American Pro: The True Story of Bike Racing in America (Book Review)

American Pro: The True Story of Bike Racing in America by Jamie Smith

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This is the third book by Jamie Smith about American bicycle racing, the American bicycle racing scene (as perhaps one can still say). I read his first book, published ten years about (also by VeloPress) -
Roadie
. He has a more recent book, Reading the Race, written with Chris Horner is (apparently) intended as an instructional book for road bike racer-beginners - I have some interest in reading it but haven't got around to it yet.

VeloPress has some further background information on Mr. Smith.

The first book, Roadie, was intended to be somewhat humorous but this third book is more of a narrative where the humor that appears is part of what the narrative describes. The author's goal is to clarify what much of professional cycling racing at the levels below the World Tour (ie, Tour de France type events) is like in the U.S. today. He describes five seasons (2012-2016) of racing by a particular team that competed both in road events and criteriums.

You don't have to know that much about bicycle racing to enjoy the book. He doesn't focus a lot of attention on the bicycles themselves and their technology. Most of the narrative is more about the people involved and the challenges of this kind of semi-professional sport. The approach is mostly chronological covering the five separate seasons but there are some separate chapters, such as one on how families often host bicycle racers. Any book on bicycle racing has to have some blow-by-blow descriptions of interesting races and Smith is good at those.

Very nice.



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Cyclist Safety - Is it Really that Hard to Understand??

I found this on the Internet, from the govt of the state of Georgia.

GEORGIA DOT RESEARCH PROJECT 13-17 - FINAL REPORT
BICYCLE AND PEDESTRIAN SAFETY IN THE [Georgia] HIGHWAY SAFETY MANUAL - July 2016
http://dlg.galileo.usg.edu/ggp/query:_ca:%22GA+T700.R4+M1+2016+B53%22

Abstract: An accurate understanding of the expected effectiveness of bicycle and pedestrian safety countermeasures is needed to support decisions about how to best allocate limited public resources to increase safety for non-motorized users. However, the kind of data necessary for developing Highway Safety Manual (HSM)–style safety performance functions for bicycle and pedestrian treatments are not currently available. Limited research has been done to date about the impact of bicycle and pedestrian treatments, and most studies are not robust enough to draw broad conclusions. Most agencies surveyed valued safety as a key component of their decision to implement infrastructure, but most did not collect enough exposure and crash data to adequately assess the safety impacts. The two major challenges in using crash records for bicycle safety research are that crashes in general and cyclist crashes specifically are underreported, and pedestrian and bicycle crashes are rare events. Therefore, GDOT should pursue case-control approaches in the immediate and build toward more robust data collection, including new sources for bicycle and pedestrian crash data, counts for exposure data, and site-specific before-and-after treatment data collection.

As I read this, bicycle and pedestrian accidents are sufficiently rare and/or not reported that their approach will be to wait until there are more reported accidents and then study the subject. But in the meanwhile . . . after all, those resources that you might allocate are limited. Etc.

Also, the pseudo-military phrasing, "expected effectiveness of bicycle and pedestrian safety countermeasures," sounds like it concerned with measures to oppose rather than support safety, but who knows. And why do they refer to "bicycle and pedestrian safety" and not "cyclist and pedestrian safety?"

Strange.

When Is an eBike No Longer a Bike?

This Gazelle (from the Netherlands) appeared on the bike rack in the garage where I work.



I am amused (or something) by the seat on the bike rack, which I guess is intended for a child too large for a conventional kid's bike seat. It would put a fair amount of weight relatively high up.

The entire bike is quite heavy. Out of curiosity I tried lifting it by the back rack and I would guess the whole thing is at least 60 pounds. So a certain amount of what the electric motor is doing is assuring all the bike's own weight gets down the road, before it starts in with the rider. Or riders, in this case.

Given the weight, I would expect hydraulic disk brakes, but it has conventional rim brakes. Perhaps you aren't expected to go that fast, but with this much weight and rim brakes, you would have less stopping power than you might want and go through brake pads at a pretty good clip. You would probably go through (expensive) wheel rims much more often than most people expect (which I think is typically never - people don't expect to wear through wheel rims with rim braking).

The Gazelle USA site suggests this kind of eBike costs somewhere upward of $2,500 - many of their models are around $3,500.

I guess because of the cost (value?), the owner of this thing has a chain that he uses to lock it to the rack. Most people do lock their bikes to the rack in this garage, but I don't see the point - there is no public access to this garage. I prefer to keep the time I don't spend messing around with bike locks. And certainly I don't carry a massive chain with me! Or any chain, actually. I use the strap on helmet through part of the frame to assure the bike doesn't fall down during the day - this is the worst sort of bike rack for that.

One realizes how things change looking at this - the Dutch Gazelle bike aesthetic (or something like that) for me was always a simple, mostly steel bike - utilitarian and simple. Ageless. This thing has heaps of plastic (that will most certainly age poorly) and I don't think "simple" is a word that comes to mind, although I guess it is utilitarian.


"A Timeless Classic" from user MacFred64 on Flickr (CC license)

This probably pigeonholes me as an aging cyclist frump of some kind. Oh well.

New Video (from 1965) "Magic of the Bicycle" (from Schwinn)

Part of the Library of Congress National Screening Room.

Summary: From MacDonald inventory: Historical profile of the development of the first bicycles beginning in the 1800s--various bicycle models shown; high-wheeler, bike without peddles, etc.--first bicycle w/ sprocket and chain gear--newspaper boys delivering paper on bicycles--new bicycle lanes open-up--bikes used in industry and businesses; bikes used to delivery tools to business--bicycle used for adventure trips--couple enjoys romantic time bicycling in the wild--housewife and mother uses bicycle w/ shopping basket to go grocery shopping, "She will save money on gas!"--film promotes bicycling as a good family bonding activity and good for health--bicycle race around track--Jackie Hines, Olympian bike rider and others shown--bike safety features of new model shown--interview w/ Dr. White on the importance of bicycling for good health.

One wonders what the audience was for this promotional video, or where they would have seen it, but clearly Schwinn spent very little on having it created. The doctor who speaks on the health benefits of cycling at the end appears at about 17 minutes into it and takes up about five minutes - he might get 45 seconds today.

Commuting Choices (Mine)

1995 Trek SingleTrack with right set up makes a good commuter

I have a shoulder problem that has meant I had to cut back on bicycling. For a while I wasn't riding at all, which wasn't much fun. Thanks to a cortisone shot, I am riding some now, commuting to and from work most days, which is about 19 miles round trip.

Initially I didn't want to carry my stuff in a backpack or messenger bag as I usually have for more than five (?) years, so I put a rack and fenders on my Trek SingleTrack. This is a good commuter, and the fact that I paid only $65 for it amuses me. Because I started using Metro here and wanted to get the transit subsidy, my agency's transit subsidy person told me I couldn't keep a bicycle parking permit for our garage. This turned out to be wrong, but for a while I was locking up my bike outside during work and I wasn't willing to park a bike that would be sad to have stolen.


1982 Bridgestone Sirius appeals to me more

Fortunately I was able to work out the business with the parking garage and have decided I can use a backpack, so I riding this bike again, which is zippier than the Trek and somehow more fun. Don't get me wrong, the Trek would be an outstanding "I can only have one bike" bike, but since I seem to insist on having 4-6 ridable bikes, the one I want to ride to work on most days is the old Bridgestone.

The Comeback: Greg LeMond, the True King of American Cycling, and a Legendary Tour de France (Book Review)

From Flickr user Anders - Greg LeMond and the 1989 Tour de France

My rating: 4 of 5 stars - from GoodReads.

It's odd, but the title on the hardcover version I have is "The Comeback: Greg LeMond, the True King of American Cycling, and a Legendary Tour de France" which is quite different from "30 Shotgun Pellets, and the World's Greatest Bicycle Race."

The central event of the book is, as the title (on the copy I read) suggests, on LeMond's amazing win over Laurent Fignon in the 1989 Tour de France after recovering from being shot in a hunting accident. But to describe this properly, the author presents a reasonably complete biography of LeMond and narrative description of his career both before and after that Tour.

Perhaps of equal importance, this book is about the transition from the LeMond era of professional cycling, when racers could win without doping, to the Lance Armstrong era, when the could not. For the author, then, LeMond is "the true king" of American professional bicycle road racing and Armstrong is not.

After the detailed description of LeMond's second tour victory and a shorter description of his third victory the following year, the book becomes tendentious. The tone changes since for the most part, it is no longer build around bicycle races but instead focusing on who-did-what-to-whom-and-why. Armstrong is the villain while LeMond is a tragic hero. I don't disagree (not that I'm an expert) on anything said here but my sense was that the author ends up launching a discussion of the EPO era in cycling to end his book that is less than convincing because it is so much less detailed and nuanced than what came before - and yet is hardly just a few pages in closing.

One problem for me with some of this is that two different issues are mixed together. One is simply that EPO was so much better a substance when used for doping than all the preceding ones (from strychnine to amphetamines) that it allowed mediocre racers to become winners. The other is that Lance Armstrong in particular was an evil person who orchestrated a successful campaign to discredit and demean LeMond. This is true not just of this book, but other discussions of this time that one reads.

Perhaps a problem is simply my own shame since I was one of many who began to follow the Tour de France mostly thanks to Armstrong's success. This coincided with my own developing interest in cycling (of a far more utilitarian nature). With the complete discrediting of Armstrong I lost interest in bicycle racing generally and the Tour de France in particular. (It is July and I have no idea who any of the leaders are and have not watched one second of footage.) Still, I have found I am still willing to read some books about road racing history, such as this one. And to be clear, I think this is mostly very well done.

This book complements rather nicely "Slaying the Badger: LeMond, Hinault and the Greatest Ever Tour de France" https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11435656-slaying-the-badger published in 2011 that centers on the 1986 Tour de France that LeMond won over Hinault.

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Danes Have Used Bicycles for a While

Photograph of "Danish election returns" in Flickr from the Bain News Service, about 1915

I was slightly surprised to see the prevalence of bicycles represented in this photo of Denmark one hundred years ago. Probably should not have been? The newspaper office that is shown in this photo is in Copenhagen.

I see five or perhaps six bicycles here - all seem to be in the service of men in suits who are riding them in the same way most modern Americans would use a car, that is, to get around, not for exercise or sport.