Back when I was racing, we had to wear white socks. I don't remember whether that was a UCI, or merely a USCF (now USA Cycling), rule. But wearing any other color under your Detto Pietro cleated shoes got you disqualified from a race.
In the early days of mountain biking, riders wore black socks in defiance of that tradition.
I wonder what they--or the UCI or USCF--would make of this:
So good to be riding just for fun again.
Yesterday I took one of my seashore rambles that have been so much a part of my cycling life. You know something's a part of you when you've been away from it for a while and, when you go back, it's like reconnecting with an old friend: It's familiar and new at the same time.
The beaches and boardwalks are all imprinted in my mind. And the bracing wind that pushed at me, whipped me sideways and, finally, took me home felt as if it had always traveled with me, in my skin and on it, yet was as bracing and chilly as the air itself feels to someone who's coming out from layers of stilled dreams, of time itself.
And there is the light I have always seen again for the first time.
I wish all of my fatigue were that of the kind I experienced while riding yesterday: of waking again for the first time.
Many, many years ago, I took Chemistry. It was so long ago that whatever I learned could just as well have been alchemy.
Anyway, I had a really strange prof. Since then, I've been told that all chemists are strange because of the fumes they breathe in the laboratory. Even if that is the case, I still think my prof was strange for all sorts of reasons.
Maybe it's because, on the first day of class, he said, "You may have heard this course will take all of your time. That's not true, but it does require conscientious attention on your part--say, four or five hours a night."
After a couple dozen people walked out, he continued: "Now look at the person on your left. Now look at the person on your right. One of them will fail, if not you."
Then, after a few dozen more people walked out, he said, "We're going to start this course by learning the alphabet." I thought, "OK, maybe this won't be so bad after all." If that didn't show what I clueless freshman I was, I don't know what did.
By "alphabet", he meant the periodic table. There would be a test on it, he said.
I thought about that when I saw this "alphabet"--or is it a periodic table?:
