On Writing, Right?

I have a problem with the word "no." On the other hand, I do not have a problem with the word "yes." Or depending on how you look at it maybe I just have problems all the way around?

I cannot say "no" to anything. This has been a problem in the past. Would I be interested in starting this bike racing team? Travel around the country and race bikes and possibly drink beers with my own band of merry men? Hell Yes! Would I like to go out for drinks? Well, yes, is the appropriate answer to that one as well. Be damned, work, or anything else that should get in the way of these leisurely activities. Should we fly to Panama to go rock climbing for three weeks? The answer, again, was — but of course.

This has also helped me to have some of the best, craziest experiences that one could imagine. They are not all good, that is not the way things work. But they are all something, I know that much to be true.

Without agreeing to certain things you will never find yourself in the back of a pickup truck staring at the Andes over your own shoes (with the caribineros de Chile shaking their fists at you.) You will also probably never find yourself naked from the waist up on an operating table in another in a third world country getting moles removed. One does not blow up boulders with hand molded nitro-glycerin, while chewing cacao, by saying "no thank you." And you certainly can not take shots of tequila from the business end of a glass shotgun by saying "I think I'll pass." Just sayin.


The point of this little word "yes" is to illustrate exactly how I found myself in Bill Strickland's Bicycling Magazine office one fine day early this summer. This, in fact, is where these photos come from. And if you leave me in your office alone, long enough, I will photograph most of it.

His wife Beth had put it to me a few days earlier that I should come down and see the opening night of the Lehigh Valley Velodrome with them. We had just finished up the Rapha East Coast Gentleman's Race (the full video comes out July 1st) and I did not think it fair to say "no" to such a lovely lady after she had just ridden 120 miles. Plus, it was promised that I could see the prestigious offices of Bicycling Magazine, possibly get a little drunk, and definitely enjoy everything that is organic and edible from the food stand at the track. How, pray tell, do you say "no" to something like that? Besides, I had kept the drink going for maybe two, three nights now, what was a little bus ride for one more before returning to the West?

Now, with that being said, there were other things on the agende that I wished to explore while in Emmaus, PA. Neither of them had to do with Mr. Armstrength either. If you know what I mean, well, one of them did, but only in a sort of round about way. A tertiary text that came from the real truth here. Bill Strickland is a writer. And as someone who has the sort of inkling to do the same, well, I wanted to know what it takes, or took. The other? Well, the other is a little harder to pin down than that (because what it takes to be a writer is totally easy to pin down.)

So, that is how I found myself sitting in Bill's office. A little adventure, sure, I'm always up for that….but as far as I knew I was On Assignment, and if I did not keep my wits about me, as I would later see, I would easily be making the half mile trek from the velodrome to a huge house situated a mile down the road.

Now the first thing that we did NOT do upon arriving at the prestigious Bicycling Magazine was to talk about Tour de Lance. The book has been getting reviews all over the board. Mostly good, but there will always be some detractors. And that is fine. The subject, I could care less about, (sorry L, I don't mean that as a direct slam to you, I'm sure you're 'totes aws' [read: totally awesome]) what I was more interested in was the simple fact that a book had been written. Seriously! A whole book. And what's more? It is good. It makes sense. You read it from cover to cover and...wait for it... it tells a story.

I do not know many writers that have written books. (Do I?) A unpublished cycling romance novel, sure. Great rides and routes in the Portland area, yes. Wait, I have to take that back a little bit, my friend Lesley wrote a book called Dear Diary about being an adolescent girl and having a drug habit (or three). So, there is that.

Bill also edited this book On Being a Writer, which, obviously I have become totally fascinated with. Know why? Want to know why? Because, in it, he interviews Tom Robbins. Yes, that Tom Robbins. Tom Fucking Robbins. Remember him? You told that girl that you had a crush on that you actually read Still Life with Woodpecker to impress her, then went out and found it just in case she question you on it? That Robbins.


The first Tom Robbins book I read was Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates. I stole it from my aunt and read it on the beach (after she finished it of course) and I remember a strangeness coming over me. I was now witness to the world that my parents and their siblings had been/were a part of, but never talked about. For example, if I was off belly down in the sand enjoying HST (Hunter S. Thompson) then they were joking to each other about how cute I was with my new tattoos and quest for edgy writing, all the while gobbling up anything T. Robbins had to offer.

AND Bill was out traveling to Seattle to interview him. Damn, that is what I call a writer. On assignment. For Playboy, or Rodale, or a gunslinger for hire. It does not matter.

He (and we're back talking about Bill here) gets to travel the world and interview cyclists. Or rather stand beside their buses and observe what they're doing. Maybe mark it all down in a notebook, maybe sneak behind a building or two to mark it down in a notebook. But either way - He's Doing It! And I will not ever stop applauding him for that. No matter how much he has resigned himself to not travel this year (I do it out of envy - sorry.)

Rouleur 18 is a pretty damn good example of this. (and if you have made it this far I applaud you). On the first page of writing, in what will go down in history as one of my favorite Rouleur's yet Strickland has written this...

At the finish, I walk among the racers like a human among wraiths, wondering what it means to me, for me, for all of us that they have done this to themselves once again. I don't like to talk to them then, though some of them want to. I watch. I take notes I rarely use. There is almost no way to write it right.

And this, is pretty much how I feel every day. I travel to events like the tour of California and get caught up in talking to a bartender that is struggling to comprehend what is happening around her (what? she was cute) or all the way to Ghent to see the fabled Tour of Flanders and am content enough to watch it from the corner of a bar, and then I feel bad about it. But it is writing like this - like the Tour de Lance, or pretty much anything coming from Rouleur (however haughtily) that gives me a little bit of hope.


I guess that is probably what I found that day, sitting with Bill and reading over a cartoon about Lance, pretending that I was helping him edit, while really just wallowing in where I was. Hope. Inspiration. Maybe a touch of nostalgia that left me wondering, "where is this nostalgia coming from?"

And after all that. All that thinking and pondering. Then we went to the Velodrome. Which, I guess is just a nice way of saying 'To Be Continued."

228: Designers Don't Read Books About Cycling

Have I made it apparent that I like books? Too much? Well, this one is about books as well. And if my calculations are correct (and I'm getting my calculations from Amazon) then today June 15th is the big day. Comic books used to come out on Tuesdays and I would run to the store to get them. Luckily, I am a bit more internet savvy these days, so I do not have to do any running.

I have been reading this book lately Designers Don't Read which I guess is mostly true, but it is probably because they are too hung up on the kerning of this, or whether all those text boxes line up or they have just been staring at the computer screen too long? (Joke)

Anyway, the book, by fellow Portland resident Austin Howe, is broken down into neat essays on various and sundry subjects. Each one of them has a title, but also a secondary header that is the minutes it takes to read the essay. I wonder how they came up with these numbers? The essays began as emails sent out to Howe's favorite designers around the country and ended up becoming this book. And most of them are really good. However, I keep coming back to one at the end. Admittedly, I've only read a few at the beginning and a few at the back. But the below snippet is something that I have been applying to everything that I have been seeing since reading it.

"Art" is the intersection of craft and self-awareness.

It works for everything. Literally. Let us say for a moment that bike racing is indeed Art. That at its highest levels these athletes are performing this insane balancing act that is the craft of their sport intermingled with the self awareness it takes to handle being at that level. But, I think that I will get back to that at some point in the near future.

Today, if it is indeed the 15th, would also happen to be the release date of Mr. Strickland's new book The Tour de Lance. And I think that the two books are related. Do yourself a favor cycling fans and get this book. Actually, get them both, support these literary arts.

I do not usually take notes when I read books. Sometimes, if I am feeling exceptionally rude, and only when I own the book myself, I will write something in the book itself. Or make a little dash or something to remind me later, when looking back through the book that there was something that caught my eye, held my interest for a minute longer, or stood out in the way that it was written. However, this time I kept notes. Furiously scribbled on an Ace Hotel Notepad, lining my own journal and even in the book, I took notes.

The tough thing about them is that my notes, especially if they are written in the height of passion, are almost totally illegible. They look sometimes like Ralph Steadman drawings without the lizards and dinosaurs. And at one point I wrote "FUCK YES" and circled that and drew and arrow towards something that looks like "Beelzebub is in the teamcar." Chew on that one for a minute. (That is not written anywhere in the book, I assure you.)

About a week before I received the book I got a call from Rich Bravo. Now, I don't know if you know this, because I give Rich Bravo a lot of shit, but, not only is he one of the smartest people I know, but he also knows his shit when it comes to books and literature...and writing...and the Classics (which is what he studied in College.)

"I'm reading Bill's new book." He says this to me in a fairly frank manner, maybe knowing that on the other side of the phone I'm clenching my fists in sheer jealousy, maybe not.

"Yeah? How is it?" I respond, obviously hiding my disappointment that I am not reading Bill's new book.

"Well, lets just put it this way, if Bill were a journalist in Vietnam instead of for Cycling and the Tour de France, he would win a Pulitzer for this." This statement coming from anyone else would make me laugh. "Tell me more." I say casually. "I don't know, you will have to read it, but I think what he does best, is not only make the subject accessible to everyone, but the insertion of his own personality into the story is so great that it gives it another dimension." DING — Intersection of Craft and Self-Awareness = Art.

The first weekend that I got the book I went for a long ride. It was sometime in March, but we had an unusually sunny and balmy day here in Portland. I had read the first few paragraphs of the book right before I left, standing awkwardly in the dining room of our house, probably making everyone else late in the process. These first few paragraphs (arguably the most important in the book) where he describes Armstrong's 2009 TT in Monaco at the start of the Tour de France would not leave me for the entirety of my ride.

And when I got home, stripped down to just bib shorts - their straps hanging down - and maybe one sock- and the same spot in the dining room is where I stood and finished the next few chapters.

It struck me a few days later that this book was going to mean something. That it would mean something more than a book about a Cancer survivor, or one of the greatest athletes ever to have lived, because at the base of it, really when he gets in and starts digging (by not digging) you will see that Lance has started to become human. That, as much as he works to fend it off, it still creeps in to everything that he does.

Now, I'm reading back over the last few paragraphs and I keep thinking "But you haven't said anything about the book." Like, an excerpt or something to really convince people that this really is the Bees Knees, as they say. I used a couple excerpts earlier this year, and that image of Menchov, the dying lion, is not one easily forgotten.

There is another one that I wrote down near the Menchov quote that was a such a good description of an exploding pack that I re-read it instantly. And have maybe thought of it a few times in races, whilst moving through a group of riders.

We drove up beside Morabito, the Swiss Astana rider. "We have to keep going," Craig said. We had to drive until we saw Lance. The gap to the break was down to 1:18. The pack seemed to be like a sack open on its downhill side and spilling out its contents as it got dragged upwards. We passed great great groups of riders, whose stench floated behind them...

It is these sweeping descriptions of the bike races that we (I) want to see and feel firsthand that make this account great. It is amazing to see the dirt under the fingernails of the riders (and writers), the gummy sharks that are the secret passage to the underworld that is professional cycling, and ultimately, the people surrounding the greatest cycling empire ever to have lived.

What I am really curious is to see what YOU think of the book.

Apparently, Mr. Armstrength himself was not fond of the book and his furrowed brow, as we all know, casts a wide net. Or however that phrase goes? I honestly kept a keen eye out for anything that could possibly harm the reputation of the golden child whilst reading.

The only thing that I could think that this book possibly does that would put a chink in the Armstrong armor? It makes him look human. And I think that is the one thing he is afraid of. Because, as soon as he's human, then he is just like the rest of us. And really? Who wants that?