7.05.2010

233: Always More.

Notes on the Tour thus far:

Ouch. Ow.

"That's just bike racing, get on with it." -M. Cavendish

I like that there is a thing called the "Shack Tracker" how clever. Really? I would however like it more if the symbol that popped up was a metal detector. Just for fun.

The first two ads after each break are about Lance (Michelob and Nissan Leaf) and then the third one starts "Can Lance do it again..." or some shit like that. Seems to be a trend here.

J-you-are (Jaguar)

If Julian Dean has to carry that team. Something tells me Julian Dean will carry that team. Otherwise he won't.

————————————————————————————————————————————————

July

We used to joke in bike shops that the two reasons why July is notoriously the slowest month of the year, in terms of sales, was that everyone was either watching the Tour or out riding their bikes because they had just been watching the tour. The joke here being that no one would watch anything, ever, relating to bike racing all year, and then the Tour comes along and suddenly everyone and their brother is glued to the set. Then, as soon as the stage and recap is over they are out on their Cervelo P34's or their Trek MADone bicycles racing to Lexington and back, or tearing through downtown Milwaukee to make it over to the bike path along Lake Michigan.

I am not an early riser.

This will come as no surprise to anyone that has spent any amount of time with me. I want to be, I try to be, but no matter how you slice it, I do not like to get up in the morning. I know for a fact that many, many, many of you will be up in the early morning hours of the day enjoying coffee, eating your breakfast and watching what unfolds in the Tour de France tomorrow. However, the only thing in those last three mentioned that can get me close to getting out of bed is the thought of coffee. So, until that happens I will be burrowed under the covers hoping to eschew any sort of stray light that can and will get through to pierce my eyes and wake me from wherever I may have drifted off to. Which is where I would rather be.

The benefit of having the Tour on in the morning is that your friends will not want to ride until later in the afternoon (9am instead of 7am in most cases) and one can be left in peace. The secondary benefit of the rides being later and the tour being on is that we now have something to talk about rather than the usual which goes dog, kids, wives/girlfriends (in that order). The tertiary benefit of this is that I would rather hear their take on what happens on the day first - seriously - I do not care if you "Spoiler Alert" me all damn day - I just want you to tell me who won. And in this fashion I can build up all the nasty rumors (CAV totes hates Fair-uh) and all the ugly truths (Schlecks do not do this to me) and then go and check them out for myself with the intense-o moments quietly disposed of.

But really, the truth of the matter is that these people, my friends, as they watch the Tour they are filled with this hope (however false) that they will ride in a manner similar to those brightly painted gladiators that they have just viewed. So, then they come out of their hiding places, eyes all squinty at the sun, and we ride. And in July, it seems, we ride harder than usual.

————————————————————————
More Small Publications

Because of all this talk about small publications I keep thinking back to this one that Rich Bravo gave me on my last visit to NYC. Only problem was that I could not decide which was the best background to present it with. As you can see, I decided on the little gravely bits.

The book is small by anyone's standards, which means it is about "yay" big. I held up my hands to show you the actual size, but I am sure you cannot see that at this point. The book is shot and designed by Lucie E. Kim and is part of the MyORB collective of goodness. You can see more photos that are similar to my photos there.

The book is a great look at Keirin racing as an introduction and the format makes the book accessible in a way that handheld paper objects should be. You want to stuff this one in your pocket and take it with you. Here is an idea. Make something like this with blank pages in between the photos? Like a cross between a notebook/journal/love letter to the sport?

Not that you should write over these photos, I do not condone that type of behavior (I did have someone tell me at the 4th of July party I went to that he 'circled up' volume5 so that he could show me all my mistakes at some point). Which, at first struck me as an odd thing to do, and possibly made me a bit angry (not so much as when people roll it up and try to stuff it in things though) but then when I put down the whiskey it made a bunch more sense, because what a better way to illustrate than with my own magazine?


I am enamored with the size of this book, sure, but also the design elements get me going as well. I like the a lot of the photos have been blocked in this strange way that makes you feel like you are not seeing the whole picture, but still gives you enough information to know what is going on. The lines and patterns that make up not only the track itself, but also the entire stadium also lend itself to visually making this velodrome setup feel a bit alien, at the very least foreign. Which I guess makes a lot of sense.


Their website is not the only place to get this book. Bravo told me he picked it up when he went to visit this new shop Adeline Adeline (same one Quirk raved about a while back in What's New). I like that they are carrying alternative publications like the one above and plan on visiting them when I head out to the Cycle Club in the coming weeks. This month is going to be all about publications, I promise.

Here is one last shot to leave you with. This is something that we made over the winter but never fully utilized. Until now that is. July is also the month to send Postcards apparently? And since they play off of one of my favorite things in the world - Mail!!- they cannot be all bad right?

We made four different postcards. There are two cross tyres and two road tyres. If my memory is serving me correctly the one you see here is from the Saxo-Bank team before the start of Paris Roubaix last year. The other road one is also from that collection, and then there are two cross ones as well.