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entertained

it was robert millar (pippa york) who first highlighted the proposition that competitive cycling was simply another branch of the entertainment industry. ok, it possibly deserves greater approbation than does britain's got talent, or 'death in paradise', but ultimately, all forms of cycle sport (and sport in general) exist for our entertainment, whether or not that particular aim was present at the point of inception. were that not the case, not only would it be unlikely we'd have access to live broadcasts spanning several hours, nor would there be any incentive for commercial concerns to spend lavishly to have their brand featured on cycle jerseys or cooling pods on formula one race cars.

of course, within sport in general, there is no equality; placing a logo on the jersey of even one of cycle sport's top and most successful teams costs a great deal less than a far smaller logo on max verstappen's company car. this disparity is based on the notional difference in popularity of differing sporting endeavours, resulting in a wide variety of tv coverage and where that coverage is broadcast. we are all well aware that cycling has been handed over to a single subscription service at dramatically increased cost, while the likes of formula one is still paid lip service on terrestrial tv as well as the nation's principal satellite broadcaster.

there is, of course, an inherent conundrum in such an inequitous situation: greater television coverage is very likely to result in a greater number of viewers, meaning that minority sports, several of which have been relegated to subscription streaming, will probably struggle for ever to achieve the viewing figures enjoyed by tennis, motor-racing, football and cricket, to name a few. but irrespective of this wide variance in popularity, it hardly denies that all comprise the panoply of entertainment available across the world. granted, many cycling devotees will struggle to comprehend the entertainment value of sports such as darts, snooker and golf, but just like beauty, entertainment is apparently confined to the eyes of the beholder.

however, though we are frequently fed youtube videos and online articles attesting to the joys experienced by many of cycle sport's better known participants, it's unlikely that many entered the arena, secure in the knowledge that a worldwide audience of enthusiasts would find their competitive ministrations brimming with entertainment value. aside from the desire and ability to earn a living from racing bicycles, there presumably has to be an inherent or cultivated competitive urge, expressed by the need or desire to beat their fellow competitors. augmenting a natural ability by means of state-of-the-art nutritional and training techniques, the immediate focus is unlikely to centre around how much interest is fostered in the apprehension of the innocent bystander.

i might illustrate this apparent dilemma by comparing it to my own participation in music-making. though i voluntarily play bass drum and occasionally snare drum in the community pipe band, i do not particularly care for the sound of bagpipes. however, i am acutely aware of the alleged entertainment value gained by the majority when listening to our public recitals. but perhaps more pertinently, the playing of a drumset alongside guitars, accordion and fiddle, which is purely geared towards musical entertainment, an aspiration of which i am acutely aware. sadly, the music which forms the greater part of our set-list is very definitely not the sort that i would listen to on a voluntary basis. however, it has been pointed out that the music in which i would happily and fully immerse myself, would be lucky to achieve an audience of one.

i have therefore knowingly subsumed the search for creativity to that of bland entertainment, a situation which is common to many musicians.

but that brings to light the undeclared question, are cyclesport's finest practitioners aware of the need for entertainment, their part in its creation, and the possible occasional capitulation to make it so? in conversation with the mighty dave-t on sunday, he pointed out that tadej's consistent habit of winning virtually every race he enters, was seriously diluting the enjoyment factor. in essence, it's the same in cyclocross; if mathieu van der poel is on the start line, even the most hardened cyclocross fan is well aware that he will romp off into the distance and win, something the dutchman accomplished with a 100% record across the 2025/26 season. unless you're a fully signed-up member of the mvdp fan club, the sporting lustre emerges somewhat tarnished.

of course, one would hardly expect either of the two named combatants to restrict their winning abilities simply to satisfy the presumed expectations of the cognoscenti, but do we believe that this is a situation of which they're aware? after all, if a jazz drummer is willing to perform in a dance band with a predilection for irish songs played in 2/4, could tadej and mathieu not find other means of enjoying the race without necessarily being first across the line?

just a thought.

tuesday 10 march 2026

the dilemma

i believe we have previously discussed the fickleness of the average weather forecast, or perhaps more accurately, the innacuracy of many a forecast. on occasion, that can alter the trajectory of the entire bike ride, or, very occasionally, seriously affect the safety of going out at all. a number of years ago, myself and a sunday ride colleague headed out to complete the usual parcours, well aware that the windspeed was bordering on the idiotic. however, with the first part of the ride being effectively circular, alongside a forecast that inferred the windspeed would gradually drop as the day proceeded, we decided to hedge our bets.

that opening circuit took us inland, along relatively sheltered singletrack roads, where we figured that, if the wind proved overly oppressive, it would be a simple matter of heading home from the turn point. however, should matters progress as defined, we would simply continue along the expected route on course for lunch at debbie's. at the end of the first loop, the wind did appear to have decreased, so continue we did. unfortunately, on leaving debbie's for the homeward jaunt, things had gone awry, and the wind gusts had increased to 100kph, a speed that, i'm sure you'll agree, is definitely over the safety barrier. it was doable, but not very pleasant.

the bbc forecast for the hebrides on sunday proposed a light breeze, with average south easterly windspeeds of around 28kph gusting to 40kph. those are conditions that would generally be considerably less than remarkable; 28kph is scarcely worth mentioning. unfortunately, the reality was dramatically different, with the headwind on the section between coull farm and kilchoman a major slog into winds that we both agreed were perilously close to galeforce.

however, as we approached that particular stretch of road, we noted another cyclist up ahead, his loose apparel and single rear pannier immediately classifying him as a touring visitor.

with our greater experience of riding in such conditions, we caught up and passed relatively easily, and not to be perceived as ignorant, we both bid him good day as we rode through. the dilemma, as alluded to in today's heading, is whether we should have done more? should one of us, in fact, have ridden alongside for a few hundred metres, introducing ourselves and asking if he was heading our way? that would have allowed us to alert him to the hospitality, toasties and excellent coffee to be experienced at debbie's, precisely where we were in the process of heading. but then, the very fact that here he was, a lone cyclist on the outer edge, bordering the north atlantic ocean, was perhaps an indication that he was quite happy with his own company, and the intervention of two, manifestly quicker, yet unknown cyclists, might not be the way he had hoped to spend his sunday at the centre of the universe.

i'm sure we've all experienced occasions when unwanted company has forced itself upon what we'd hoped was going to be several dozen kilometres of relatively quiet reflection. and though body language would soon provide the answer to the hypothetical question, it's a tad embarrassing to be shunned by a fellow rider when all you'd hoped to do was offer a hearty island welcome.

we had half-hoped that he would tag onto the back of our very short train into the headwind, but having to stop for an oncoming car when passing kilchoman distillery, we could see no sign of the fellow, suspecting that he'd possibly turned right, either to kilchoman beach, or possibly the ruins of kilchoman church. conversation over coffee and cheese and onion toasties digressed far away from the unknown cyclist whom we may have unfortunately slighted, but on the homeward jaunt, we saw him again, emerging from bridgend hotel, where he had possibly enjoyed food and a coffee. waving and hailing once again, we hoped that we had remedied any inadvertent offence we may have incurred earlier, but fine hostelry that bridgend hotel undeniably is, the coffee and toasties available at debbie's would surely have knocked any bridgend offering into a cocked hat?

a dilemma for sure.

monday 9 march 2026

who, me?

i am not a frequenter of cycling forums, if for no other reason than they would seem to confirm one of two things; either i am hopelessly ill-informed when it comes to velocipedinal matters, or i'm simply not 'professional' enough in my approach to cycling. worst case scenario, perhaps both are true. however, while searching for information on a subject far removed from that which i learned, i came across a post on an un-named (by me) cycling forum, in which a rider queried his pre-supposed peers on a dilemma facing his immediate bike-related future. ending the details of how the described state of affairs had impacted his day-to-day cycling, he genuinely enquired: "I could shutup and be glad I have a really nice bike."

i can imagine that many owners of less salubrious machinery may be inclined to agree with that last query, and i cannot deny that i have a certain sympathy with that response. in truth, i think way too many of us are inclined to aim for the sort of up-to-date mechanical perfection enjoyed by the professional classes, despite the knowledge that this is achieved by riding the very latest bicycling technology, maintained by professional mechanics who are expected to be pin-sharp down to the most minute of details.

professional race bikes are fettled to within a centimetre of their existence, ahead of every single day of racing; any component that fails an arbitrary, yet realistic standard, is immediately replaced, invariably at the expense of the component sponsor. when you or i return from a rain-inflected bike ride, there's a better than evens chance that the bike is popped into the bike shed, while we opt for a warm and soothing shower. maybe the bike gets washed and dried later, but more often than not, it doesn't. so next time that duty is demanded, it's already in less than pristine condition. yet, watch any professional cyclocross race, and the bikes retrieved from the pits after a couple of laps often look better than those on the shop floor of your nearest bike shop. even the amber sidewalls on the tubulars are immaculate.

our big problem is that we secretly think of ourselves as the equals of the pros, that, if we'd really wanted to, a contract would have been ours for the taking. and that despite being bereft of the support infrastructure from which they benefit, and usually including the notable fact that our watts, distances and speeds are but a mere percentage of theirs. the professionals, by the very definition of the word, are being paid to ride their bicycles, while we, on the other hand, are paying to ride ours. were that the only concern i harboured about my, now in doubt, attitude to cycling, i think i could probably live with that, but once down the rabbit hole of the cycling forums, its seems there was a great deal more about which to worry.

my specialized crux features an 11-36 cassette, because it's a cyclocross bike; tibor, cameron, wout, mathieu and thibau would scarcely be seen in public with even that many teeth on the biggest sprocket, but certainly not with the 40 or 42 that i could have fitted. i might be of advancing years and a bit iffy in the cardio department, but i still have my self-respect. the ritchey, when the gears and cables have been refitted, benefits from an 11-32 cassette, the latter number because it allows me to reach the summit of the col du rspb on the same day that i began the ascent. but if ever the coffee stop conversation turns to gear inches, i'd have to make my excuses and visit the toilet. despite marrying the cassette to a 36/52 record chainset, not once in the many years i have possessed the groupset, have i ever sat down and calculated the set of gear inches at my disposal.

yet, while rifling through many of the queries, responses, advice and plain chatter, i discovered more than one instance where the rider had created a spreadsheet of gear ratios to which they might refer when choosing their next cassette, or options for different rides. is that what the professionals do? are they not simply bid to ride whatever the mechanic fitted that very morning? quickstep's patrick lefevre once said that he didn't pay his riders to be comfortable, so one would seriously question their options when it came to gear ratios. but to learn that mere amateurs like myself (though possibly fitter and faster) drill down to such minutiae, has me now questioning whether i'm taking this as seriously as i ought to be?

and now that i come to think of it, will my admitting to such laxity mean that my reader thinks a great deal less of me? have i simply skated through my cycling career, such as it is, on whims and a prayer, when i ought to have been making more informed choices as a result of detailed research?

actually, who cares?

sunday 8 march 2026

escalation

i detailed, just over a week ago, how my negligent attitude to the ritchey logic road bike in thewashingmachinepost bikeshed had resulted in an inability to change gear due to what appeared to be a sticky cable wire on the rear gear mech. diagnosing that it was the rear mech cable that was the principal culprit, led me to order a campagnolo mechanical cable set; if one cable has effectively seized, i surmised, the chances are the others won't be far behind. and since the cables have not been replaced for several years, it seemed the prudent thing to do. thankfully, the logic does not subscribe to the idiotic idea of stuffing all the cables inside the head tube before routing them internally to their various endpoints. yes, a lack of visible cables offers a pleasing aesthetic, but makes not one iota of sense whatsoever.

none of us ride fast enough to achieve the reputed aerodynamic benefits, but if you're willing to suffer the slings, arrows and substantial costs of replacement, then you only have yourselves to blame.

however, the cunning plan was to remove the two gear cables and both brake cables on friday afternoon, following my return from debbie's, in preparation for replacement tactics this morning before lunch. obviously enough, this requires not only removal of the inner wires, but also removal of the bar tape to gain access to the outer cables which would also need replaced. unfortunately, i came unstuck at the very first hurdle, when attempting to remove the offending rear meach wire. while it was easily eased from its frame fitments, it transpires that the sticking point that was preventing any semblance of gear changing, was the minute length of gear wire inserted into the cable adjuster at the back of the mech. despite having loosened the cable pinch-bolt on the underside of the mech, the wire, point blank, refused to move, despite having been drowned in wd40 and wrangled to within an inch of its life with a pair of pliers.

to add insult to injury, the cable adjuster seems to have embedded itself in the threaded portion into which it screws in the mech. turning by hand or with pliers simply resulted in the adjuster staying put, so it appears i am unable to even attempt to replace it with a new one, as the the threads have apparently stripped. the only sensible solution, given the state of play, would appear to be replacement of the gear mech.

things are starting to look expensive.

because removing the rear mech meant splitting the chain, which campagnolo recommend is not refitted with the existing rivet, but by installing a special set of links. but to be honest, the chain was in need of replacement in any case, so despite yet more expense, it was going to have to be done at some time anyway. with the chain removed, spinning the cranks highlighted an audible roughness in the bottom bracket bearings which, on campagnolo record, super record and chorus are affixed to the cranks themselves; if i'd gone this far, it would surely be a good idea to replace said bearings while working on the bicycle's nether regions.

chains and bearing replacement are part and parcel of the velocipedinal life, but having to purchase a new gear mech is entirely down to negligence by yours truly, something that could surely have been avoided had i made regular checks on the bicycle even when, with good reason, it wasn't being used for a few months. to be honest, the cassette has also seen better days, but there are limits. and while i was in close proximity to the chainset, i checked that the pedals hadn't seized in the cranks; thankfully not.

both brake calipers were easily removed, but by golly is there a whole lot of crud embedded therewith, crud which is going to take strenuous efforts to remove. and, of course, i'll need new bar tape after i've removed all the old cable outers from the handlebars.

in short, there is a great deal to be said for preventative maintenance, even if only to keep my bank manager happy.

saturday 7 march 2026

good cycling taughted here; betterer indoors.

training was never a practice in which i indulged, save for a few weeks prior to riding hot chillee's londres-paris in 2017. not convinced that i might possess the stamina to undertake 500km in three days, i embarked on a series of saturday rides to slowly increase both distance and speed, while simultaneously reviewing the advice provided by a training manual that had been sent to washingmachinepost headquarters. as it transpired, both the highlighted purposes were eventually achieved; i reached paris in one piece, at the same average speed as my portion of the peloton, and i was able to offer a cogent and practicable review of said training manual.

however, as an avowed non-racer, there was never any real call for structured training in my own version of velocipedinal life, so i was predominantly comfortable keeping pace with my sunday morning colleagues and occasionally reaching any given summit comfortably ahead of those selfsame colleagues. despite both of those abilities having effectively fallen by the wayside, i still feel no compulsion to train, in order to restore any aspects of that former life.

however, the same cannot be said for those colleagues. though at least one has abandoned all thoughts of world domination by selling his wattbike to one of the more intrepid sunday morning pelotonese, otheres have rarely demonstrated such perspicacity.

yet, despite residing on an island with relatively light traffic, and an entire network of singletrack roads which rarely suffer from vehicle overpopulation, several have succumbed to the enticements of zwift and strava, even when doing so demonstrates manifest illogicality. there are verifiable instances of the indoor realm proving preferential to riding out of doors on warm, sunny days, competing against virtual cyclists in foreign lands without ever leaving the claustrophobic atmosphere of a back garden shed. aside from any other potential misgivings, that is the primary focus of my distaste with the online platform, a distaste, it must be said, that is rarely shared by its adherents.

but, if we're willing to recognise that commerce of any flavour bears an intrinsic need to reproduce and expand in limitless fashion, it should come as little suprise that, in this respect at least, zwift is no different. the inherent contention appears to be that, now that the claimed one million active subscribers have embraced the smart turbo trainer and affixed ipads or large format tv screens, they must surely be clamouring for new, online experiences, confirming, if nothing else, that indoor cycling has achieved the dubious honour of having become an end in itself, as oppose to the means to an end for which it was reputedly intended.

to return to my erstwhile londres-paris training schedule, the contemporary alternative would surely have been to set myself up in the sitting room and pretend to ride 50km before breakfast, prior to travelling south, intent on pedalling from real london to real paris? in little less than two decades, that has changed dramatically; if evidence for the prosecution were required, might i draw your attention to the fact that rapha allows its festive 500 participants to undertake the 'challenge' on zwift. where once training on zwift was the precursor to an actual, outdoor event, now the event(s) often take place indoors.

so where does it go from here, because there's not a chance in flanders that zwift is going to rely on standing still? an e-mail newsletter from fast talk laboratories (ftl) which arrived in my thursday inbox, hardly gives rise to optimism for the platform's non-adherents. as an aside, i should declare my suspicions over conversing about intangible pixelations as if they were real. the latest podcast from ftl brings discussions with the platform's (hard to believe that such a word has traction within the world of cycling) product leaders, investigating "structured workouts, social rides, and legit competition, and how personalisation is becoming the next big leap". and there's rarely a facet of computer-based endeavour these days that has not succumbed to the addition of those two letters: a.i.

the emergence of nvidia's biggest area of income never fails to remind me of the arrival of digital technology in the 1970s, when even guitar amplifier manufacturers were keen to add the word digital to their products, even if subsequently admitting that the circuitry was entirely analogue. artificial intelligence applied to zwift apparently promises "smarter recommendations, better guidance, and a platform (that word again) that helps you know when to push and when to back off." presumably aspects of training that were entirely ignored when training was achieved in the great outdoors at the behest of real people?

artificial intelligence may be the young upstart of the 21st century's third decade, but i do often wonder whtever happened to conventional intelligence? of course, those wonderings are not solely confined to the velocipedinal realm.

friday 6 march 2026

obvious

several years ago, a neighbour of mine called to ask if i would check out a pre-loved road bike he'd just purchased from a local seller. he appeared to be under the impression that he'd been done, and sold a bicycle on which the gear levers had been removed. as curious to find out what that looked like as i was to offer assistance, i popped round to his house to find him in the garden quizzically staring at a bicycle, outfitted with shimano tiagra gears. i wrested the bike from his grasp, spun the pedals and flipped the gear lever to learn of the assumed problem. unfortunately for his ego, the gears changed impeccably, with no untoward adjustments in evidence.

handing the bicycle back, i could only advise that all seemed to be well, and he was ok to go for a ride. his astonishment, however, seemed only to increase, immediately querying how i had managed to move the chain both up and down the cassette without difficulty? it transpired that he was even more old skool than yours truly, expecting the gear levers to have been affixed to the downtube, hence the reason he had thought them to be missing in action. to an extent, you can sort of see his point, though i did admonish him for not having kept up with technological change.

yet a related problem was once endemic for the former bike hire outlet at bowmore post office in the first decade of this century. for more than just a single season, the proprietor was fielding phone calls from hirers who had snapped the chains, usually well outside walking distance from home. on investigation, i learned that the hirers, despite being aboard derailleur-geared bicycles, were of the impression that they ought to back-pedal slightly as they changed gear. those of us who consider ourselves to be members of the velocipedinal cognoscenti, will probably be aware that that so doing can cause any amount of untold havoc for a bicycle chain, and offered the very reason why so many chains were breaking.

but from whence came the notion that back pedalling was an integral part of changing gear? releasing pressure by means of backpedalling slightly was certainly customary on a sturmey-archer hub gear equipped bicycle, but almost all of the hirers were way too young to have ever experienced such gearing, and i would consider it a bit of a worry if backpedalling while changing gear had entered common lore.

i bore all the above in mind when coming across a global cycling network (gcn) youtube video the other day, entitled 'gear changing made easy!' the immediate reaction was to laugh out loud, while wondering how low gcn were prepared to stoop in the desire to create regular videos; but a moment's consideration of the potential difficulties engendered by bicycle gearing systems thankfully stifled that laugh (see first anecdote above). i have never purchased a bicycle from a bona-fide bike shop, so i have no idea if it is a commonality for staff to explain today's gear systems to any actual or potential customers.

there are enough disparagements of the arrogant superiority of certain members of the bicycle retail trade, that it would hardly surprise me, or others, if explanations were not part of the deal in some places. large wads of cash being exchanged in return for eywateringly expensive carbon fibre does not guarantee that the purchaser has the faintest idea how di2 or sram wireless actually works, nor indeed which particular sprocket they ought to have selected at any given part of a bike ride. if i had a fiver for everytime i've been asked that question, i'd have a fleet of limited edition colnagos sat in the bike shed, just for show.

i've generally recommended that when pedaliing is hard (uphill or into a headwind), the chain should be as close to the frame as possible, and when it's easier (downhill or tailwind), the chain ought to be as far from the frame as necessary. unfortunately, such an explanation often seems to fall on deaf ears; or at least uncomprehending ears. though my days of group riding seem to be mostly behind me, in recent times i have often found myself behind a colleague riding in the big ring up front, and one of the very small sprockets at the rear; even uphill. again, i have kindly attempted to point out the error of their ways, but within a few hundred metres, they've usually returned to old (bad) habits.

and then there's the vicissitudes of the three major componentry purveyors: all three are different, though the advent of electric buttons has evened out some of the more arcane differences. i still maintain that campagnolo's is the simplest to comprehend, given that they provide a separate lever or button for up and down. granted, shimano sort of do the same, but it's a tad unintuitive to push the brake lever sideways to change gear, while trying to avoiding simultaneously applying the brakes (i have seen it done). in which case, videos such as the cited gcn example, are probably worth their weight in gold (even at today's prices).

but with no disrespect to the global cycling network, the final part of the jigsaw would doubtless be the great unwashed discovering their youtube channel in the first place.

simplicity, it would seem, is in the lever of the beholder.

thursday 5 march 2026

embarrassment

today's monologue will be a tad shorter than most due to several circumstances outwith my control, a state of affairs that bears remarkable similarity to the event ticket i purchased at teatime yesterday afternoon. when i was younger, proximity of any event to the opportunity to acquire an entry ticket, was (or at least, seemed) a great deal closer. of course, if, like yours truly, you're not exactly on the ball, so to speak, lastminute.com takes on a whole new perspective.

purely by accident, in october last year, i learned that keyboard player extraordinaire, rick wakeman, an integral part of the progressive rock band with which i was besotted when a mere teenager, was to play a concert in glasgow's royal concert hall. though i have frequently regaled innocent bystanders that i once attended a concert by the police at glasgow's long-departed and much lamented apollo theatre, where tickets were £1 each, and you could sit wherever you liked, ticket prices are several magnitudes higher nowadays. that said, the wakeman tickets were hardly exorbitant, and the opportunity to combine an eyetest at specsavers in sauchiehall street, was a great convenience, particularly on learning of the concert mere weeks before it took place.

and because i bought an online ticket from the concert hall, as is common nowadays, i have had my e-mail address added to their mailing list, meaning that i received an e-mail in december, advising that jethro tull will perform on 20 april, and i then learned that the current version of wakeman's erstwhile employers, yes, were to play the same venue on the following day. now for a wide variety of reasons, i opted not to purchase either ticket, at least in part because i was very unsure of my availability almost five months in advance. all manner of stuff could get in the way, and spending nigh-on £80 on a ticket i may be unable to use, seemed the very definition of folly.

but to return to the purchase of which i informed at the outset, it will take place in glasgow's kelvingrove park on 13 december this year, a full ten months away. believe me, i have no idea what i'll be doing next week, let alone in the second week of december on the approach to christmas. however, the very nice people at british cycling, to whom i have paid my annual dues for more years than i can remember, and for which i have received very little, if anything in return, sent me an e-mail yesterday, offerg the opportunity to pre-order an event ticket with a 10% member discount for, believe it or not, a uci world cup cyclocross race. not just in the uk, but in glasgow's fair city and at a location that's relatively easy to reach from any city centre accommodation.

i'm so glad i actually opened an e-mail that claimed, mere weeks after the 2026 'cross world championship and the subsequent end of the 25/26 season cross is coming. all i need now is for the ferry to sail on saturday 12 december.

wednesday 4 march 2026

old

in about a week's time, i will address a journalism class at the local secondary school, principally on the subject of page design, of which i am an acknowledged local expert, having worked with adobe's indesign page layout programme since it was introduced in 1999. prior to that i'd spent around four years working with the previous market-leader, quarkxpress and before that, several years using the now defunct adobe pagemaker, the predecessor to indesign. for those to whom the foregoing means absolutely nothing, all the above software allowed/allows any designer the ability to layout magazine or newspaper pages by combining material from other sources, such as photoshop and illustrator, in both of which i am also highly experienced.

though i harbour suspicions that the course is less about actual journalism than an extension of the english class, having seen some layout abominations over the years, i'm happy to attempt to forestall continuance of that particular trend. that said, i have prepared a few handouts, one of which features the work of david carson by way of spreads from the infamous 90s publication, raygun. for those who are not of a certain age, or aesthetic persuasion, raygun's layouts really pushed the boundaries, printing an interview with (i believe, bryan ferry), entirely in the wingdings typeface (you'll have to look that one up). another featured text which continued, line, by line, over the edge and onto the next page. many a fanzine owes a debt of gratitude to david carson. as does rapha, which issued a so-called capsule collection last year, designed by mr carson.

and just as velominati has curated a series of rules applicable to the velocipedinal realm, i too have compiled a list of layout and typography rules, the highlight of which is not to double-space after a full stop. the final rule, however, makes it plain that none of the preceding recommendations are written in stone, but that it's prudent that students learn of these rules prior to breaking them.

this love of the written word and its tangible assertions, is principally the reason why thewashingmachinepost has remained largely unaltered throughout the thirty years of its online existence, a kilometre-stone it has reached as of the beginning of march 2026. while the bulk of the online cycling world has adopted podcasts, vlogs, youtube reviews and all manner of social media interjections, the post has remained tethered to my original ideal. in fact, if i had a printing press, a supply contract with wiggins-teape and a comprehensive distribution network, rather than wrangle pixels, i'd be publishing something resembling a magazine/newspaper. that would allow me to practise the indesign skills of which i boasted several paragraphs above.

in a sense, this returns me to the protestations i outlined in yesterday's episode; just because blogging has been appropriated by substack (which, by all accounts, is today's equivalent of wordpress, doesn't mean i have to like it. i can but admit that while my spelling and grammar are competently functional, and the desire to employ little-known or used words remains steadfast, it's my limited ability with html and css that has enforced the admittedly outdated format achieved by these black and yellow pixels.

during the last thirty years (a point at which i had once promised myself i would gracefully retire) i have dipped a toe in the worlds of the podcast and video review, but neither seemed like a good fit, and took a lot longer than these inveterate monologues. in that sense, i have returned to my roots; the early days of the post consisted of my own views of velocipedinal matters, before the cycling industry took interest and showered me with products to review. however, partly due to my remote location, awkward transport restrictions and covid, the industry and i seem to have arrived at the selfsame compromise. in these more straightened times, what a rapha marketing executive referred to as the big names are at the top of a pruned tree of review opportunities; a one-man-band, such as myself became reduced to the crumbs, but at more or less the point at which i'd decided i had tired somewhat of an admittedly welcome but constant receipt of jerseys, bibs, shoes, jacket, bicycles and componentry; though i like to believe i harbour an extensive vocabulary, over the course of two and a half decades, i fear i had run out of superlatives.

there are only so many things you can say about a cycle jersey.

thewashingmachinepost appeared ahead of the appellation, weblog (jorn barger, december 1997) and its shorter form, blog (peter merholz, april 1999), both of which i was inclined to take as insulting; what i thought i was publishing was a website, a word catalogued by the oxford english dictionary in january 1993. there are many cycling blogs that appeared in the years immediately following the birth of the post (which had appeared in print in islay's local newspaper a few years previously), few, if any of which are still around today. to the best of my knowledge, thewashingmachinepost is the longest running and surviving cycling blog in the world, knowledge of which engenders a certain level of self-satisfaction, but surely demonstrates that everyone's got to be somewhere.

i'm not particularly bothered about my site statistics which, i freely admit, i never-ever check. even if there was only you reading (and that might well be the case, for all i know) it would make no difference whatsoever to what you read on an almost daily basis. i can only say that i'm grateful to all those who have read over the past thirty years, and the companies which have been kind enough to supply me with review materials, and those who, occasionally, still do. something that might impose a sense of delight or utter dread, depending on your point of view, the post currently has no sell by date. no doubt i'll have to stop at some time, but i'm already looking forward to the 31st birthday next year.

and to the park lane, london, hotel which contacted me in 1998 to enquire about the cost of two industrial washingmachines and a tumble drier, i promise i'll get back to you soon.

tuesday 3 march 2026