VecchioJo's blog

A bike must be built up in the correct fashion. If the frame does not come with a fork then the fork must be the next thing on the list, it needs its skeleton. It’s the rules.

Now the nights are drawing in everyone needs something to do to keep them occupied through the cold wet darkness, or just to retain sanity whilst the Other Half is watching Strictly Come Dancing (Victoria Pendleton is not an excuse).

In these troubled times when the once fabled Yellow Jersey is tarnished, stained and all but worthless it’s good to know there’s something yellow you can still rely on. That’s right, custard.

Looking in the corners of the clothing drawer, prospecting for warmer leg lycra I unearth my old Livestrong bib-shorts.

I’m sure I put them away clean.

I was looking forward to this, my first cross race of the season, a local one, just 10 miles up the road, so an enjoyable mix of friends and fun and pain, the potential re-shuffling of the mostly amicable pecking order, and stopping off on the way home for something fatty and tasty and frequently justified as ‘well-earned’. It’s mostly a tradition now.

It was one of those elaborately simple transactions.

What was the product again?

Some of us do our utmost to be Pro, slammed stem, the right socks, legs smooth as hewn marble, vain glances in reflective windows to check that our poise is just so… The truth is most of the time we are just galumphing about in too-tight clothing compared to that elegant mix of power and grace that real cyclists have, and deep down we know it, all bark and no bike.

No-one could ever accuse the Gadget Show on Channel 5 of serious in-depth reviews in their reportage of electro wizardry and boys toys. The programme is a guilty pleasurable way to blob out and enjoy the techno-japery, especially when in that post-ride mid-muffin brain mush, but sometimes the gogglebox gets it so spectacularly wrong that it has you spitting tea at the screen and sending the better half to the bureau to fetch the Parker and Basildon Bond to pen a strongly worded letter.

Strava, Facebook, Twitter, Endomondo, Flickr, mapmyride - these days it’s almost impossible for people to go for a ride without turning it into a multi-media event*, to the point where if someone doesn’t upload a picture or tweet it or log the miles it’s as if the ride never happened, because there’s no proof that it ever existed.