when it crossed the Ballon d'Alsace in the Vosges Mountains along the border with Germany. That has puzzled me ever since I biked over the Col de Republique outside of St. Etienne to pay homage to the bust of Velocio, the father of cycle touring, at its summit. That climb was included in the first two Tours. In the second edition hooligans assaulted the riders when they went over it.

Maso points out that the Col de Republique at 1,161 meters high is only seventeen meters lower than the Ballon and is an equally difficult climb. The reason the Ballon is considered the first climb is that Tour organizer Henri Desgrange hyped it before the third Tour as such a significant climb he wondered if the racers would be able to summit it without having to dismount their bikes. It was one of many examples of the race promoters trying to inflame the public's interest while creating a mythic aura to the racers, elevating them to heroic status, "Giants of the Road," as Desgrange termed them on the eve of their arrival in Paris in the first Tour, when the magnitude of their achievement of bicycling around France in six stages caused a sensation throughout the country.

Maso also gives perspective to one of the most storied events in The Tour's history, Eugene Christophe repairing his broken fork in the 1913 Tour after breaking it on the descent of the Tourmalet. Maso says the incident was barely mentioned in the papers at the time, not wanting to malign the manufacturer of the bike, an important sponsor. Desgrange didn't mythologize the event until 1919 when Christophe suffered similar bad luck breaking another fork. Citing these two incidents he eulogized him as the unluckiest rider ever. He lost four hours to his first broken fork, ending the race fourteen hours behind the winner. But his broken fork in 1919 cost him victory in The Race, the year the yellow jersey was introduced with Christophe being the first one to wear it. Desgrange called upon his readers to send in donations to Christophe and thousands responded with more money than what the victor won.

Though the book is largely devoted to the Tour de France, other races are also mentioned. Like Tkhe Tour de France, the Giro d'Italia was founded by a sporting newspaper to increase its sales six years after the Tour de France. France had two sporting daily newspapers that were in heated competition with one another at the time. The Italian sporting papers were only weeklies as 40% of Italy's population was illiterate. The Tour introduced the Pyrenees in 1910 and the Alps a year later. The roads in Italy were so rough, it wasn't until the l930s and l940s that the Giro included its high mountain passes in the Alps and the Dolomites.

Maso mentions that in 1982, as The Tour became increasingly commercialized, only nine of the twenty-two stages started in towns they finished in the day before, a new record for the fewest, as the organizers tried to spread stage starts and finishes in as many towns as they could, getting each to put up a hunk of money for the privilege. Since I began bicycling The Tour route eight years ago, I've felt lucky to have two or three such cities. Nine would be fantastic, but that is a luxury of the past. Those transfers are the bane of all Tour followers and participants.

Maso had previously written one other book on cycling, "We Were All Gods," on the 1948 Tour won by Gino Bartali. Unfortunately its not available in English, true of all too much of his source material. He certainly whetted my appetite to learn even more about the rich and seemingly depthless history of bicycle racing and the hold it has had on its fans. I am exhausting such books within a two-day ride of Chicago. I will have to start going beyond a two hundred mile radius of Chicago for more. I could go east to Ohio to the libraries of Dayton, Oxford and Cleveland for books on my hit list, or west to Columbia and St. Louis in Missouri for a couple more. I know whichever I choose I will have a good ride and some good reading and a batch of more Carnegies. I can ask nothing more of life.

Rochester, Indiana

Friends: I had stopped to fill my water bottles at a park on the outskirts of Rochester, Indiana. When I turned back to my bike a man with a flourishing gray beard and a huge camera was approaching me.

"Mind if I take your picture?" he asked. "I'm with the local paper. I was out here photographing an eagle nesting out beyond the lake. Touring cyclists are about as rare around here as eagles. Where are you headed?"

"I'm on my way to Chicago. I'm on a 400 mile loop to Fort Wayne and back. The Fort Wayne library has the best collection of cycling books in the mid-west. Its the only library within 200 miles of Chicago with biographies of Fausto Coppi and Bradley Wiggins. After Wiggins won Paris-Nice a week ago, the first major bike race of the season, I thought I'd pay homage to him and take advantage of this summer weather and take a ride to go read his biography. I'm also in search of Carnegie libraries. I'm here in Rochester because you have one. Can you tell me where it is?"

"Its now a private residence, but you can't miss it."

"I was just in North Manchester, twenty-three miles back, and I was told the same thing about their Carnegie. Its now a law office, but like all the Carnegies, they may be one hundred years old, but they are still magnificent buildings that truly stand out."

"Ours still has Carnegie Library chiseled into its front. Its a block from the main square at 8th and Jefferson. The new library is just a couple blocks away."

"How often does your newspaper publish?"

"We're still a daily. We have the smallest circulation of a daily in Indiana with about 8,000 subscribers."

He handed me his card--Mike Kenny, "The Rochester Sentinel, The Voice of Fulton County's People Since 1858."

He was right about the Carnegie being easy to spot, right on the corner across the street from a church. It still had an original three-globed light fixture out front. When I stopped to take a photo, a large dog appeared at the doorway and began barking. It was the tenth Carnegie I had visited on this quick dash of a trip, with a possible three or four more. It was the second one I had visited with a four-legged critter on the premises. A cat patrolled the Pierceton Carnegie, contributing to its small town feel. It had had a slight addition, but still retained its original aura.

The most striking of the Carnegies was the first one I visited in Whiting, just across the border from Chicago in steel mill country. It had had an addition but it was hidden behind the original building that featured a pair of statuesque towers. The Gary Tolleston Branch library, built by Carnegie, was still in its original state but is presently closed down. The Carnegie in Hobart is now the town's Historical Museum.

Two of the ten on my itinerary were no longer standing--those in Valparaiso and Fort Wayne, with the new libraries built on the spot of the old one. Fort Wayne's had been the largest in Indiana thanks to the largest contribution for an Indiana library from Carnegie--$90,000. Most were built on not much than $10,000. The Fort Wayne Carnegie had been replaced by a huge county library. Along with its seven shelves of bicycling books it has the second largest genealogical collection in the U.S. after Salt Lake City.

I had a pleasant two days at the library polishing off a pair of superlative cycling biographies. The Wiggins bio, "In Pursuit of Glory" was written in 2008 just after he won two gold medals at the Beijing Olympics for individual and team pursuit, bringing his total of Olympic medals to six over three competitions, tied for the most by a Brit. Unfortunately, there was nothing in the book about his year riding with Garmin and Christian Vande Velde, as that was his 2009 season.

Garmin was his fifth professional team after Francaise des Jeux, Credit Agricole, Cofidis and HTC-Highroad. Now he is with Sky gunning for a Tour de France title, though he says in his 2008 book that the best he could ever hope for in a Tour was perhaps a stage win. He has developed as a road cyclist considerably since then, finishing fourth the year he rode for Garmin. He wrote that it would be one of the great moments in British sports history for a British rider to be wearing the yellow jersey on the Champs Elysees, never imagining that it might be him.

There have been more books written on Coppi than any other cyclist. This one was "Fallen Angel, The Passion of Fausto Coppi," written by William Fotheringham in 2009. His previous book was "Roule Britannia," about the Brits in the Tour de France that I read last month. He knows his stuff, though he did stumble saying that Bobet was the first person to win The Tour three times and implies that Bartoli's win in the 1948 Tour was his first Tour win. Coppi's career, like Jacques Anquetil, was marred by leaving his wife for a doctor's wife. It was even more scandalous in Italy, than France, as adultery was a crime in Italy until 1968. Coppi and the doctor's wife were put on trial and convicted, though their sentences were dismissed. The Pope refused to give a blessing to the 1954 Giro when it set out from Rome as it contained "a public sinner."

I would have been out of Fort Wayne half a day earlier if I could have found a benevolent librarian willing to let me borrow the books overnight. I pled my case to four of them in four different departments, but there wasn't a kind-hearted one in the lot, not even the woman who had grown up in a small town in Iowa with a Carnegie library and was impressed by what an authority I was on them.

But neither she nor any of the others were impressed enough that I had bicycled 170 miles from Chicago in less than two days just for these books to let me slip one out for the evening. Nor could I win any of them over by knowing their library resided on the spot where a Carnegie had once stood and that I had visited nine others in the past two days and all that I knew about them, much more than any of them knew. I asked if they ever loaned books to Chicago on inter-library loan. They did. I offered them my Chicago library card and anything else in my wallet as a deposit to borrow either one of the books for the evening. What I could read that night and the next morning before the library opened at noon would be invaluable to me. They each patiently listened to my spiel, but none were willing to oblige me. I'd make a lousy salesman or con man.

Nor could I find a bicyclist in the library to check them out for me. If I'd thought of it then and had a little more time, I would have searched out a bike shop. I know I would have found a sympathetic soul there who would have loaned me a library card in exchange for some collateral, perhaps as simple as my honor. It was frustrating, but hardly calamitous. I arrived at the library an hour before closing on Saturday, then returned on Sunday when it was open from noon to five, and was back at nine on Monday. I had completed my reading by six and was able to get 30 miles down the road before dark.

I camped two nights in Fort Wayne in a forest along the St. Joseph River just three miles from the library on the outskirts of the city. On the other side of the road up on a hill resided the private burial spot of Johnny Appleseed. He spent the last fifteen years of his life in Fort Wayne, dying in 1845.

I was hoping the library might have a bunch more cycling books I didn't know anything about, but the only ones it had that I hadn't already read were several of the Velo Press/John Wilcockson books on The Tour de France from the years 2003, 2005, 2006 and 2007. They are not essential reading.

This has been such a nice ride, I may make another up to Wisconsin next week for another rare cycling book by a Dutch sociologist called "The Sweat of the Gods."

Later, George

More Exceptional Reading and a Disappointment

With all the cycling books I've been reading the past few months, over forty, I feel as if I'm earning a PhD in cycling history. My binge has included biographies of Anquetil, Hinault, Fignon, Bobet, Roche, Kelly, Phinney, Armstrong and an anthology of racers in the great book "Giants of Cycling," by Jean-Paul Ollivier, a Frenchman who has written over fifty books on cycling. It was one of quite a few in my reading translated from French, all a cut above.

Equally exceptional was "Tomorrow, We Ride...," perhaps the most evocative title of the lot, by Jean Bobet, brother of three-time Tour winner Louison Bobet. It was written in 2004, nearly fifty years after he and his brother raced, and translated into English in 2008. Jean was five years younger than his champion brother. He was inclined to the intellectual life, but at his brother's urging left university, putting aside a dissertation on Hemingway, to be a support rider for him.

His book offered literate insight into racing as it was in the 1950s, and the decade after, when Jean stuck with the sport as a sports writer. He was at the start of the Ventoux stage in 1967 that left Tommy Simpson dead. Bobet wrote that before the stage began Simpson mischieviously stuck his tongue out at him to reveal three pills on his tongue, as he knew that Bobet knew that is what it took to succeed in the sport, and was one of the reasons that led Bobet to an early retirement. He described quite eloquently a blistering hot Ventoux stage he suffered through that broke quite a few riders, including a Belgian who'd fallen to the road. He described him as crazy and crying in a manner such as he had never seen before. He knew Anquetil well enough to describe him as a man who found most things annoying, emphasizing, "and on this point I will brook no contradiction."

Along with the biographies, I've read quite a few history books, many on the The Tour de France, and also several on the history of cycling in a particular country--England, Colombia, Italy and the United States. All were thoroughly researched and scholarly, and very colorfully written. All that is except "The Evolution of American Bicycle Racing" by Lou Dzierzak from 2007, the only one written by an American, a nationality woefully lacking the cozy relationship necessary with the sport to write about it with eloquence and more than a superficial understanding.

Dzierzak had the best of intentions and provides a useful compilation of facts and statistics, sketching the history of racing in America and by Americans, but without making it interesting in the least or penetrating to the essence of the sport, unlike that trio of histories on Colombia ("Kings of the Mountains," by Matt Rendell), Great Britain ("Route Britannia" by William Fotheringham) and Italy ("Pedalare! Pedalare!" by John Foot). Those three were joyous celebrations of cycling and highly informative page-turners that I'd highly recommend.

One of my disappointments with Dzierzak's book is that I have a personal relationship with some of the events he writes about (the Coors Classic, the 1986 World Championship in Colorado Springs, the Tour de France, the first Tour of California in 1971) and he failed to convey in the least what they were like. The other histories celebrated such seminal events, fully resurrecting them. The others also more fully developed portrayals of their national stars, letting them be the thread for their histories. John Howard and Wayne Stetina and Jonathon Boyer and Greg LeMond and Andy Hampsten and Lance Armstrong and many others are all written about, but not with the verve of these other histories.

Dzierzak's book may be good for reference, but not good for reading. He simply did not have the deep, intrinsic understanding of the sport as did these English writers, nor the gift to write more than a text-book. He piles on the stats, many of them irrelevant. Unlike these other authors, he bothers to give the overall winning time for various Tours, an utterly meaningless statistic: 110 hours, 35 minutes and 19 seconds for LeMond's 1986 Tour, 29 hours, 39 minutes and two seconds for Marianne Martin's 1984 Tour de France Feminine in l984 and on and on.

And his book was clogged with factual errors. He said that LeMond battled Claudio Chiappucci and Miguel Indurain for the lead in the 1990 Tour de France. Indurain was Pedro Delgado's domestique in that race and finished tenth. Delgado finished fourth. He wrote that at the 1998 Tour de France when Willy Voet was arrested with a car load of drugs on the way to the Tour start that the "Tour de France organizers immediately disqualified all nine members of the Festina racing team." That's not true at all. It wasn't until the sixth stage that they were finally kicked out of the race while the press howled and howled over the team still being in The Race. He also gets it wrong on the number of teams that quit that Tour, putting it at four, two less than it was. Such sloppy reporting is most disheartening and clearly impugnes Dzierzak's credibility.

It was good that someone wrote a book on American cycling, but unfortunate that it wasn't someone with the talents of a British or French writer born into the sport leading to a life long passion for it, and relished the opportunity to bring the riders and the races to life. Such a being may not exist in America. It was another frustrating example of a superficially written treatise of cycling by an American, most notably exemplified by Samuel Apt. Such books are mere attempts at a cycling book compared to the full-fledged efforts by their British and French counterparts.

The tear index as always is a reflection on the depth of a writer's understanding of the sport. Riders are constantly being brought to tears of triumph and joy and frustration and despair. The emotional depth and commitment of the riders is the essence of the sport. There wasn't a single mention of tears in Dzierzak's book, unlike these other three national histories and every other book mentioned above.

Still, one must applaud that even books on cycling as lackluster as this are being published. They are certainly better than nothing.

John Wilcockson and the Puy de Dome

I've been reading John Wilcockson for over thirty years, first in "Winning" magazine and then in "VeloNews," as well as quite a few of his books and even via email. He doesn't reveal too much of himself, but I've still come to know him a bit. He is most certainly an authority on the Tour de France, having covered it since 1968. But the first thought that comes to my mind when I see his byline is that this is a man who was hard core enough to have biked The Tour route before he became a journalist, as did Graham Watson the photographer, and as I have done the past eight years.

He rarely mentions his bicycling exploits. It wasn't until a few days ago when I read his book "23 Days in July" about the 2004 Tour de France that I learned he was there on the Puy de Dome in 1964 with his bicycle when Jacques Anquetil and Raymond Poulidor battled it out shoulder-to-shoulder in what many consider the most dramatic stage in perhaps the greatest Tour of all time. That certainly had to be one of the great moments in Wilcockson's life. It gives me a thrill to have a small connection with someone who was there, imagining the thrill he must have been experiencing, and also all the pleasure it gives him whenever he remembers the occasion.

I've missed out on a great deal of pleasure over the years having been unaware of this until now. It is a badge of honor that he can truly be proud of. Henceforth it will be what I'll immediately associate with Wilcockson. And whenever his name comes up in conversation, I'll want to blurt, "Did you know he was on the Puy de Dome in 1964 as a fan," knowing that it will grant him instant respect from any aficionado of The Tour and will give whoever I am talking to a glow of pleasure remembering that storied stage and imagining what it must have been like to be there and could direct our conversation to other memories of such splendor.

I'm always happy to recall being on L'Alpe d'Huez in 2004 for the time trial between Lance and Ullrich and Basso when Lance was going for Tour title number six. Every cycling fan in the universe had been looking forward to that time trial from the moment The Race route had been announced the October before, all wishing they could be there. People began gathering on the climb days ahead of time. It was the largest crowd by far ever on L'Alpe d'Huez or perhaps any Tour mountain climb. Thousands of Americans were on hand and almost an equal number of Germans, all in a state of supreme ecstasy.

The Tour has returned to L'Alpe d'Huez three times since and I've been there each time. Those there are always in awe of the gathered throng of humanity, but I have to tell them that its not even half as many as were there in 2004, and as exuberant as everyone seems, it doesn't compare to what it was like in '04. My tent-to-tent squatter's campsite at the foot of the climb and my morning ride to the summit with thousands of others past all the frolicking Germans with their boom boxes blasting out drinking songs and people still painting the road and the orange-clad Dutch going berserk, everyone just super energy-charged, all remain vividly etched in my memory. That was truly an electrifying experience, as no doubt it was for Wilcockson to be on the Puy de Dome in 1964. He too was at the focal point of millions of racing fans all over the world, all wishing they could be there.

I don't know how he resists mentioning it from time to time as comparison to other great moments in Tour history or to comment on fan intensity or the great attraction The Tour has or what it was like in the old days or to firmly establish his credibility. Other writers find reason to bring it up. Making a reference to it would not be out of place at all, especially with his personal connection. Some might consider it boastful, but not me. Part of his resistance may have to do with his English roots. Even though he has been based in Boulder for many years, he may have retained a certain English reserve. His writing is generally very straightforward, not venturing off on personal or historical asides. He is not one to embellish his writing, unlike French cycling writers, who can launch into outrageously lyrical and grandiose prose, elevating the heroic exploits of the riders to mythic status. He goes easy on the adjectives and the pomposity, sticking to the point.

His VeloPress books on the 1998 through 2001 Tours, that I have recently read, are all quite clinical journalism, almost painfully so. They each follow a simple formula of a few profiles of the main contenders and their build-up to The Race and then seemingly dashed-off stage reports written immediately after each stage with a minimum of analysis or color. Those books deliver the facts but not much else.

But after reading "23 Days in July" on the 2004 Tour, it was clear that he was hand-cuffed in writing those books, getting a book out as quickly as he could and sticking to the bare minimum. But this book had a different publisher, Da Capo Press, unleashing him and allowing him to write with genuine depth and perspective, delving into the lore of The Race, mentioning the accordionist Yvette Horner and La France Profonde and Red Smith's 1960 visit and the great French sports writer Pierre Chany and many of the other small features of this great cultural event that fully define it. One gains a much greater understanding of The Tour from this book than all his VeloPress books combined. For the first time in all my reading far and wide I learned what towns have to pay to host a stage start or finish. No book or newspaper or magazine article I have read has ever mentioned it. I've asked people in tourist offies of Stage cities what they've have to pay and they don't want to say.

Wilcockson put the question to Tour director Jean-Marie LeBlanc. He puts the figure at 120,000 euros. It is the same amount for every city regardless of size. He explained, "We don't set the price too high because we don't want to attract only the big cities. But its high enough that only the serious candidates come forward." They usually have a pool of just under l00 cities to choose from every year for the 35 or so they need.

Wilcockson supplements his usual fine reporting with a wide range of worthwhile background material. If I had known what valuable insights it had to offer, I wouldn't have put off reading it all this years. And I would have had an enhanced appreciation of Wilcockson as a cylist. Not only did I learn he was on the Puy de Dome in 1964 from this book, but also that he raced in Brittany for a couple of summers in the mid-60s. Though he became a journalist and didn't have as much time to ride his bike, the bike hadn't lost its allure for him In 1979 when the "Sunday Times" that he was working for went on strike during The Tour, he took advantage of his freedom to go to The Tour on his bike once again. He didn't have a tent, but was staying in hotels. One evening in the Alps the hotel he was planning on staying at was closed for renovations, so he had to continue on for several hours in the dark. He arrived at Bourg d'Osians at the foot of L'Alpe d'Huez at two a.m. Everything was closed up forcing him to sleep on the wooden bench of a bus shelter. That earns him another "chapeau."

I've seen Wilcockson from time to time at The Tour off in the distance, usually scampering to snag a rider for a question or two, but have never had the chance to meet him. I will make a genuine effort this year. Hopefully he will be there, but it won't be for "VeloNews," as he and several other senior writers were let go after last year's Tour. His expertise will be missed. He's still writing though. It was nice to see him in the latest edition of "Peloton" magazine writing about Greg LeMond's triumph in the 1989 Tour.

And for the record: This book includes five very telling incidents of crying, once again attesting to the deep emotional commitment of the riders. The first is Jan Ullrich after an out-of-competition drug test in May of 2002 the day after he took ecstasy in a discotheque. He says in his autobiography "All or Nothing" that he knew he was going to test positive. After the inspector left, he "cried uncontrollably, terrified that his girlfriend would leave him."

Tyler Hamilton is a crying culprit twice, once over having to put his dog Tugboat to sleep during the 2004 Tour and the other when he tells his director Bjarne Riis that he will be leaving CSC for Phonak right after the 2003 Tour in which he finished fourth. Hamilton revealed, "When I had to tell Bjarne, it was awful. We both cried." Hamilton chokes back tears telling Wilcockson about it, and adds, "It was terrible, just terrible. It was probably one of the worst days of my life."

A domestique for the Belgian Lotto team, Christophe Brandt, cries when he learns he has tested positive for methadone during The Tour. And there is a photo of Fabian Cancellara after his Prologue victory pulling his just won yellow jersey up over his face to hide his tears of joy.

And for my final research topic: the spelling of L'Alpe d'Huez. It is properly spelled with the capital L fifteen times but without the L seven times. Two are excusable when quoting Lance on page 244 and Christian Vande Velde on page 254. One of the five other L-less spellings was on the back cover of the book.