With CicLAvia coming up this Sunday, here’s a photo of bicyclists on Pico Boulevard near Western Avenue in 1895. The bikers were participating in the Los Angeles Times Bicycle Club run from downtown Los Angeles to Hollywood.
Part of the Title Insurance and Trust / C.C. Pierce Photography Collection in the USC Digital Library.
[two men on bicycles both approach the same curve, in opposite directions, each on the correct side of the path. a cluster of four people stand on the right side of the path. cutting a path to avoid both the other cyclist and the cluster of people, the northbound cyclist loses his rear wheel in the sandy edge of the path and falls.]
cyclist: oof. person 1: are you OK?! cyclist: yeah, fine. person 1: we were just talking about…[points to sandy edge of trail, gestures at person 2] He went down the same way! person 2: I broke my AC joint! cyclist: oh. yeah, I saw someone coming the other way and was trying to…[makes a hand motion indicating path between people and cyclist.] person 3: [voiced with bizarre undertone of pride] We were in the way! cyclist: … persons 1-4: … cyclist: well, have a nice day. [rides away]
The 1931 [Paris-Brest-Paris race] saw victory by Australian Hubert Opperman with a sprint on the finish velodrome after his long solo breakaway was neutralized just outside Paris. Opperman’s finishing time was a record 49 hours 21 minutes, despite constant rain. His diet included 12 pounds of celery, which he thought an important energy source (celery’s energy content is minuscule, but it may have been a source of fluid and salt).
To travel from Paris to Brest and back to Paris again is a trip of 1200km (745mi). Bike racing!
Hideous. If this is anyone’s thing more power to them (any bike you ride is a good bike), but I am forever in debt to UCI for going “No. Bicycles have triangles. Stretch and slope them if you must, but on some level they must resemble this, forever and ever.”
Stage 15 of the Giro d’Italia saw Matteo Rabottini spend about 165km of a 175km stage out in front of the race, in the rain and fog, all by himself. He dragged himself over those hills and then, in the closing kilometers, the leaders caught up with him. (You can skip to about 7:00 in to get right to the finish.) Joaquim Rodriguez, who was certainly lot less tired and in all likelihood a bit more talented, went right by Rabottini in the last 500m. But—and this is important—before he’d left the team hotel that morning, Rabottini had packed himself a suitcase full of courage.
I’ve said this before, but when I’m up on exercise I feel like “Shit yeah, gonna do this forever.” When I’m down on exercise, I think to myself “Jesus fuck, I have to do this forever.”
