now it's millar time

bit like london buses this column. you get nothing for ages then they all arrive at once. however, this is really important stuff and relates to one of the post's heroes, the great robert millar, on which there is much a plenty info on other pages on this site.
it's now nearly twenty years since millar's fourth place and king of the mountains jersey in the 1984 tour de france, still the highest placed brit (though those of us north of the border are happier that robert is a scotsman) outstripping any of the in-betweens, pretty much restricted to chris boardman if we're honest. in honour of this achievement, a man by the name of jeremy wilson, accompanied by two cycling fanatics will be wearing the archetypal peugeot checkerboard jersey, as worn by millar at his best. the jersey is available from prendas ciclismo for a minimal £35 and all those of us who feel that robert's success ought to be visually recognised through this year's tour are encouraged to purchase one of these jerseys and wear it at every opportunity during july (and beyond for that matter). pity we can't have them done like the current crop of football jerseys, with millar's name on the back.
anyway, assuming you are of a similar mind to myself (millar was the guy who got me into this cycling thing in the first place), i would suggest that you either log on to prendas, or telephone them and order a jersey. for every order received relating to this campaign, prendas will donate some pennies to the dave rayner fund which helps young cyclists gain a foothold in the great world of european competitive cycling.
if you'd like more details on the campaign, e-mail backingbob@yahoo.co.uk
maybe if you can't afford a jersey, prendas could come up with some retro peugeot caps that we could wear while we're at work - would look ok at the ileach office, but perhaps not in a city centre accountants office.
and now that this public service message has effectively ended, this would be a good time to go and check out the 'bob' pages listed to your left. any comments are more than welcome. e-mail here. and very many thanks to john gardiner for alerting me to this in the first place.

this website got its name because scotland's graeme obree built his championship winning 'old faithful' using bits from a defunct washing machine.

on a slightly different note, my regular reader will have noted the addition of a 'colnago c40' rollover to the left. this contains a reprint of a recent article featured in cycle sport magazine, which they were very kind to let me present here (because i'm a colnago geek) there are also links to cycling weekly reviews of the colnago c50 and colnago dream b-stay. i have also found an excellent review of the colnago c40hp here

i have been asked to add the following link to the post by wheelygoodcause. they're a cycling club dedicated to arranging epic rides for charity and do not charge charities for the pleasure. They ride because they want to. here's the link.
www.wheelygoodcause.com

Remember, you can still read the review of 'the dancing chain' the utterly excellent book on the history of the derailleur bicycle by clicking here

any of the books reviewed on the washing machine post can probably be purchased from amazon.co.uk or amazon.com

as always, if you have any comments on this nonsense, please feel free to e-mail and thanks for reading.

this column almost never appears in the dead tree version of the ileach but appears, regular as clockwork on this website every two weeks. (ok so i lied) sometimes there are bits added in between times, but it all adds to the excitement.

on a completely unrelated topic, ie nothing to do with bicycles, every aspect of the washing machine post was created on apple macintosh powerbook g4, and imac computers, using adobe golive cs and adobe photoshop cs. needless to say it is also best viewed on an apple macintosh computer.