Happiness is...

...a bike ride in the fall. A slight mist, perfect temperature, glowing trees, and a carpet of leaves. Post-ride, after wiping the water, sand, and organic muck off my bike, I was still left with tires wrapped in the glory of autumn.

A Pie of Speculation

In cycling news, nothing is bigger than Lance's return to pro ranks. People compare it Jordan's return, and gosh, I hope it's different. I enjoyed watching Jordan so much, I entirely lost interest in basketball after he retired—and his second (third) incarnation did nothing to bring me back. Somehow, even though Jordan's competitiveness and fitness were no less legendary, things feel different about Lance. Could it be that cycling is somehow easier than pounding about on a basketball court?

Anyway, the Vanity Fair article that broke the news of his planned return—penned by a Rice professor, no less—has a curious photograph. It is of Lance presenting a cycle and helmet to Bill Clinton, and three things stand out:

• What is that in line with the top of the handlebar? Is there something in Lance's hand, or is is that a...mirror? On a race-ready, low-spoke-count, team-livery Trek?
• Is that really a huge cog on the rear cassette? Or could that be a...pie plate? On a race-ready, low-spoke-count, team-livery Trek?
• And finally, what's that at Bill's right leg? It appears to be some kind of polystyrene stand for the cycle, but photographed at entirely the wrong angle. Or, could it be the oddest of creatures—a pie-plate for the chain ring? What would the Snob make of that?

Anyway, as an Internet commentator, I feel dragged into this Lance affair with a comment of my own. My own conjecture is that what Lance really wants is to finally win a stage atop Ventoux. It'll be interesting to see whether next year's Tour route has a finish atop the Windy One—the ASO is not known for playing ball.

An Unkempt Zebra

This past weekend I changed the bar tape on my Bike Friday. Last year I switched from a bland black to zebra tape (frequent readers in these parts will be familiar with my affection for things zebra). I rather like Cinelli's cork tape, though the zebra pattern isn't always easy to find. In particular, they make a close variant: instead of black and white, it's black and a sort of dull grey (or gray). I never quite figured out the appeal to the latter. It looks a bit militaristic, but in a sort of new-agey, I'm-not-a-really-intimidating-military kind of way.

Anyway, over the weekend, I peeled off the old tape and attached the gleaming new one. As I was collecting the old tape to trash, I happened to notice a rather odd pattern. Here's a photograph:

The left is how the tape looks in its (mostly) pristine state. The right is how it comes to look after a year of constant wear. The right is also...the spitting image of the black-and-grey tape you'll find in a store.

And I was enlightened.

As my friend Laurie Heller said, it's like buying jeans that've already had abuse pre-heaped on them.

How to Climb Like a Champ

I have discovered the secret weapon behind Chris Carmichael's success with climbers.

Chris is the coach behind Lance Armstrong's magnificent performances in the mountains of France. Now that we've had two Tours in a row in which other extraordinary climbers have been thrown out for illegal substances, many minds wonder what Lance was on (besides, as his famous Nike ad said, his bike for six hours a day).

Fortunately, for the right sum, Carmichael will tell us. Let's look at his advertisement (Bicycling magazine, July 2008, page 113):

Gives away nothing, does it? Now look at it again.

First, you'll have to ignore the model on the left who has the posture of a squat toad and the expression of someone who has just swallowed one. The one on the right is the one we are all supposed to aspire to be.

Ignore the geological oddity of this place, where each hill seems to be composed of entirely different substances. If the hills you train on don't look like that, well, that also explains why you aren't winning any Tours de France.

Ignore the extraordinary sharpness of the bleached rocks in the middle distance. Why did they use a photograph where rocks, not bicyclists, were in focus? No doubt because the Carmichael-trained cyclists ride so fast, no camera can capture their movement.

Focus, instead, on what's between the “dancing on his pedals” rider's legs. No, no, not like that! Here's the detail:

It's extraordinary. Where you would expect to see the background (of rock and grass in unearthly focus), you see...the fragment of a yellow oval with the letters “MIC” in the upper half, looking exactly the same as Carmichael's logo. And just a bit lower is what appears to be a third wheel for the bicycle, with a tire of clearly different type, hovering in the air, as if ready to drop like landing gear on demand. And if you look further down this montage (not—it is now clear—ever to be confused with a montagne), to the left of Carmichael's corporate logo you'll see a profusion of chains and gears and drivetrains and other instruments of S-and-M. (And the typo in the URL—trrainright.com—is just a bit of icing.)

When Lance won at Limoges, he said he rode with “the strength of two men”. Now, for a small fee, you too can have your second man.

Or, maybe it's possible that the secret to Carmichael's success is something else entirely.

It's Photoshop.

Dutch Mountain → Kenyan Mountain?

Nicholas Leong has a dream: to turn Kenyans from Eldoret into professional bicyclists. Since they already vaporize marathon runners in their wake, this is a fairly natural next step. To make his point, he's recruited two riders to climb L'Alpe d'Huez and, hopefully, come close to the record time for the climb. It's a quixotic effort of the kind we'll look back on years later and ask, “Duh! Why didn't someone do that sooner?” So, good on you, Nicholas, and good luck, Zakayo and Mwangi. You'll roast my time, that's for sure.

Animal Instinct

After years of dealing with a pair of unpolarized shades with optical inserts, an ugly, ungainly, heavy combination, I finally decided to splurge on a pair of custom Oakleys. For the price of a small principality, they will create prescription lenses—not inserts, lenses!—that fit the frame of your choice. Of course, my optician was taking care of all the easy and technical parts (like the prescription); the awesome burden of designing the actual glasses fell to me. Oakley's site has a bewildering set of models, all poorly differentiated, each of which has umpteen customization options. Yee haw!

“These glasses will make you two miles an hour faster!”, my optician had said. Surely the glasses alone were just the beginning of the gains. The right color scheme, I was sure, would only enhance the effect. So I spent a night at it. What, I thought, spelled a combination of speed and stamina better than a zebra? I already have Cinelli cork zebra bar tape—a tribute to the great zebra train of Mario Cipollini, which represents everything that is ridiculously over-the-top about cycling—and this would be the perfect match.

In the morning, I was pottering around pouring cereal as Kathi came by. “I designed my new shades last night!” She responded encouragingly. “Guess the color scheme!” She gamely tried a few lackadaisical options, then confessed ignorance. I paused for effect. “Zebra!”, I proclaimed. Her reaction was a little too stable. “Want to see it?”, I only half-asked, bouncing off in the direction of the monitor.

“Oh, cute! A cow!”

Now would be a good time to point out that later in the week, she confessed to needing to update her prescription. I'm just sayin', is all.

Anyway, the shades are here. They're terrific. In my mind, a zebra is what they will always be. Though I could have sworn I heard a moo as I was waging war with the wind on Blackstone Boulevard earlier this evening.

Major Faux Pas

Life was tougher a hundred years ago, and tougher still in the face of open discrimination. Yet while people like Jackie Robinson are celebrated across the US, an earlier pioneer, Major Taylor, the first black cycling world champion, has been entirely forgotten.

Or would be, if a band of enthusiasts didn't have their way. But this group has kept his memory alive, and just under a month ago crossed a milestone: a statue of Major Taylor now stands outside the public library in Worcester, MA, a city where Taylor lived for much of his active life.

I wasn't there for the statue per se—I find most of these civic monuments uniformly ghastly—but to support Lynn Tolman, who has been the most visible member of this tireless group. They did have two headliners attend the event, Greg Lemond and Edwin Moses, and I figured they might have something interesting to say. In the end, things came out backwards. The statue is quite superb:

Moses was interesting enough, while Lemond continued to embarrass himself and those listening to him. It's one thing for Lemond to declaim about drugs in the sport: he knows something about life in the peloton in a way that the rest of us never will. (It doesn't help that he has become a kind of confidant-in-chief for suspect riders.) But at an event like this—which he knew about well in advance—he not only rambled without continuity or coherence part of the time but, worse, didn't so for the rest. When he wasn't rambling, he was telling us about how terrible a time he had had as a young American in Europe, and somehow linked his own tribulations (immense though they were) to Taylor's (which were unimaginably greater). In the end, one felt pity for Lemond and an even greater sense of Taylor's accomplishment.

So, no photograph of self-promoting celebrities. Here's Tolman during her pleasant and modest address:

Bush(n)e(l)l of Acorn

I didn't really want to shake Jesse Bushnell's hand.

Normally I'd be glad to, grease and all. But Jesse, whom I'd known as someone from bike rides, from watching the spring classics in his bike shop (The Hub, which doubles up as a furniture shop, The Zoo), and as one of my bike mechanics, had suddenly shot to fame as a principal participant in this summer's most entertaining happening: the maiden voyage of the Acorn, a replica of the US Civil War submarine, the Turtle. As to where Jesse's hands had been, this New York Times article says it all. (Even the droll, coolly ironic tone of the article cannot disguise the glee of a reporter assigned to a story whose copy virtually writes itself.)

So I go down to the Hub:

(Jesse) Dude, how's it going?

(Me) You're asking me? I'm surprised to see you still a free man.

[Grins, pauses, grins again...] Oops!

So here I am, interviewing Jesse Bushnell. What follows is a reconstruction of a conversation; I went in with prepared questions, but life is not a prepared activity when Jesse is around.

What's your connection with the other two?

They're both great friends. The Duke's my best friend.

Mr. Riley was recorded as emerging from the sub with a beer. Do you think it's safe to drink and dive?

The beer was intentional! That was to thin the blood. There's a ton of lead in that thing, so you've got to keep the blood thin, and the alcohol does that.

Given the quote by which the nation now best knows you, I have to ask: boxers or briefs?

Tighty-whities!

Owing to your action, do you think Alberto Gonzales would be justified in upping the terror level to a new color code? Say up to Celeste?

Who's that guy?

Aren't you embarassed about the lack of a propulsion mechanism, given that you work in a bike shop?

Dude, that's what saved us! The FBI told us that if we'd had a screw, they'd have definitely arrested us.

What's your relationship to David Bushnell?

The Duke tells me I'm related.

This unfortunately stole my next few questions, such as: was he related to Nolan Bushnell (of Atari and Chuck E. Cheese fame); whether, like the senior Bushnell, he too planned to migrate to making naval mines; and whether, given that David Bushnell moved to Georgia and adopted the name of David Bush, Jesse was also related to George W. Bush.

Some of the other things Jesse related was how the media glare was so intense he had to be escorted out the back door; how he got bitten by a dog while he was in the East River, and got stung by several jellyfish; and how the FBI descended on him. He said he was at one point bobbing around in the sub, looking out over at the Statue of Liberty and thinking about how cool all this was, when he saw a group of helicopters heading directly at him and began to revise his evaluation. When the Feds eventually got to him they asked him about various aspects of his life, including details of the houseboat on which he lives. He asked them how they knew about it. Their reply: “Because we have agents on it right now.”

The last word should surely go to Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly who, with New York sangfroid, called the Acorn the “creative craft of three adventuresome individuals”. Give the man a medal for his understanding that such utterly unfettered and wholly midsdirected creativity is precisely what makes America so insanely great.

I Know I Knew a Knee

In late 2005 I started to take up running. After two winters on a bike trainer in the basement, I was jealous of people who could actually do outdoor things in the winter—in shorts! Running is relatively convenient compared with cycling, especially where I live, so when spring arrived my feet stayed firmly planted on the ground, instead of clipping into pedals. And thus, what began as a winter substitute turned into cross-training and then slowly morphed into something I nearly admitted to liking. (The admission comes hard in part because having been asthmatic into my teens, running is truly harsh on me.) The day before we left for Edinburgh in November 2006, I ran my first sub-7-minute mile.

By spring 2007, the entire length of my left leg felt about twice as old as the rest of me. I had some persistent pain in that foot; then along the thigh; and finally the knee got so bad I couldn't sit with my knee bent for more than fifteen minutes. In restaurants, I had to find a table where I could stretch out my leg, as if fractured and in a cast. I was very close to going in to a doctor, and had begun steeling myself for the inevitable knee surgery.

As an experiment, starting in the beginning of May, I decided to give up running cold turkey and focus solely on cycling. At first all those old pains persisted, and manifested themselves on the bike. But then, about 500 miles later, I noticed that they were...completely gone. My left leg feels as good as my right, both feel excellent, and I write this message having just spent four continuous hours almost motionless on a plane, knees bent, without the slightest trace of pain.

It's well-known that running is usually harder on the knees than cycling (though a badly-configured bicycle can be just as bad or worse). I'm also lazy about warming-up and the like; clearly, people run marathons on end without anything like the problems my feeble efforts engendered. But it still amazes me that cycling can not only be so much less bodily stress, but that it can have helped effectively cure my knee. Maybe I can sink the cost of that surgery into a new bike instead!

Slow-Motion Sports

American football is my canonical example of a slow-motion sport. By that I'm not referring to the long pauses between action (what George Will famously likened to committee meetings), and obviously not to the actual plays, in which numerous people with the speed of top sprinters charge in several different directions all at once. Rather, I'm referring to the fact that what you see is not what you necessarily get: before you can cheer for a touchdown, you have to check whether a flag was thrown on the 40-yard line because someone whom you've never heard of who had nothing to do with the play grabbed the jersey of someone else you've never heard of who also would have had nothing to do with the play—save for the jersey-grabbing, which has now nullified the play itself.

Every sport has or is acquiring slow-motion elements. Cricket and tennis now have action-replays that can make or nullify a decision. But these are invoked rarely, and when they are, the result is usually dramatic (in cricket, especially, the uses are sparing and important enough that the official replays are tenser than the play itself). And outside a small set of events there are no fouls or replays, letting stand what you saw as what happened.

Mind, I don't mean “slow-motion” as a pejorative. There is a certain kind of fan for whom that very indecision is part of the charm of the sport, and it leads to a kind of dramatic tension of its own. So be it. That isn't my point here.

What I did want to point out is that we've rapidly acquired a new slow-motion sport: cycling. It used to be that nothing matched the primal immediacy of a mountain stage: a small handful of the most talented riders struggling up an HC climb, attacking and dropping, standing and delivering. The pain was real because the context was real: you didn't need to refrain from delivering a glancing blow because you weren't sure of what flags were flying elsewhere on the field of play. You didn't need a photo finish: the difference in finishing times was in the order of minutes. For an aficionado, there are few more dramatic things in all of human activity.

That's still what happens on TV, but the outcomes have become entirely detached from the action. Who's dirty, who's clean? Who's going to have irregular blood or inhuman testosterone? From Hamilton to Landis to Basso to Petacchi to Vinokourov, what frustrates me most is not watching and wondering “Are they clean?” but rather wondering, “Should I be applauding?”. After all, tomorrow may say today didn't happen, or even next year may say this year didn't happen.

To me, then, the real tragedy is that what has gone out is not trust: that was never there. What has been lost, instead, is the immediacy, the directness, the decisiveness. Cycling has become a slow-motion sport—an ironic statement about an activity in which men and women climb impossibly steep pitches at improbably high speeds—where decisions are made and then unmade over what is, relative to the action itself, geological time. That, to me, is the truly incalculable loss. By the time we watched the finish of Stage 15 on a one-day delay, we'd already heard about Vino's (supposedly) failed dope test, so watching the play was surreal, and about half the comments by the commentators sounded cruelly ironic.

Meanwhile, though, I'll still be getting goose-pimples watching Alberto Con(ta)dor fly out of his saddle like—indeed, even better than—a certain Texan, and hope he won't go the way of all the other climbing prodigies of the past few years, from Iban Mayo to Alejandro Valverde to, perhaps the most dramatic of them all, Damiano Cunego, who rode like Marco Pantani on the way to his Giro win and has subsequently never demonstrated that same form (hmm...).

Climb to the Vista Point for the Clouds

The Charles River Wheelmen (CRW) organized an excellent ride today called Climb to the Clouds. The name is a bit of an exaggeration: the highest point in the climb is Mt. Wachusett, a ski station in central Massachusetts. But it is a ski station; the hill gains about 1100 feet over four miles, though this hides a few ridiculous pitches. That, combined with the warning that the course was very hilly and definitely not for beginners, made it undeniably tempting.

I have a confession: I wasn't sure I wanted to do Wachusett. Not the ascent, which I definitely wanted, but the descent, which—like many others in New England—is riddled with narrow roads, tight curves, frost heaves, and cracked pavement. Combined with how much my bike has been rattling lately (and rattled especially vigorously the last time I came down that way), I wasn't looking forward to doing it in a bunch.

So when I set out my gear last night, I laid out my very flash Nalini bike shorts, a bright red. My reasoning was simple: I felt morally obliged to negotiate Wachusett on account of (a) being in a ride called Climb to the Clouds, and (b) knowing I'd spend the rest of the day sacked out watching the first real mountainous stage of the Tour de France. And I knew that once I'd worn the Nalini, I'd really have no choice in the matter. Once you talk the talk, that is, wear the wear, you've got to walk the walk, that is, ride the ride.

It proved to be an exceptional ride. It was hilly as promised, and with the odd mile of awful pavement, mostly on very good roads. By taking it early on a Sunday morning I was able to avoid most of the traffic. There were two or three very fast descents, one long and screaming (the Wachusett payback). Some of the climbs were long hills that demanded that you settle into a steady tempo, others were short, widing roads whose length you couldn't estimate; there were a few genuine quad-busters.

Aside: someone in the Massachusetts Department of Transportation has a perverse sense of humor. At one point on Wachusett, coming out of a false flat, the road turns to the left and pitches upward sharply; it rises up and touches you in the nose, as Phil Liggett might say. And just there this humorist has seen fit to inscribe the instruction, SLOW.

But perhaps the best part of it was the CRW organization. They were superbly organized, firm but friendly, manned perfectly good feeding stations, and had arrowed with exceptional attention. Even someone who demonstrates nearly functional illiteracy when it comes to following arrows (e.g., me) managed the ride without a wrong turn. That is something they can brag about.

That Must be Why They're Called “Specialized”

I was looking at the Owner's Manual for my Specialized Decibel Helmet, and came across the following line amidst the usual swarm of disclaimers:

Failure to follow this warning could result in serious personal injury, death by strangulation, death.

Feeling Blue

Since my Bike Friday is in for repairs, I've begun to overhaul and put some miles on my old Specialized. Two years in the basement on the trainer—and not much maintenance before that—have left it in a fairly bad state. But over an hour of washing (with Kathi's help), and a few more (lighter) rounds of that since, have made it ship-shape. While I immediately notice my dislike of the sub-105 Shimano parts, and miss my 50T chainring (I'm back to mashing a bit in my 53T), overall I've been putting on some miles quite comfortably.

One problem with reviving a bike that's been in a basement too long, though, is that you don't know what really works and what doesn't. Last Friday, after a 25 mile ride, I was making the last turn before home when I went down comprehensively. I suffered very little external injury, so initially I was more confused than anything else. (A construction worker nearby asked whether I was okay and, when I replied in the affirmative, he responded, “That was spectacular!” It was immediately clear that he's never seen a real bike crash.) While taking inventory, I noticed that my front tire was...half-flat. So I'd had a very, very slow leak that had gotten progressively flatter as I bumped around town, and on that final hard right turn the tire just buckled.

It turns out that I'm actually quite bruised in various places inside. My friend Laurie Heller recalled that she'd had a similar experience: some of her worst injuries were from her slowest crashes. Due to various internally bruised parts, I can now primarily only ride in the drops. At the very least, I feel quite silly plodding along to school in the morning in that position.

One casualty of my fall was my bar-tape, which was anyway beginning to unravel. Four years ago the bike began with a Specialized Phat Wrap, which is surprisingly comfortable. Two years ago (after another fall) I switched to yellow Cinelli cork: less padded, but a lovely feel. Today I got a Deda Elementi blue wrap. This officially proves that my biking color is blue: blue glasses frame, blue shoes, blue gloves, and now blue wrap. I've realized the reason is because I don't like green, there's too much macho red on the roads already, and yellow is pretentious (or can appear that way).

The Deda tape is a thing of beauty:

(The actual tape is darker than the photo suggests.) Those little dents are just the edges of the logo, which is under wraps. The attention to detail is fantastic: the sticky strip is just broad enough, the color is sublime, it feels like it isn't there, and the package includes both tape for the end and a little supplement to wrap around the back of the hoods.

Once I was done wrapping, I proceeded to install the end plugs. I was about to just shove one in when I noticed it has the Deda ‘D’ logo on it. I stopped, rotated the plug a quarter turn to orient it properly, and only then pushed. That's what beautiful design inspires you to do.

A New Fixation

Wherein our correspondent chronicles his very first experience with a fixed-gear bicycle, for the benefit of others who may follow this enlightening route.

There are no new puns left to make about fixies. None.

So I was riding around the criterium course at last weekend's Cox Cycling Classic in Providence, wondering why I wasn't racing, when a nitwit decided to pull over from the middle of the road all the way to the kerb—right in front of me, without looking over his shoulder—to greet his friends. Naturally I went down, hard. Because of the way the universe works, not only did he not crash, he didn't even notice what he'd done. It was left to his friends to come over to help. No road-rash, but it did remind me of why I don't race.

Friends are admittedly important—perhaps the most important thing in the world. But more important even than my front derailleur? Not only is it busted, but so (I shudder to even think about the cost this will involve) possibly is the front derailleur hanger, which in turn is part of the rear assembly of the bike: everything's just more complicated on a Bike Friday.

Anyway, since I'm feeling in particularly good riding form right now, I was fairly upset after dropping off the bike at my LBS, the Hub. As I was leaving the store, though, I realized I was...surrounded by bikes! So I asked Jesse whether he'd rent me one. Knowing I've been eyeing fixies for a while, he loaned me a brand new KBS. It was so pristine I was afraid to take it (how many falls does it take to learn to ride a fixie?), but with a twinkle in his eye he said, “Consider it a test ride”. Dangerous words.

Getting started was a bit terrifying, and my first day I doubt I exceeded 6-8mph. I was getting passed with abandon by people wearing cotton t-shirts riding flat-bar hybrids with zany pedalling styles—nothing against any of that, bless their souls, but it did make me, in lycra and gear, feel rather ridiculous. The second day I was well over 10mph. And I've learned a bit about the fixie experience.

My main concern was about needing to stay conscious of always pedaling (this is a fixed-gear, not just a single-speed). It turns out I needn't have worried. The momentum of the rear wheel is such that there is no real danger of stopping cold because you forgot to pedal. I went into turns and other configurations where I normally wouldn't be pedaling, and the momentum gave my leg the little kick it needed to remember to stay in motion; indeed, it would have taken effort to not stay moving.

The truly hard thing, I've learned, is stopping. There's a funny motion to it. Say your left foot is at 12 o'clock. You need to use your right foot to initiate braking. So as your right foot moves up to 12 o'clock, you keep adding resistance. So far so good.

Suppose, however, you don't come to a stop. Now your right foot goes over the top...at which point gravity pulls it down, and you have to make a conscious effort to (disregarding all your hard-earned, pedal-in-circles muscle-memory) push down on your left foot...but only until it peaks at 12 o'clock, and so on. As a result of not stopping by the time the countervailing foot had reached 12 o'clock, I would end up going through another pedal circulation, and another, and another.

I realized that I just needed to push down harder, but then I began to feel a rather strange sensation. Never having experienced it before I began to ease off, which of course led me back to the almost-but-never-quite-stopping cycle. A few minutes later I finally figured it out. That sensation was a muscle that I had never exercised, indeed even experienced, before, being called into duty. Marveling at the human body and letting the muscle do its job did the trick: I am now stopping (from low velocities of about 10-12mph) very nearly on command. (Though just as I came to believe this a squirrel ran half-way across my lane and planted itself there, losing me a few hundred heart-beats that I will never recover.)

So, yes, I'm hooked. It's an absolutely wonderful experience, and I can see it doing wonders for my cycling. A single-speed would simply not be the same; after all, I grew up riding nothing but (very few bicycles in India had gears; those that did were deemed “racing” models—usually synonymous with drop-bars—and my folks weren't about to get me one of those). I've parked the KHS for now because it doesn't have a front brake, and my interest is in improving my pedal-stroke, not in acquiring additional bones. Also, it's an ultra-cool, retro-design, all-black hipster model, and I am definitely not worthy of it. I'd proclaim that a fixie is definitely in my future, except I'm afraid the cost of one may be sunk into Bike Friday repairs this summer, pushing the fixie into the more distant future.

Hill Repeats in Flanders Fields

I wrote this in late March, 2006, shortly after our trip to Flanders earlier that month. A few people were kind enough to pretend they enjoyed it, so here it is, rescued from the oblivion of my mailbox.

... in which our correspondent discusses climbing a wall, visiting a museum, and chatting with the locals.

I.

I did hill-repeats a week ago Zaterdag.

I was based in Ghent, in eastern Flanders, and my destination was an obscure town due south named Geraardsbergen. Geraardsbergen is big enough to warrant a train to it from Ghent, but only just. Its four-track station was peopled by: a ticket-seller, three bored teenagers, and a confused-looking middle-aged person who wordlessly stared at us the whole time. The cafe, uninhabited by people or goods, represented the triumph of economics over hope.

I wasn't supposed to be at the station at all. I'd based myself in Ghent so I could ride to Geraardsbergen, but a nasty bronchitis meant I had little energy to spare, especially for the numerous wrong turns I was sure to make on rural roads. The train was a fair compromise when the alternative was going nowhere at all.

The previous day, while we stumbled jet-lagged around Ghent, it rained and rained. At night I went to the receptionist to ask whether she had a weather forecast for the next day. She smiled and arced her hand toward the outside. “You mean it's Flanders in the spring?” She smiled again in eloquent silence. Fair enough; had it been warm or dry, I'd have felt robbed of some fundamental part of the experience.

Moreover, I was prepared. I'd asked a Flemish friend, Kim Mens, how to pack for this. It will be cold, he said, and I should expect lots of rain. I was more concerned about snow, which could ice and turn roads—especially upwardly-inclined cobbled ones—nasty. But that at least, he said, was one thing I shouldn't need to worry about in Flanders.

We woke on Saturday to thick snowfall.

Any town with “berg” in its name is sure to be interesting, and the town's French name offers confirmation: Grammont. But Geraardsbergen goes one better: its hill is called the Muur, an altogether better name that means “wall” (think “mural”). The Muur, one of the final climbs of the Ronde Van Vlaanderen (Tour of Flanders), is often the decisive point in the race with mud, cobbles, pitch (up to 20%) and screaming crowds packed into a tiny space. The town has signs with the word “Muur” and a cycle icon. The burghers know why we're here.

Ignoring the people and the workings of the invisible hand, I wheeled out of Geraardsbergen station. I'd printed the Ronde's maps, but the route seemed to slash across town like a flailing snake—a ploy, I felt sure, to maximize the town's chances of seeing the race. But some of those could be one-ways, and nobody was holding traffic for me. So I'd mapped another little street that avoided all the meandering and instead got down (up) to business.

I was soon in the market square, an atmospherically dark gothic town hall watching over a parking lot. A few obligatory wrong turns (and descents) later, I found my chosen street. I saw that it rose absurdly (think Jencks St in Providence, but 2-3 times as long, and cobbled), but hey, that's what I'd come for. So I set off in the haze, squirming over the terrain...only to be greeted by a barrier.

A barrier? Kim Mens's father had confirmed that repairs on the Muur were long done; but here it was, and it forced me to dismount. Well, you don't easily clip back in on an incline like that; you don't easily, and I don't at all.

What to do now? I couldn't possibly *walk* up the Muur, but up ahead I saw my savior. I'd read about the Hard Men of Flanders, and there was one obstacle they were not known to master: stairs. This could not be The Way. Reassured, I pushed up (which, on slick cobbles, meant I frequently caught my slide by locking my cleats into the edge of stone), descended, and finally got to a different cobbled road that was barrier-less and stair-free. I was on the Muur.

After all these hijinx it was a relief to find it at all, so the repeat climbs, which I'd earlier used to justify the trip, became essential for reconstructing the experience.

The Muur is in two parts. The lower streets have small, very rectangular, cobbles laid out with the long side perpendicular to motion. Here you are in the midst of of town, the streets are wide, and these cobbles look fresh. Then you take a 120 turn—which, surprise, is precisely the route marked on the Ronde map—and everything changes. The road narrows so much a large SUV or truck would have trouble squeezing through, and probably couldn't turn the sharp corners. And the cobbles are more square, like the one in the Paris-Roubaix trophy. They are gapped, chipped, and sometimes missing. There is little sidewalk to speak of, an interesting way to host hundreds of drunk, screaming fans.

The lower part is on a sensible incline, so the natural instinct is to accelerate. The resulting ride is is straight out of a cement mixer, but this seemed the most pleasant way to tackle the unworldly vibrations; indeed, all week long I found myself accelerating over cobbles (and rather enjoying it). On the square cobbles, the trick is finding a line. In the steepest stretches you can't sit for need of power, but can't stand for lack of stability (due to moss on the cobbles that makes your wheels slip); I nearly fell three times.

The rest of the week I rode around in cobbled Brugge and out of town. Even in the middle of a working day we were passed by ones, twos and groups of bikers on road machines, all dressed in the proper European fashion of team or club kit head-to-toe and beyond. The area around Brugge is filled with paths along canals bordered by perfectly aligned poplars; the roads are straight as arrows, offering no protection from the wind. My speed differential attributable just to wind was 4-5mph.

II.

This past Saturday I visited Oudenaarde, also in south-eastern Flanders; once the home of Flemish tapestry, now host to the Ronde Van Vlaanderen museum. They museum bills the Ronde as one of the two great “cobbled” classics. Flanders had a fit of asphalt surfacing in the sixties, which greatly altered the route of the Ronde; the race has been part of a restoration and revival of cobbles, especially on the hills—though the museum offers no perspective from the locals who have to negotiate these hills daily.

The museum's organizational conceit is that you pick from a menu of twelve past winners. You then hear about “your” rider at various exhibits along the way. I suggested that Museeuw and Merckx must be especially popular. Without disagreeing, the ticket person noted seriously that Schotte was quite popular too—an indication of the museum's demographics (Schotte reigned just after WW II; a legendary Hard Man, he was nicknamed the Last of the Flandriens). Then he broke out into a broad grin and confessed, “But Eddy is number one.” (I felt obliged to tilt the statistics, and figured Godefroot would be good for a quote or two—which he was.)

One of the museum's main attractions is a trainer set up before a projection TV so you can ride against Peter Van Petegem. (I can't wait for this to become cheap enough to put in a basement.) The outcome is precisely what you'd expect, though nobody all day (including me) spent more than about thirty seconds on it—keeping up with them is a pretty sweaty activity. Besides, what trainer can compare to the real terrain?

Amidst all this fun I skipped the museum cafe. I discovered just as was leaving to run to make my train that Ludo Dierckxsens was visiting for the day, and holding forth in the cafe on Milan-San Remo. The museum has a steady round of visiting “speakers” such as him, especially in the spring season. It vastly exceeded my expectations and I'd heartily recommend it to anyone who's read this far.

III.

The Bike Friday is, of course, a wonderful conversation piece. At the top of the Muur we meet a late-middle-aged couple. After the usual stumble through 3-4 languages we settle on English. Do we know what the Tour of Flanders is? That's why we're here. Wonderful! A great race! And there's a pause as they remain standing there with us.

I fill the gap. Are you from the town? This is their opening. Oh no, they're from Antwerp. They're scouting out the climbs on the race route. By foot? We have bikes back in town, he tells us. And then very precisely, a bit sternly, he adds: “First we do it by foot. Then by cycle.” She smiles sweetly.

So have they looked at other hills? Yes, they're working backwards. They have been to the Bosberg, then, I ask, waving in its general direction? Slowly, and with pride, he replies: “We have spent the night on the Bosberg. (pause) We are with...” I recognize the trailing voice of the vocabularly gap, but my suggestions—friends, family, etc.—aren't helping. A moment, and he straightens up and repeats slowly: “We are with camper.” This is a habit? No, this is their first time, he says with pure joy (she smiles very sweetly). They will be amongst the masses; you can tell he will yell loud Flemish invective at the riders while she smiles at the proceedings and lets out a little whoop as her favorite rider comes by.

I play to the crowd. They're Flemish, so there's an easy guess: I toss out that they surely have great hopes for Tom Boonen. Tom Boonen!, he echoes, as she smiles sweetly. (I'm still pronouncing it like the English language commentators, not quite getting the intonations right, but we're past that.) He tells me Boonen has excelled in Paris-Nice but, looking ominously around, and dropping his mouth into a frown, he confides that Tom's climbing is not so good.

We ramble about TV coverage and other things. Looking to wind up and depart this miserably chilly hilltop battered by gusting winds—he has called the view from here “beautiful”, an indication that regional pride has entirely trumped aesthetic sense—I decide to play the trump card: Tom will be riding in the world champion colors, yes? His breath catches. So maybe, I offer, we will see Boonen win the Ronde wearing the rainbow stripes. She grins very broadly, but he is too choked up with emotion; his heart-rate seems like mine was when I crested; if he could breathe, I reckon, he would break out into the Belgian national anthem(s?). On that note we wave these fine people goodbye. She wishes us well but he does not seem to notice, his mouth puckered with pride and his eyes distant.

It is not our only encounter.

As the holder of an Indian passport, I have developed a host of techniques to disarm immigration officials who express too much interest (it's rarely of the positive kind) in me. Lately I have been waved through immigration, but at Brussels airport I notice the staff are in a questioning mood. Kathi's passport warrants none, but me he asks where we are going. To Brugge eventually, but tonight to Gent.

He relaxes. “So you are in the Flemish part of Belgium!”, he says, not disapprovingly. But he's still talking, so I want to distract him. Yes, I say, and I add, “We go also to Geraardsbergen.”

“Geraardsbergen!” he echoes, correcting my pronounciation but smiling. “You go for the <something that sounds like it would translate to mutton pies>?”

It is my turn to correct. I stiffen, straighten. As my hand makes a sweeping upward motion, palm down, subscribing an angle about 65 degrees greater than reality, I say, “We go for the Muur”. You can hear the capital `M'.

“The Muur!”, he roars. “Amateur cyclists!” (I bristle slightly at the entirely accurate but unnecessary adjective.) The trainee sitting beside him has said nothing, given away no emotion as she has looked at me; but now she breaks out into a partisan smile. He, meanwhile, is grinning a mile wide as he thumps a stamp into my passport with a passion you would not have thought possible of a government official.

Suspending the passport between us, he pauses. “When you go to Geraardsbergen, you must try the <something that sounds like it would translate to mutton pies>. It is the local speciality.” He returns the passports so he can make a small round shape with his thumbs and forefingers, and looks down at it a little wistfully, as if hoping that by the powers vested in him by the Kingdom of Belgium, he could make a mutton pie manifest itself in the ring of his hand. (She does not appear too impressed by this gustatory passion.) When the round refuses to fill, he looks back, smiles broadly (but, I feel, just a little more sadly this time), and wishes us a excellent trip.

It is in the nature of contemporary journalism to make the most of episodic data, to extrapolate wildly from a single incident. The journalist wants, most of all, to be seen as the spotter of a trend before anyone else. Your humble correspondent is not above such frailty. Thus I am forced to report that when a citizen's first reaction to hearing “Geraardsbergen” is to think mutton pies—pies that, my instinct tells me, will not be on the WeightWatchers approved list—over the Muur, the state of cycling is in jeopardy. Tim Moore has pointed out that Eddy Merckx looks like he stayed on his racing diet long after he stopped racing; and we have citizens worried that Tom Boonen's climbing is not so good. I have toured the breadth of Flanders this week, folks, and I have assembled the evidence to report that it will be a while before we see another Lucien Van Impe. You read it here first.

Coda

On reading this report, Kim Mens pointed out that the officer was referring to mattetaarten—made, he said, of “butter, milk, sugar and almond”. So I now regret having missed out on them.

Oh, and Tom Boonen won the Tour of Flanders in his rainbow jersey.