I heard a story once about John Coltrane that I’ve always loved. I don’t remember where it’s from, so take this with a grain of salt, but the story was that Coltrane spent his whole life looking for the right saxophone mouthpiece. He had this sound in his head, and he was always looking for …
Benny the Ice Pick has some great advice for staying warm on the bike come winter.
Mailing list dynamics are often fascinating: a complex self-disorganizing system, like a bunch of really dumb ants who are neither very good at finding food, nor at finding their way back to the nest. When they work their best, they’re a fabulous tool for decentralized group communication, thinking and decision-making. At their worst… Today’s case …
A comment worth highlighting in the thread on whether bike helmets are dangerous because cars pass more closely when a cyclist is helmetted: The solution is invisible helmets. Duh.
One of my favorite bike racers, Alexandre Vinokourov, is winning the Vuelta. Vinokourov is a great joy to watch – an unpredictable, attacking racer with a flair for the dramatic. I had no idea he was winning. It’s not that I intentionally boycotted the Vuelta. I just got out of the daily habit of checking …
Continue reading ‘The Practical Effect of Cycling’s Doping Scandals’ »
Another contribution to the bike helmet debate (see also here): Drivers get more than 3.1in (8cm) closer to cyclists wearing helmets than they do to bare-headed riders and female cyclists are given more room on the road than male riders, according to a survey from the University of Bath. Dr Ian Walker, a traffic psychologist, …
A friend sends along a link to Squishy’s road markings gallery. I wanna know the stories.
There’s a fascinating anecdote in Peter Spotts’ Christian Science Monitor piece on athletes and doping. After publishing results of tests on a new compound that showed promise in growing extraordinary muscles in mice, University of Pennsylvania researchers were inundated with requests for information, but not from people in the medical community: After the university published …
Some useful background for those cycling fans in the audience trying to understand the context of Floyd’s test results. Turns out Malcolm Gladwell spent the necessary time getting on terms with the subject some years ago: Athletes have now switched from injection to transdermal testosterone patches, which administer a continuous low-level dose of the hormone, …
This was a joke. This apparently is not: Floyd Landis, who on Sunday became the third American cyclist to win the Tour de France, tested positive for a banned substance after winning Stage 17 of the race, his team announced Thursday.