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it's only an excuse

we are now at the point of the year when the rain approaches the torrential (as it did for an hour or two on saturday night) and the wind is likely to upset my carefully coiffeured hairstyle while delaying forward progress on the bike to a greater degree than is truly desirable. but, odd though it may seem, i rather enjoy riding in such conditions; where's the point in having a wardrobe full of state-of-the-art waterproofs and denying yourself the opportunity to ride where and when they might prove their efficacy? the wind is something you either get used to, or you don't.

that saturday night rain was witnessed at first hand, involved as i was in playing bass drum with the community pipe band at a function in a local hostelry of fine repute. sadly, i was not clad in items from my extensive array of waterproofs. with the modus operandi of the community pipe band including teaching piping and drumming skills to the more junior members of the community, we recently replaced the large, ageing bass drum, with one of more compact proportions, one that might not only offer a lighter weight on the harness for smaller people, but also more favourable conditions for the elderly, such as myself.

however, any function, such as that taking place on saturday eve, is replete with extenuating circumstances, by which i refer to playing for ten minutes, then sitting around for an hour or so, before repeating the process but with a different selection of tunes. augment this with mildly oppressive heat in the function room, and the evening may have proved a smidgeon more onerous than had first been thought. such circumstances were quite possibly even harder for the pipers, though i'm somewhat loathe to apportion any hardship in their direction.

it's an old tradition.

but then arrived sunday morning and the usual early(ish) start to the velocipedinal day. while the forecast featured portents of lessening rainfall, it showed a similar diminution in the wind speed. as it transpired, neither turned out to be strictly true. the ride south west to debbie's for the grand départ was peppered with light showers and the wind direction, having changed since saturday, made the ride along uiskentuie strand a bit less alacritous than we'd hoped.

in keeping with the time of year and the likely onset of seasonal illnesses, the government has announced its intention to impose the 'flu jab' upon more children and adults than ever before. my understanding, however, was that the latter had to be 65, or over, before ministerial advice kicked in, which led to a raised eyebrow when one of the sunday morning peloton admitted to having received his jab on saturday. my surprise centred around the fact that this fellow is a long way from seeing his 65th birthday.

after saturday evening's heavy rainfall, portions of our sunday parcours were inflected with flooding caused by an overflowing from the roadside ditches. it's easy to blame the council for failing to carry out annual ditching procedures, which may indeed be true, but there's also the contention that we currently suffer from increased rainfall. that may well be the case, since much of the present day flooding was conspicuous by its absence over a decade ago.

but, as we turned at the flooded junction on the high road, to head back from whence we came, i noticed that i appeared to be pedalling as hard as i could, yet seemed to be dropping off the back with increased frequency. the fellow riding alongside and making better progress than yours truly, complained of having 'heavy legs' and a sore head, conditions that he was placing squarely at having received his 'flu jab on saturday. in that contention, he may well have been correct, but the more worrying notion was that i bore no reasonable excuse for my own tardiness on a bike capable of going a great deal faster.

in the spirit of jest, i suggested that my slowing progress may be due to the amount of water absorbed by my socks and shoes, while riding through the flooded portions of road at ill-advised speeds. the flaw in that excuse would surely be that all three others in the reduced peloton had done likewise. so i now find myself in the iniquitous and inescapable situation of needing a believable excuse for my lack of cycling performance, one that will not only be accepted by my riding colleagues, but one that i might actually believe myself.

and just in case the situation persists, i need an excuse that will bear regular repeating. it's going to be a long winter.

monday 7 october 2019

slings and arrows

in 2012, i paid my second visit to portland's fair city in oregon state, at which point i was loaned a beloved bicycle by james selman, that i might get about town under my own steam, without recourse to begging for lifts, or trying to make sense of the city's public transport system. even though i say so myself, i did rather well in keeping to the correct (but wrong) side of the road, until i turned into the road in which i was staying and realised that the car in the distance, heading in my direction, was on the same side as was i.

a few years past, while wending my merry way to debbie's for a bout of froth-supping and the ubiquitous double-egg roll, as i came round the blind corner at crosshouses, just a mile or so south of bridgend village, i was confronted by a car heading in my direction, but on my side of the road. after a brief moment considering "what's wrong with this picture?", i took evasive action and pulled to the opposite side of the road. unfortunately, having realised the error of their ways, those in the car did likewise, and i'd to quickly swerve back to my original trajectory. all this happened in a matter of seconds and due to other traffic, there was no time or opportunity to even visually remonstrate with the foreigners in the car.

sadly, this was not an isolated case; just past the foreland road-end, at yet another blind corner prior to the coal yard, all of us have, at one time or another, met cars cutting the corner by driving on the wrong side of the road. fortunately, none of us have ever been close enough to the corner to have been in any danger, but there's no saying that situation will last forever.

in my brief period in a previous life working for hertz car rental, a couple, having arrived from the united states into glasgow airport, collected their rental car and headed off towards glasgow city. unfortunately, either through jet lag, a momentary lapse of concentration, or just sheer stupidity, as they turned from the junction onto the main road, they looked left instead of right and were subsequently t-boned by a car travelling innocently in the right direction.

in common with the majority of american drivers, they had specified a car with auto transmission, the last of which they had just destroyed. they were then transported to prestwick airport to collect an automatic transmission car from there, but, believe it or not, they did exactly the same thing at prestwick and destroyed a second car. not only would hertz no longer rent them anything, but we advised the other car hire firms to refuse them too. i drove them and their luggage to the railway station and left them to their own devices.

though i've never made a complete study of the island's road infrastructure, it seems possible that there are as many single track roads as there are featuring two lanes. the latter, however, are not as wide as many similarly-laned roads on the mainland, so conjecture would have it that many a foreign or mainland driver has mistaken two lanes for one, despite the painted lines. i'd like to think that, as cyclists, we may be a tad more manoeuverable than speeding motorists, but there's little doubt that we're a great deal more vulnerable if it all goes badly wrong.

so, aside from honing our bike handling skills and keeping our eyes peeled at every stage of a bike ride, is anything being done by the local council to mitigate the situation? it's not even a possible predicament confined to the summer season; with currently, nine operating malt whisky distilleries, visits from foreign motorists tend to continue throughout the year. port ellen distillery will re-open probably in 2021, while another is planned to open in close proximity to laphroaig probably by 2025, so the problem is unlikely to go away anytime soon.

in recent months, small, spray-painted arrows appeared at apparently random points on the two-lane roads leading between bowmore, bruichladdich and south to port charlotte. a matter of a week or so ago, those arrows were replaced by much larger and much whiter arrows, forecfully pointing out in which direction motorists ought to be travelling. these are placed close to road junctions, lest these overseas visitors turn onto the wrong side of the road.

i contacted argyll and bute's press office to ask if these arrows were confined to the hallowed isle, or if they were to be seen elsewhere in the region? according to an a&b spokesperson, these have long featured on two-lane roads on the mainland and are also to be seen on bute and mull. the directive, to reduce injuries and deaths from foreign motorists inadvertently driving on the wrong side of the road, is apparently part of a scottish government transport initiative, which commenced in the 1990s. i have so far received no reply to my query as to why it has then taken more than twenty-years to reach islay.

now the only danger is avoiding cyclists such as yours truly, who stop to take photos of the arrows.

sunday 6 october 2019

are we doing it wrong?

fausto coppi allegedly advised that the three things most likely to improve riding performance and ability, were (to paraphrase) "ride your bike, ride your bike, and, ride your bike". common lore would have it that il campionissimo indulged in just such a simplistic training regime, one that brought many a victory and the adulation of the tifosi. in the 1950s, it would appear that the majority of his peers adopted a similar manifesto, one that ultimately led to 'getting the miles in' being the mantra espoused by pretty much every club cyclist in the land.

even eddy merckx effectively subscribed to similar thoughts, evidence for which can be gleaned from his oft mentioned quotes: "ride as much or as little, or as long or as short as you feel. but ride." and "don't buy upgrades, ride up grades.", the latter sounding somewhat contrived and just a smidgeon on the twee side, but obviously considered sufficiently quotable to be found at almost every turn. mind you, the cannibal rather marked his card by mentioning "cyclists live with pain. If you can't handle it, you will win nothing".

fausto never mentioned pain.

it may have been olympic pursuit gold medallist, chris boardman, who finally turned the tide, concentrating less on quantity and more on quality. thus it became less about how many kilometres were covered in a 'training' session, and more about the number of hours ridden and the intensity produced during those hours. the latter could be seen to have been adopted by both 'peloton' and 'zwift', whose training programmes often seem constructed to favour those with less than enough time to take a real bike from the bikeshed and go for a ride somewhere.

however, though the modern-way might be a tad more concentrated and scientific than advised by fausto and eddy, they're still based on the premise that 'practice makes perfect'. on the brink of professional stardom, boardman supposedly enquired of robert millar, what steps he should take to improve his hill-climbing prowess, to which the scotsman replied, "find some hills and ride up them quickly". that may or may not be factually correct, but either way, we're still talking about some form of repetitive practice, purely on the basis that more of a good thing must be better.

but what if that's wrong? what if that's completely the wrong approach?

my suspicions are based on a quote from buddy rich, one that gained a modest increase in profile on the occasion of his 102nd birthday, last monday. i make no apologies for re-printing the quote in full:

"I don't put much emphasis on practice anyhow. I think it's a fallacy to believe that the more you practice, the better you become. You can only get better by playing. You can sit in a basement with a set of drums and practice rudiments all day long, but if you don't play with a band, you won't learn style, technique, and taste, and you won't learn how to play for a band and with a band. It's like getting a job, any kind of job, it's an opportunity to develop. And practice, besides that, is boring. I know teachers who tell their students to practice three, four, six hours a day. If you can't get what you want after an hour of practice, you're not going to get it in four days."

that was easy for him to say.

before you point it out, i'm well aware that drumming is a whole bucket of bearings different than cycling. for starters, cycling scarcely revolves round creativity, and those riding with you, do not necessarily depend upon you being of a similar standard. and i should make it clear that for the purposes of conversation, i'm referring to the compeititve milieu, as distinct from the leisure cycling that many of us undertake on a weekly basis. thus, training (or practising) to race, is never going to equate with the real thing, meaning that the best means of improving as a racing cyclist, is to race.

the sunday ride is just good fun and a legitimate means of justifying cake and coffee.

there are several professionals who would likely agree, but even they would probably point out that the only way to learn to ride the 300km demanded by milan-sanremo, is to actually ride such a distance at near race pace. and the only way to learn the craft of the peloton, is to ride in one (and not pretend to simulate the sensation by riding in front of an ipad). but differences aside, might buddy's assertions actually have a point? have we simply surrounded ourselves with a training construct, the point of which has not become lost, but the promised achievements of which are sadly misguided?

so, in order to test the veracity of my inquisitive contentions outlined above, i will simply ride my bicycle as the mood takes me and at whatever speed seems like a good idea at the time. i will then write to jonathan vaughters, offering my services as a fully remunerated member of the 'ef education first' peloton and watch the victories and plaudits roll in.

of course, it could be that professional race speeds are simply 'not my tempo', as averred by a commenter 'neath a video of a buddy rich drum solo.

saturday 5 october 2019

release form

several days past, i regaled you with tales of derring-do, having fitted an inner tube to a campagnolo bora one rear wheel, after suffering a puncture while riding some considerable distance from the croft. the purported hardship engendered by this malfeasance, revolved around the length of valve stem on the replacement tube and my not having checked its suitability prior to departure. however, prior to delving into the nitty-gritty of puncture repair, there arose the indelicate conundrum of just how to remove that rear wheel.

obviously, as an individual of immense mechanical knowledge and ability, i was never completely stumped, but i may have inadvertently raised one eyebrow in the process of a few quizzical looks at my predicament. this centred round the thru-axle fitted to the campagnolo wheels, items which were presumably supplied by basso bicycles rather than by campagnolo. these are a combination of quick-release and thru-axle: the q/r lever simply unscrews, but has no mechanical bearing on the integrity of the fitting. it transpired that the lever part of the q/r closes into a slot on a washer type device, which itself, slots over the splined end of the axle.

in order to remove the axle, it was necessary to hold the lever closed in the slot and effectively unscrew the axle from the dropouts. a bit like the old ringlé type skewer. in other words, the q/r part, apart from offering some leverage, is mostly there for cosmetic reasons, though unfortunately not as pleasingly cosmetic as the 'real' quick-release levers fitted to my campagnolo bora wto carbon wheels on the ritchey. the difference is that the basso features super-record discs while the ritchey sports record calipers.

so, in the face of encroaching rotors, to use the technical lingo, whither the singular component on which the campagnolo kingdom was built? though i infinitely prefer the original style, chrome campagnolo quick-release lever, i can see the pereceived need for the more ergonomic modern version, of which there are two similar variations on offer, depending for which wheelset they were designed.

the early years of disc adoption were still blessed with regular dropouts, though minor alterations surfaced to cope with the additional forces conferred by the use of more powerful hydraulics. these included having the front fork dropouts, counter intuitively pointing forward (shand cycles). however, my understanding of the circumstances surrounding the almost wholesale adoption of thru-axles had more to do with improving the torsional strength of the axles, by increasing their diameter. to take advantage of this innovation, it was necessary to anchor those axles more solidly, while strengthening arguably the weakest part of the fork.

the quick-release skewer was simply collateral damage.

though i'm sure the majority of manufacturers would disagree, it's hard not to notice that modern frame design leans far more towards the functional than the aesthetic. that may be the very reason why events such as the eroica and the like have been increasing in popularity, rides that disallow anything other than pre-1970s steel, when bicycles could still be reasonably be expected to adhere to artistic values, rather than kneel at the pantheon of the great god stiffness.

having just returned from a wet, windy night-time ride on a disc-equipped specialized crux elite, i'd be considered well north of daft to criticise the efficacy of my thru-axle anchored sram rival discs. yes, the front rotor squeals like a banshee when wet, but stopping is remarkably controlled and efficient, probably more than i need at any given time, until i actually need it. but those campagnolo record calipers seem every bit as efficient (though i know they're probably not) even when modulating me to a stop on carbon rims. this coupled with the fact that i can see those delightful quick-release levers just north of the bar tape.

i realise that the mores of competition demand constant improvement in the quest for saving a few more seconds. the only way to pay for such innovation, is to sell the rest of the production cycle to those of us who, truthfully, have no real need of saving even minutes, never mind seconds. that's what marketing is all about. there may come a day when the quick-release lever becomes a mere museum exhibit, but i'm ever hopeful that sense will prevail and some visionary in the corporate boardroom realises that the bicycle is about a great deal more than unfettered quest for efficiency at all costs.

as the nice people at emigré wrote on a mouse mat "design is a good idea".

friday 4 october 2019

cycle touring in northern scotland. mike wells. cicerone press paperback. 200pp illus. £14.99

islay's secondary school offers senior pupils the opportunity to undertake a foreign trip/expedition every two years. the frequency of these trips is designed to allow for the substantial level of fundraising required; to illustrate the necessity, the trip undertaken in july of 2019 travelled to the foothills of the himalayas for four weeks. lest you consider this a frivolous use of hard-won funding, the students are required to provide assistance with projects aiding underprivileged children, such as helping build schools, construct gardens and other undertakings that might help those less fortunate than themselves.

the reward, or holiday part of the trip, is usually a trek across particularly attractive regions within the area. it's safe to say that the majority return with a different perspective on the world in which we live, allied to the realisation of just how much better off they are, both financially and in terms of education, than kids in the more remote regions of the world.

my friday afternoon drumset tutoring was delayed last week due to a meeting held to decide which part of the globe, some of the students will visit in 2021. the outcome, i was informed, was the planning of a visit to mongolia, probably about as far from the hebrides as it is possible to travel, and involving a lengthy flight from the uk before the fun begins.

while the raison d'etre behind these trips is perfectly understandable, there's no denying that the majority of those participating will probably not have explored the more remote regions of scotland, aside from the allegedly remote region in which they are currently domiciled. it is quite likely that the outer hebrides remain a mystery to many, while having set foot on either orkney or shetland is not a box likely to have been recently ticked. you and i both know that the perfect way to appraise oneself of scotland's hidden treasures is by bicycle, but the chances of persuading any of the local secondary school pupils to cycle anywhere run from slim to none at all.

i'm not necessarily suggesting that there are any pockets of underprivileged children across the highlands of scotland to which assistance might be offered, but i figure it would be something of an eye opener, were a future trip to be centred around cycling through the more remote regions of the country. and should this fantasy ever come to pass, i have the very guide book that ought to feature under the clear plastic covering of their handlebar bags: mike wells' cycle touring in northern scotland.

the author has neatly packaged this 528 mile (855km) northern route into fourteen stages, leaving from inverness, the capital of the highlands, and returning to the same town. this makes it remarkably convenient if you intend arriving by car, train, bus or aeroplane. though the daily stages never exceed 50 miles (80km), if you're possessed of the honed physique to which we'll all gladly admit, it would be simples to combine a couple of stages in a single day if you so desired. in fact, should you be restricted to a week's holiday rather than two, undertaking the tour over a mere seven days would extend your daily mileage to a relatively easily accomplished 75 (121km). the choice, as they say, is yours.

in common with all the excellent cycling guides from cicerone press, the introduction covers all the basics such as a concise history and geography of the area covered by the route, the wildlife that can be observed when not puffing and panting over the 'bealach na ba' (an alternative route is also described), where and when to eat and, perhaps most importantly, the weather likely to be encountered as you wend your merry way back to inverness. the routes followed include the wester ross coastal trail, the north and west highlands tourist route, and part of the national cycle network.

along the way, the author has inserted snippets of information relating to aspects of the relevant parcours:

"Until the mid-1970s, the only approach (to Applecross) was by sea, or via road over the Bealach na Ba (pass of the cattle). Originally a drove road the Bealach was cnverted into a parliamentary road in 1822, although it remained dirt surfaced until it was asphalted in the 1950s."

the image atop the same page informs the reader that the pass has a maximum gradient of 20%.

ever the armchair tourist, the chances of me getting my act together and actually heading into the northern regions are disappointingly slim. however, one of the finest aspects of cicerone guides is their eminently readable nature. aside from the turn by turn instructions, the images and the sidebars provide a potted history of unvisited scottish regions, though i should admit at this point that i have actually been to smoo cave near durness. but i didn't know there was a nato refuelling base near drmchork, nor that there's a town called tongue close to achuvoldrach, the latter sounding like a character from a harry potter movie.

this may be the wrong time of year to consider heading out into the great (northern) outdoors, given the prevailing climate ("...it can be dreich one moment and bright, warm sunshine the next. In northern Scotland, winds can blow from any direction..."), but it's never too early to plan a spring or summer break for 2020. let mike wells and cicerone be your guides.

cycle touring in northern scotland by mike wells is published on 15 october. it is currently available for pre-order at cicerone press

thursday 3 october 2019

changing of the guard?

buddy rich was born 102 years ago on 30 september 1917, gaining notoriety at a very early age as a part of his parents' vaudeville act, where he was billed as 'traps the drum wonder'. photos of the time show a little fellow dressed in a sailor suit, dwarfed by an enormous bass drum, subsequently following a lengthy career path that ultimately recognised him as one of (if not the) most influential drummers of all time. though buddy's vocation was that of a jazz swing drummer, best known for work with his own big band, he was versatile enough to have recorded not only with pianist art tatum's trio, but also vibraphone player, lionel hampton and sax player illinois jacquet.

pop and rock players may fail to see his relevance to their specific genres, tending to view neil peart, steve gadd or john bonham as pretenders to buddy's throne. yet the aforementioned, in common with many other contemporary rock drummers, placed buddy on the top step of the podium, happy to acknowledge his superiority. and this despite the outpsoken mr rich's contention that "if you don't have ability, then you wind up playing in a rock band."

buddy rich died on 2 april 1987, several days after surgery to remove a brain tumour, when he suffered a cardiac arrest in a los angeles hospital. as testament to his importance to the world of music (as opposed to just that of jazz drumming), a new biography has been published this month, and even former partner at prendas ciclismo, mick tarrant, was moved to tweet on monday, reminding me that, had he lived, buddy would have been 102. rich experienced a long, successful career and, if you click the link at the end of this article, you can see that he was still at the height of his percussive powers on the michael parkinson show, a few months prior to his untimely death.

at the risk of pointing out the glaringly obvious, it's a darned sight easier to follow a lengthy career as a professional musician, than it is as a professional cyclist. though the ability to play blazing single-stroke rolls and fearsome paradiddles would appear not to diminish, even into a sixth decade, keeping those thigh muscles turning at world tour level past the age of forty, is perhaps a cadence too far. that such is the case could reliably be viewed at a very wet yorkshire on the last sunday of september.

two stars of elite cyclocross for the past few years, wout van aert and matthieu van der poel, have made an almost seamless transition to world tour road racing. van aert is still in the mid stages of recuperation, riding an e-bike bianchi after a serious accident in this year's tour de france, while van der poel started as one of the main favourites to win this year's world championship road race. van der poel is 24 years old, van aert is a year older. sadly, yorkshire was one lap too far for van der poel, but just the right length for eventual winner, danish rider, mads pedersen, who, at the age of 23, is the youngest fellow to win the rainbow bands since 1999.

second place rider, italian matteo trentin, at the age of 30, finds himself midway between young enterprise and velocipedinal decrepitude. my contentions are, however, rescued by switzerland's 25 year-old, stefan kung, who took third place. however, the old guard was still well represented by three-time world champion, peter sagan, in 5th place, though he, along with many other 'elder statesmen' seemed either to have underestimated the exuberance of youth, or fallen into the 'after you' trap, where the entrepreneurs make hay while the others spend several laps looking at each other, seemingly oblivious to the fact that, waiting too long, generally obviates any potential tout at victory.

sagan has a good few years ahead of him yet, so it would be naive to discount him and his peers and consider them as has beens. but van der poel's strong showing all season, coupled with pedersen's winning of the coveted rainbow bands and kung's bronze medal, gives some indication, however slight, that we may have witnessed the cyclical changing of the guard.

of course, if buddy had been riding, the result would never have been in doubt.

buddy rich 1987

wednesday 2 october 2019

be careful what you wish for

i seriously doubt that i am the only one to have noticed the trend for road bicycle manufacturers to tinker with the peripheries of the double-diamond frame. no doubt they would be poised to meddle with those two diamonds themselves if given even a smidgeon of leeway by the uci, but for now, the outer edges will have to suffice. aside from tube profiles, there has been a distinct move to lower the point at which the seatstays meet the seat tube, a feature that seems quite prevalent across many different ranges.

as one bereft of any intrinsic engineering ability, i was keen to learn whether there was any mechanical reason for so doing, or whether it was a simple case of aesthetics; the old, 'form over function' mantra. on enquiring further from an un-named someone far more qualified to comment than yours truly, i received the concise answer "it's because the companies of which you speak are not in the business of making bicycles, they're in the business of making money." though perhaps a tad curt, it struck me that this was probably a great deal more accurate than i was inclined to give it credit for.

at one time in islay's (relatively) recent past, the distilleries were owned locally (kilchoman and bruichladdich), or by scottish-based 'parents', who, by and large, left administration of said distilleries to the distillery managers. however, if you're an aficionado of the islay malts, you will be aware of their growing popularity across the world; whiskies from jura, mull, skye, et al, come under the heading of island malts; islay is classed as a wholly independent region. that makes it an attractive object for others in the business of making money.

thus, ownership of the majority of the island's malts has transferred, usually for large sums of money, to multi-nationals, such as beam-suntory, louis vuitton, moet hennessey, distell international and remy-cointreau. those are predominantly companies with responsibilities to their shareholders, responsibilities that mostly centre around money. though i hope it never comes to proving the contention, there's every likelihood that, if islay whisky ceases to become popular, they'll move their interest elsewhere.

as a wiser person than me once commented, "that's why it's now called the whisky industry and no longer the whisky business."

it would be nice to consider the world of the bicycle as being immune from such corporate machinations, but that's probably a ship that sailed many years ago. there are, of course, small, niche players in every walk of life, but at the end of the world that produces most of its bicycles in taiwan, money makes the world go round. do not misunderstand; i am not positioning the acquisition of money as being inherently bad. bicycle companies with wads of cash, make it easier to walk into a bike shop and buy the very bicycle you had in mind, rather than filling in a spec sheet and waiting several weeks for it to turn up.

that's the job of the niche builders.

it might be considered something of a back handed compliment that portions of the bicycle industry are seen as ripe for investment, but quite frequently, the visions of the original owners/inventors can be subverted, diluted, or substantially altered by the board of directors atop the new owners/investors. if money was no object, were i to purchase campagnolo, nothing much would change, except i'd have a whole wardrobe of campagnolo-branded polo shirts and casquettes. but that is precisely the reason why i will continue to scribble daily musings and stay well away from corporate stuff.

so, despite my disparaging of the e-sports arrangement between zwift and the uci, this appears to be the current flavour of the month, along with e-bikes, in which to invest, hopeful of a lucrative future that just happens to involve bicycles. if further evidence were required, wahoo, progenitor of the recently announced kickr bike exclusively for indoor use, has now announced the acquisition of speedplay pedals, shortly after announcing the intention to purchase the online endurance web platform the sufferfest. though the originator of speedplay, richard byrne, was doubtless of a velocipedinal persuasion and there's no real reason to suppose that wahoo's chip hawkins thinks otherwise, you can maybe see where i think this might be heading.

but you should bear in mind that i'm always looking for the conspiracy theory.

tuesday 1 october 2019