..........................................................................................................................................................................................................
unsought praise, is praise indeed
there are a great number of readers of thewashingmachinepost who are besotted with rapha, and from correspondence i receive from many of you, and while it is perhaps easily justifiable, it seems this rapha love is quite inexplicable. perhaps even more so these days when there are so many top quality cycle clothing purveyors in the world.
i do my level best to retain some degree of perspective on the rapha phenomenon (for i believe it to be so) and to apply same when reviewing rapha products on the post; whether you think i achieve this, only you can answer, but the fact that the release of the spring/summer range almost brought down their web server, perhaps renders this academic. it's not just this side of the pond that engenders such a following: andy clark of arkansas' competitive cyclist (a major american assos stockist) has invoked the pink rapha t-shirt as his picture icon on twitter, while senior editor of bicycling magazine, bill strickland, a wordsmith of great note and literary prowess, has penned a succinct precis of his rapha lust on the magazine's website.
it is worthy of your attention.
read bill strickland's article here
posted on saturday 14 march 2009
..........................................................................................................................................................................................................two steps forward, one step back
cycling tv has become a legend in its own lunchtime for two reasons: firstly, its almost groundbreaking approach to initially providing us with top quality cycle racing on the computer, featuring many of the smaller races most of us would have to admit to having never heard of before. in so doing, it allowed the informed fan to better appreciate the unfolding of the early season minor classics, and how they influenced the outcome of the major races. secondly, in exactly the opposite direction, it has consistently frustrated those attempting to watch either through inconsistent web interfaces, or an inability to actually show many of the races we'd all paid to watch. unfortunately, as an early enthusiast for the service, i have had to temper this enthusiasm as things have gone from bad to worse, to the extent that i currently no longer subscribe to what i once praised as the saviour of modern cycle racing.
although the picture above says paris nice, the racing is at tirreno-adriatico
so, if you live in the uk, the only alternative, albeit a rather fine one, is british eurosport which, until recently could only be viewed on the proper telly with commentary from david harmon (of u2needyourheadsfixed fame), sean kelly, and more recently, brian smith and anthony mccrossan - though not all on the same race at the same time). then enter eurosport player, an online subscription service that allows the subscriber to watch all content broadcast on british eurosport and british eurosport 2 for only £3.99 per month. depending on your work or home circumstances this comes as an excellent fillip: with paris-nice and tirreno-adriatico on at the time of writing, i have been able to watch the bulk of each stage while i was supposed to be doing something less important in the office, as well as viewing any race highlights without upsetting mrs washingmachinepost's evening televisual habits.
however, while this fits the bill so to speak, i rather resent the fact that i already pay a large clump of money every month to sky television for the privilege of being able to watch eurosport channels on my telly, and now i have to pay another £3.99 for the same content on my computer. and just to drag out the old chestnut beloved of those of us with the intelligence not to rely on microsoft windows, why is it that mac users get such a raw deal? for reasons i cannot even begin to fathom (let alone how it is technically achieved) the eurosport experience is supported on internet explorer and firefox browsers only. for those on a mac, that means firefox alone, because internet explorer has not been available for the mac for many a long year.
and since the service relies (as currently does cycling.tv) on windows media player, it means that macs must have flip4mac installed and watch on the native quicktime player. so what am i moaning about? well on reaching the player's page the graphics offer standard, high, and very high quality video streaming, as well as the alternative of full screen - except the only one that seems to work on the mac is 'standard'. i tried the other two, and while they click, there seems no discernible difference in picture quality on any. and full screen? well, i really didn't expect that to work anyway. i did e-mail eurosport's tech support and suggest that using flash streaming would be a far better alternative (i know - i can get very boring over this.) but the reply simply reiterated that they only supported streaming coverage on the windows platform through windows media player, though they had heard that it sometimes worked on a mac.
so while i might moan (and goodness knows i've done more than my fair share) i have long ago resigned myself that being a mac using cycle fan means i am in a minority, and should expect no more than i receive. however, something that affects those on both computer platforms is eurosport's idiosyncratic programme listings. we all know that live sport is unpredicatable and events can run over their allotted time, but that does not explain why, when attempting to watch highlights of the previous day's paris-nice, i have been regaled with either downhill skiing, or football, neither of which were live broadcasts. and this evening, logging on to watch paris nice at 17:30, i ended up watching an hour of tirreno-adriatico (which had been listed as commencing at 17:00); and while watching, at 18:00 the listing changed to tell me i was now watching alpine skiing, to be followed by live biathlon: except at 18:30, i got half an hour of paris-nice.
confused?
you will be.
posted on saturday 14 march 2009
..........................................................................................................................................................................................................inside stories
just a quick update to inform that the rapha book inside stories featuring a number of the inner labels from a variety of rapha clothing, is now available on their website at a cost of £10. i think i might buy a copy and leave it in debbie's for passing cyclists (and golfers) to peruse at their leisure, over a designer coffee.
and now you can do the same (i mean for yourself, not for a table in debbie's)
posted on friday 13 march 2009
..........................................................................................................................................................................................................in safe hands
not that i can remember where i saw it, but i seem to recall an animated vision of the world where the inner workings were laid bare; open the world in half, and there was a myriad of cogs and stuff churning away inside keeping the world turning and working just the way all the innocent little people on the surface liked it. and these little people (i think they were made from plasticene) were all bissfully unaware of the rumblings beneath them. and we are of a similar ilk: stuff happens, people join forces, and those of us on the surface continue in our ignorance. well, apart from being directed to the stuff that's happening - we like that.
enter a pr company called aftermarket, or perhaps exit a company called aftermarket. the latter was owned by a chap called matt ward, and its business was as it states on the website: brand strategy; market location; event management - you probably get the general idea. aftermarket was an associate of anthony mccrossan's and brian smith's cyclevox, and this may well still be the case, except matt ward has sold aftermarket and joined cyclevox as the third partner. as the title of the genesis album after steve hackett left - 'and then there were three.'
and if it all just stopped there for a while, we'd probably still be none the wiser; we'd continue to pedal our plasticene bicycles around our little world, while the cogs continue to turn and click and do the things that cogs do. except with the addition of the third cog, things are moving even faster, and almost entirely for our benefit.
cyclevox have secured a film production deal for the twelve races that make up the british cycling premier calendar series, meaning that we get to see the lot on british eurosport (including the online player, i would presume) with commentary from morecambe and mcwise, with all the whizzing up and down the length of britain being filmed, edited and produced by media specialists within the organisation. and even that's not enough: the darned thing starts this weekend with the bikeline two-day based around the town of hope in flintshire.
new boy at that large oak conference table in the cyclevox boardroom, matt ward said that they're quite excited to be working with british cycling to bring top level british racing to the big screen with eurosport. so while the cyclevox trio work their cleats to the sole, all we have to do is sit back in the leather armchair, click the remote, and let it all was over us.
i really like work: i could sit and watch it for hours and hours.
posted on friday 13 march 2009
..........................................................................................................................................................................................................rapha's luke scheybeler
i'm sorry, it just works out this way: i hadn't intended to present quite so many rapha pixels this week, but things work in mysterious ways, and stuff turns up when you least expect it.
just over five years ago, simon mottram and luke scheybeler formed rapha, now amongst the world's finest purveyors of cycling apparel, and arguably the most stylish. mr mottram we've already heard from, and when it comes to any press dealings, it is generally he that we see as the face of rapha. luke once compared himself to the guy behind the keyboard in an eighties pop duo, the guy who kept the music going in the background.
however, you don't succeed in the big, bad world of pain and suffering by remaining totally anonymous, so i am honoured to be able to present an interview with luke scheybeler - the other pet shop boy.
posted on thursday 12 march 2009
..........................................................................................................................................................................................................rapha italian jersey
training cannot start before his first espresso
if it's raining, it doesn't start at all
he sets the rules for euro cycling style
and has the best victory celebrations
he comes alive in the mountains
and lives for the hottest days in may...
saturday was a pretty crap day weatherwise: the rain was persisting down and there was a modicum of wind (no change there then), so the only sensible thing to do was to stay indoors and build a pair of wheels. the brightening part of the day, regarding the wheels, was the prospect of joing the three parts to make a whole, starting with a rather fine pair of hubs. lord carlos of mercian is nothing if not discriminating in his choice of vintage componentry when it comes to attaching new stuff to either of his mercian frames.
in this case, there is no room for any of that sti or ergopower nonsense; this is all downtube levers and thread-on freewheels, beginning in this case, with a pair of elderly, but untouched, campagnolo record hubs. some of you would have been in nappies when these were in vogue: grease ports and their attendant snap rings, highly polished aluminium, an engraved campagnolo script below each port, and the sort of quick release skewers beloved of rohan dubash. and just to make it an all italian build, spokes were aci double butted and the rims were a hefty pair of touring hoops from drc.
since the weather improved not one whit throughout the morning, it was a leisurely four cross lace-up before having lunch, and as ever, both wheels were left sitting within line of sight for the regulatory sense of appreciation.
of course, you may have inferred by the sprightly tone of the article so far, that the dismal weather, even here, had to let up sometime. and it did. granted, while the temperature had mildened (someone has to take responsibility for new words), it was possible to move from the totally winter section of thewashingmachinepost wardrobe, and dip into the latest recruit to the spring/summer section - rapha's rather distinctive italian jersey (you can see a theme developing here, can you not?)
biggest surprise is that it's black: those of us drilled in the heritage of the world championships and colours for countries would have been expecting the squadra azzura, but we didn't get it. but surprise number two is just how much more stylish a black sportwool jersey banded with the italian tricolour could possibly be than any of the abominations worn by the italian squad over the last few years'. there is little differentiation between this latest offering from rapha and earlier sportwool jerseys, though i still own one of the original pink mortirolo jerseys (the one with the flock lettering back and front) and it's suprising how much more luxurious the latest one is. the rapha script still appears on the left, though in contrasting white and maybe just a tad larger than it used to be.
warmer it may have become, but warm enough to cycle bare-armed it most certainly was not, so the three-season-old rapha armwarmers were fished from a very dark place and hooked in place (i've always loved those little pink loops on the end - makes off and on much easier). i have mailed rapha more than once over the past few weeks regarding a matching pair of armwarmers for this jersey (you can acquire a pair of matching kneewarmers), but have received no affirmative nod so far. i know that michael at velodramatic has had similar thoughts. you just don't appreciate the thought that others have put in on our behalf until you see how easy some stuff is; wear a regular cycle jersey and find that the three back pockets always seem to be further up your back than is entirely practical, or the fact that it's often a struggle to bend elbow and wrist to impose or extricate pump, food etc. the outer rear pockets on the italian jersey are shaped to allow easy access without the need for yoga lessons. i'm not going to mention the existence of a zipped fourth pocket, because every jersey should have one. and, of course, there's the label (see above).
the rapha fit is glorious: no saggy baggy bits around the chest, no riding-up at the back, thanks to a strip of gloop to prevent just such a scenario, plenty of space in those pockets (for an orange stowaway, perchance), the soft luxury of sportwool, and one of the two reasons we all wear rapha: style. even debs was wont to comment on my cycling sartorial elegance, on dropping in for a saturday afternoon soya cappuccino - a double shot; i'm no wimp when it comes to coffee.
of course, style is no triumph if it ignores function - cycling is a sport, and sportspersons rarely achieve their utmost if constantly fighting the fit. in this case, perhaps not unexpectedly, freedom of movement, comfort and practicality were not left just to the side of the drawing board. as i may have paid lip service to the subdued temperature prevalent at the time of nipping out for a coffee, the occasional involuntary sprint just to maintain core temperature could not be totally avoided. had this been the last few kilometres of la primavera, the sprinters would already have been supping their collective espressos, but my vain attempts to tag onto the back of the peloton would not have been hindered by my stylish apparel.
the rapha country jersey comes in four international flavours: dutch, belgian, french and italian. i do have a mild lusting after a belgian jersey too, but there can be little denying that the italian offering may well be the one that leaves perren street more often than the others. all are available in sizes ranging from extra small all the way up to xxl for a mouth-watering £95. if you have not met the rapha experience before, sportwool of this calibre is at least a couple of levels above the more regular lycra: the cost is justified.
...he is italian
posted on wednesday 11 march 2009
..........................................................................................................................................................................................................cycling the canal du midi - a cicerone guide by declan lyons. 187pp illus. £12.95
you know that i don't get out much, or at least, i don't leave the island that often, particularly for cycling trips. there's no particular reason for this, but it could be because there's no place like home and i'm a total wuss when it comes to travel; undoubtedly a rather narrow-minded point of view, but it's mine and it doesn't do any harm to anyone else, so far as i know. of course, this doesn't mean that i don't experience notions of envy or desire when reading or watching the exploits of the more adventurous on two wheels. there are many places in the world that it would be just fine to pedal through and up and over on the company colnago, and there are no end of those willing to aid the facilitation of such trips into the (relative) unknown.
one of those facilitators is outdoor guides publisher, cicerone, a number of previous releases of which have been reviewed in these pixels over past years, the latest of which i have had on the bookshelf for the past week. this guide, written by declan lyons concerns the canal du midi, or rather the towpath that follows the line taken by this mediterranean water route, construction of which commenced in 1667. the towpath itself links toulouse in the haute garonne region, with sete on the mediterranean coast, and covers a distance of 240km. as could perhaps be gathered from the length of the canal du midi route and the regions through which it passes, there is a wide range of countryside and scenery to be experienced by the touring cyclist, and this is the very book to help you appreciate it all on whichever mode of pedalling you wish to utilise for the journey.
the author lives barely a stone's throw from the canal, and has been traversing its banks for the last ten years, both solo and with family and friends. having been cycle touring since a teenager in the early sixties, declan lyons would seem perfectly qualified to be our guide for the region. in common with others in the cicerone series, the opening pages describe the lay of the land, why you'd want to cycle it in the first place, the ideal machine on which to pedal and at which time of year would be the most clement to do so.
unless your training regime includes the milan san remo, you are unlikely to wish to cover the full 240km in one sitting, something that has also occured to mr lyons, added to which, there are numerous attractive detours to enhance the touring experience. therefore the route has been broken into bite size chunks which not only describe each in stunning illustrated detail, but give encouraging insights into the geography and history of each individual section. ideally, the narrative allows the reader/user to decide how many sections to undertake at one go, depending on how much you like sightseeing as opposed to pedalling.
there are lists at the back of the book denoting various levels of accommodation relevant to each chapter, along with a few helpful phrases in french, should you find yourself as linguistically challenged as myself. undoubtedly the finest compliment that can be paid to a cycle touring guide is a desire on the part of the reader to find out when the next ferry leaves in that direction.
mission accomplished.
posted on tuesday 10 march 2009
..........................................................................................................................................................................................................rapha stowaway jacket 2009
even after doing this for possibly more years than i can remember, i'm still not sure if there's a formula or an art to product reviewing. if there is, then it has escaped me completely, because i still treat each individual review on the basis of what it is, when it is, and how it is. undoubtedly, it would be a piece of cake (so to speak), to take some appropriate photographs of said object in a style befitting the professed market at which the subject matter is apparently aimed, before telling you all how good a product the manufacturer says it is and which boxes it ticks. but doing so is not only an abrogation of any implied responsibilities you think thewashingmachinepost has, it is plainly not fair to the purveyor who has been kind enough to send product for review, and it pretty much takes you lot for a bunch of mugs.
fortunately for me and you, that is most definitely not the way i see this sort of thing going: rapha sent the latest version of their stowaway jacket for review at just the right time, when the weather falling on the principality was considerably less than dry and temperate. on the basis of a review, the very name of the jacket -stowaway - sort of gives the game away as to its intended purpose in life; if rapha had called it a triple layer, goretex arctic stormbreaker, you and i both would be less expectant of something that could be scrunched in a rear pocket and brought out only when the odd shower sneaked up from behind during a shiny spring/summer's day.
but then its intended purpose gives rise to possible double entendre: if rapha consider it as a paper thin (i actually have toilet paper that's thicker than this), breathable, temporary rain jacket with, at the very least, water resistant properties, then surely it would be a brilliant idea to wear it over a sportwool summer season jersey on a sub-zero day out on the bike? and an even better idea would be if there was the odd gale force wind kicking about, bringing freezing rain, sleet and hail. apparently, on islay, that's just what sundays are for, and midst the enveloping greyness that always accompanies the preceding weather, the stowaway's bright orange ensured that ditching in the sea would be unlikely to hinder the helicopter search and rescue mission.
you'd figure that the foregoing would be quite enough to alarm the unsuspecting stowaway jacket, but just to add the icing on the cake, i added the debbie card test to the small debbie pocket on the front.
i'll not pretend that central heating was my middle name - a winter jersey under the semi-transparent orange would doubtless have been a more pragmatic idea, but as my mum always used to say 'pride bears no pain', and the jersey, of which you will hear more of another day, added too much style to the coffee stop to be replaced by anything else in thewashingmachinepost wardrobe. however, provided a healthy pace was maintained during the uiskentuie echelon, overall temperature was merely a smidgeon below comfortable. granted a low body temperature is unlikely to aggravate the breathable properties of this impossibly thin technical fabric, but there was never really any danger of that jersey or armwarmers acquiring a thin film of condensation at any point of the 70km ride. i do so love it when a waterproof jacket exhibits tiny beads of precipitation upon the surface, all the more so because water droplets on the outside would tend to suggest that they have not made it as far as the interior.
but i realise that the over-riding question that you are all dying to ask is how did the debbie test go? for those too young to remember the origination of the debbie test, allow me to enlighten. in keeping with the trend exhibited by many a barista refuge on the mainland, debbie happily provides her patrons with a small card on which boxes are ticked on purchase of a cup of coffee; collect eight ticks, and a ninth cup is free. this debbie card is custom designed to fit in the pocket on the front of rapha's stowaway and the debbie test checks to see whether the card is still dry and intact, with no blurring of felt tip pen ticks after the dunking provided by the sunday ride. in this case, all thumbs were up.
probably the part of the equation that was likely to cause the least consternation was the jacket's stowawayness. rapha's first incarnation of this garment from around three or four years ago (a pink version of which still resides amongst the waterproof section of my wardrobe) consisted of a thicker, and arguably more waterproof, lined fabric which occupied a not inconsiderable proportion of one of those three rear pockets. this new, lighter fabric all but disappears into the depths of a similarly sized repository on the back of a sportwool or lycra jersey. this obviously fits well with rapha's intended usage factor. the fit is better than that ageing pink version too - it's a progress thing.
the zip follows the, by now, rapha trademark of being offset from centre, the tail flap is long enough to cover the tail feathers when on the drops and there are reflective strips and logo in case surrounding or impending traffic didn't quite catch the orangeness on first approach. altogether, the rapha stowaway (also available in black or misty blue) ticks the appropriate boxes, except that i have undergone at least 70km of pain and suffering in the cold and wet, just to make sure.
rapha's stowaway jacket is available in sizes extra small all the way up to xxl, obviously becoming slightly less stowable at each stage, at an unchanged cost from 2008 of £175 ($290). perhaps more than you'd thought of paying for a so called showerproof jacket but it does do more than it says on the tin.
posted on monday 9 march 2009
..........................................................................................................................................................................................................focus variado expert
uk online retailer wiggle has an exclusive deal to sell german manufacturer focus' bikes to buyers in the uk. while focus supply frames to the milram team, wiggle have recently concluded a deal to supply nicole cooke's team with focus bikes for the forthcoming season. however, both teams will be riding the finest of focus carbon: at the other end of the road price range is the variado expert, a somewhat bizarre name for a bicycle, but available at a rather attractive cost.
at a couple of hundred pounds shy of a thousand, does the variado benefit from german expertise, providing a fine introduction to the world of road riding? wiggle very kindly sent an appropriately sized machine on holiday to islay for a few weeks to allow me to find out. for the full story read on...
posted on sunday 8 march 2009
..........................................................................................................................................................................................................does it have to cost this much?
now, lest i have the finger of hypocrisy levelled at me, please try and read all the way to the bottom before answering or asking any questions.
just the other day i received an updated press release regarding the factor001 carbon bicycle currently under construction by beru f1 systems as the ultimate training bicycle the world has ever seen (notwithstanding the fact that i don't actually know of any other training bicycles in the world). as from march 11, a prototype of this machine will be on display at the science museum in london, in case you fancy a trip along to see what all the fuss is about: assuming you knew there was a fuss in the first place.
this machine has had formula one principles applied to it and will incorporate state of the art biometrics capable of collecting, collating and comparing data from the rider and bicycle. it should surprise you not at all that the cost of all this software, electronics and carbon fibre has a lengthy price tag, starting at just under £20,000 (approx $28,000) and heading ever northwards as the optional extras accrue. both wheels are stopped via carbon ceramic brakes (!), and i did point out to the originators that the uci, in their infinite wisdom, had not sanctioned these for competition use.
that, however, is of no consequence to beru systems, since the machine is not intended for use as a race machine. yes, at least twenty grand's worth of carbon and it can only be used for nipping to the shops or acquiring training data. how on earth any race bike is going to feel worthy after training on a factor001 would worry me greatly. but it also worries me greatly that the application of formula one principles to bicycles is happening at all. cervelo may be the first team to head in this general direction with their test team, but is it all too much and all too expensive?
having prefaced this article with the possibiity of being seen to be hypocritical: the post quite often reviews items that have hefty price tags, relatively speaking, such as lightweight wheels and derailleurs, rapha clothing and other such luxury items, but my main point here is not that cycling can be expensive, but does it actually have to be? it's one thing to have the income to spend substantial amounts on your obsession, another entirely to have similar degree of obsession but little or no income for even basic acquisitions.
there has been much said by many over the past few months, including on the post, about cycling becoming the new golf, not necessarily a comparison i find sits comfortably on my saddle. even on islay, the cost of membership at machrie is around £300 (approx $420), a fee i am reliably informed is peanuts compared to many larger clubs; at turnberry, it can cost as much for one round. our local golf professional on islay charges about £50 per lesson. i'm not sure i'd want cycling to go that way, except that in some areas, it already has. i am aware that all stuff costs money, including bicycles, about which in the current financial climate little can be done.
crammed into thewashingmachinepost bikeshed at the moment, is a focus variado expert on test from wiggle, the cheapest road bike i could find from the focus range. and while it appeared on the wiggle site for £629 ($886) at the time it turned up, it is currently listed at £809 ($1140). the review of this bike will follow very soon, but the price of admission is still well above the amount many can afford to pay. of course, this is not the fault of either wiggle or focus, but the advent of such as the factor001 could be seen to exert upward pressure on the bottom end. cheaper bikes can be had: second-hand is always available, and there are cheaper machines than the focus, but i can't say that i've noticed the continued development purveyed by the entire cycle industry has necessarily led to lower prices. it's possible to grab a supermarket mountain bike for around fifty quid, but if you've read of cycling plus editor rob spedding's experiences with just such a bicycle in the current issue, cheap really is cheap; and a road bike it is not.
it is likely a thoroughly galling experience to read of the culture of pain and suffering in these very pixels, in rouleur (a bit pricier than the monthlies), and the usual suspects, knowing that while the passion is willing, the pennies are missing. and much as i'd love to have a solution to this dilemma up my rapha softshell sleeve, i'm afraid that is not the case; it is my experience that most of the clothing, components and bicycles currently available are justifiably worth the money being charged. it's just that i worry that being a roadie doesn't seem as financially accessible as it did when i joined the club - and that was less than twenty years ago.
could we be in danger of creating an inadvertant elite while excluding the youth that cycling will need to progress?
posted on saturday 7 march 2009
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