Greg LeMond in the famous change room of the Roubaix velodrome after the 1991 Paris-Roubaix. Look at his eyes. This man is a million miles away. Probably trying to find the energy to chew and swallow whatever pre gel food he’s trying to get into his body after 300 odd kilometers of windswept racing and the jackhammer vibrations of the cobblestone roads that make this race so epic.
I remember the era fondly. John Tesh did the commentary for NBC Sport’s broadcast of the Tour in those years. At the time of this photo LeMond had cemented himself firmly into the pantheon of cycling myth having won the Tour de France 3 times (86, 89, 90) and the World Championships (89). He would retire only two years later after destroying his body trying to keep up to middle of the pack guys that suddenly became contenders overnight. The start of the EPO era, when several large teams instituted doping programs.
Photo by Klaas Jan van der Weij, pulled from Velominati.
I often feel like a blue collar dude working in a white collar world. Salary or not, I’ve always felt that an hour worked is an hour paid and I’ll never really get away from feeling like that. In virtually everything I’ve ever done that 1:1 ratio holds true. There are no freebies, or, if there are, I’m not smart enough to see them. In essence, in all things, you only ever get out what you put in. And I think the sooner an individual realizes this the sooner they get their life together. It doesn’t just come to you. Same thing with bike racing. I was reminded of this through a conversation I had recently with a fellow Synergist, Joe, and an old quote came up.
“Bike racing is a blue collar sport. You’ve got to put in the time.”
I don’t know who said that. It was awhile ago, the 80′s I’m sure, as its been around at least that long. A Dog in a Hat: An American Bike Racer’s Story of Mud, Drugs, Blood, Betrayal, and Beauty in Belgium, Joe Parkin’s awesome book of a few years ago, delved into the lifestyle behind that sentiment. The book is set in the 80′s when he went over to Belgium, one of the early Americans to do that kind of thing.
Compare this with the fact that, to the outsider, road cycling in North America has an elitist look to it. Its filtered through our culture, for sure, but a lot of the teams nowadays are sponsored by banks and white collar institutions which really contributes to this. Certainly a lot of the people that have picked up the sport post Lance Armstrong also perpetuate this. I’ve heard it said that ‘cycling is the new golf’ for the so called ‘MAMIL – Middle Aged Men in Lycra’, the demographic that essentially funds innovation (thank you!) in bike technology by throwing disposable income at carbon fiber wheels and heart-rate monitors. These things take the perception of the sport in North America away from the roots and guts that Parkin writes about.
The crux of the quote above is clear – no matter who you are you need to ride to get faster. That’s the deal. But the day to day reality of the sport is like what’s talked about in Parkin’s book. A day to day, hour to hour grind. Sometimes good, sometimes bad. A job. So its true in that sense as well. Coincidentally the act of writing is much like this. Another piece of culture that looks all fancy and white collar to the uninitiated, but is really a thing improved only ever by commitment and practice, an hour at a time.
Here’s an exercise. The next time you’re in Home Depot, or Revy, or some other place like that, keep your eyes peeled to see how many pro team sponsors you’ll see. And they’ll be European. Look for Quick Step and for Mapei, two of the more mythical teams of the last 20 years. Find others. These sponsors mirror the core of Parkin’s book and experience, as well as the heart of what’s beneath that quote and the sport itself.
I’ve appreciated that connection since I first noticed it. Mapei, the team of Paris Roubaix and the place The Lion of Flanders finished his hard-man career with is….brick laying cement. Yep. It’s perfect. All the color and flash and spectacle you see on TV is supported by brick and mortar. And that’s the point I’m trying to make here.
On that note, here’s a blue collar icon singing the song that most resembles my feeling every time I try to do an interval workout, you know, the kind where your fingertips turn white ’cause the blood won’t go there anymore?
I’m always holding on to what I got (watts), halfway there (minutes), and living on a prayer until I can finally, for f$#’s sake, stop pedaling.
I was talking about this with a friendmy smart and rad pal, Trent Burton, a week or so ago and saying how I wanted to write a blog post about the evolution of Joy Division into New Order following the suicide of Ian Curtis.
Both bands are brilliant for their own reasons but its really interesting, to me at least, to look at the transition from Curtis to Sumner and how the mood and tone of the band changed, and also how the mood and tone of the band stayed the same.
The best song to look at to see this evolution is Ceremony. It was one of the last Joy Division songs and one of the first New Order songs. Curtis wrote the lyrics and first recorded it when he was 23 (!!) and it was the first song that the reincarnated New Order did immediately after his death. Guitarist Bernard Sumner stepped up to sing and, purportedly, had to transcribe the lyrics from the audio of Curtis as they weren’t actually written down anywhere. I’m not sure if that’s true, but if it is, and if you stop to think about it, there’s something incredibly, hauntingly, beautiful about that. The first sounds moving forward for this collection of friends are actually initiated by the voice of the recently departed Curtis. How his voice must’ve hung in the air.
Now if you’re not really a Joy Division fan, or not into this music, the best version for you to listen to is likely the New Order version from the 1987 album Substance. I’m not saying that this is the best version, its just the most sort of accessible one – although the 7″ version is a bit more punk and raw and that’s good too. The original Joy Division recording is very muffled and Curtis’ distinct and robotic drone can be a bit alienating if you haven’t warmed up to it. A great Joy Division song to prime a new listener on would be Love Will Tear Us Apart Again, of course, probably followed by Shadowplay, the first of these two is pretty popular and the second was covered by The Killers. But once you get deeper into the sound these songs begin to sound a bit too poppy and you end up going all the way back to stuff like the original Ceremony, or Temptation, another exceptional example of Joy Division begetting New Order and one made popular by the movie Trainspotting. I also just heard a Weakerthans song that featured the distinctive ‘oh you’ve got blue eyes, oh you’ve got green eyes, oh you’ve got grey eyes’ at the end of it. Apparently John K Samson is also a fan. Eventually you get to stuff like She’s Lost Control and Dead Souls, which was on the Crow soundtrack as a cover by Nine Inch Nails – probably one of the bands that best emulated the spirit of an Ian Curtis, if not necessarily the sound of Ian Curtis. Perhaps my personal favs would be Digital, which is pretty punk at the end of the day, and Disorder, which gets into some really, really cool atmospheric sonic kind of sounds and distortions. Groundbreaking stuff. Isolation is another classic. Hell, I like em all.
Anyway. Back to Ceremony. Give these a listen back-to-back. The vocals are really bad in the first two but these are the only recordings (well, plus one more live one) of this song, so that’s all there’s ever going to be. The second one here has some rather Transylvanian sounding spookiness. The third is the first post Ian Curtis, with Sumner singing. But you feel that its still very much a Joy Division song being performed by guys that are just emulating the sound they’d always had. The fourth one, from the 7″, is the version that you could suggest is the first, legit, New Order version. The tempo is faster, its getting further away from a reverby punkish sound and into something more electronic and studio-esque. It’s only a matter of months between these but the direction is there. This is also where Sumner is singing more as himself and less as an Ian Curtis impersonator, although that it definitely still there. You hear a bit of both, which is why that version is the absolute coolest. It maintains the rawness and DIY feel of Joy Division yet you start to get a little bit more melody and the more outgoing passion of Sumner and New Order. Its my fave.
The final version, which was put on the 1987 album Substance, is where the transition is complete. Its important to note that while that last one appeared on an album six years later it was actually recorded in the same year as the 7″ – in 1981. In fact, all five of these were done within just over a year. And by a group of people in their early 20′s who had just lost their friend and leader.
Joy Division, 1980, from Heart and Soul
Joy Division, 1980, live, two weeks before Curtis’ death
New Order, 1981, single
New Order, 1981, 7″
New Order, 1987, Substance
This is why events unnerve me, They find it all, a different story, Notice whom for wheels are turning, Turn again and turn towards this time, All she ask’s the strength to hold me, Then again the same old story, World will travel, oh so quickly, Travel first and lean towards this time.
Oh, I’ll break them down, no mercy shown, Heaven knows, it’s got to be this time, Watching her, these things she said, The times she cried, Too frail to wake this time.
Oh I’ll break them down, no mercy shown Heaven knows, it’s got to be this time, Avenues all lined with trees, Picture me and then you start watching, Watching forever, forever, Watching love grow, forever, Letting me know, forever.
Alarm bells sounded in my dream I did my best to sleep But a hand reached in and grabbed my ankle Dragged me through the same routine Cold air filled my lungs Felt like I slept for months Hypnotised by repetition Living without living at all Fresh air brought a sense of smell Renewed my strength But the pins and needles hurt my feet As I walked from an interrupted dream And to look back now I can only see those streets in black and white I never found the rainbow’s end But at least I found a better place without you
McConnell invited me out on a back roads, gravel and singletrack ‘cross fest with some hardcore mountain bike masochists a few weeks ago. The theme song for this ride is brought to you by England’s Guns and Wankers, a punk band comprised of members of another English punk band called Snuff, and from an album called ‘For Dancing and Listening’, which we would play, non stop, for days on end, back when I had a blonde afro and worked at Spokes and Attire. I’ve highlighted the appropriate lyrics so that you, dear reader, might also connect with the uncanny relationship between this song and what riding 140k in below zero temperatures was like for this dude. I’m sure if you do that kind of thing on a regular basis you wouldn’t have such reverence for the experience but for me, as a virgin, it was an awesome ride that I’ll remember for awhile. Until, I’m sure, I clock 200k or some other landmark and then the details of the previously termed ‘epic ride’ will fade into the blur of memory just like the kilometers had along the way. The lines on the road roll past. Tides ebb and flow. Faces, they come and go. And suddenly you’re not 19 and ‘punk’ working in a bike shop but 40 and ‘punked’, paying a mortgage.
Cruisin north of Cochrane, AB
It was a bit chillier than I’d hoped for when I left my house at 9:00 to meet up at Cadence Coffee in the BowHood. I had cannibalized the brakes off of my line duty CX bike, an old 90′s Bianchi, to put on my new whippy carbon Cannondale before I went down to Oregon in December. I’d been bombing around town on the Cannondale for a bit, here and there, but since I hadn’t yet moved the brakes back to the Bianchi I had no choice but to roll out on this epic astride a pretty snazzy race bike with pretty snazzy race wheels. Not the kind of beating I really want to put on that bike, but it was a-ok and probably made the 140k a lot easier to handle. I had not ridden anything well above 80k for over a year and even then had only hit the mid 80s maybe once or twice in the last 4 months.
We had a crew of 6 that included myself, Andrew Cullingham and Mark McConnell from Synergy, plus Cesar Martin, Thomas Yip, and Craig Stappler. Craig was the ride leader, essentially, and all these routes and roads we took were ones that he has sussed out over long hours training for stuff like Transrockies and other epically long distance mountain bike events he has done. He mentioned he would soon be doing the Tour Divide. Cool. Guy’s a stud, what can I say. That’s bad ass shit. We talked a little bit about the great idea of just getting way out there on a bike and finding uncharted territory and that feeling of exploration and camaraderie you get when you’re truly remote. I’ve never had that on a bike trip, yet, but I’ve certainly felt that while climbing in Arizona and Nevada, off the beaten path and halfway up some chossy desert pinnacle with a pal you’d better not have reservations about. Even then, well established trad climbs are hardly remote. Not like rolling a bike over a foreign mountain range or alpine climbing in Cerro Torre. Things I want to one day do.
But, for now, everything starts at home, right?
The ride was brilliant. We rode out of Bowness on singletrack and headed up and north through the Tuscany valley for some techy snow and ice bike handling skillz test. Once we arrived at the city limits we stuck to gravel backroads and dualtrack and scarcly saw anyone else, maybe just a single car if I remember correctly. The landscape was blanketed in a thin layer of snow that helped everything merge together into a textured span of white that helped contribute to the far away lands feeling I was experiencing. I don’t want to get all Lord of the Rings, as we weren’t all that far away, but there were horses and barns and windmills and cattle. Bridges and ravines and erosion on the cliffs that told you that, one day, there’d be hoodoos here too, if you could only come back and have a look in a few hundred thousand years. And amongst it six guys out for a bike ride.
We trundled along making pretty good time and, soon enough, hit a series of rolling climbs that no one but me even really noticed. I watched my heart rate steadily work itself up into stratospheric levels with each subsequent hill. Hill 1 – 160bmp, no prob; Hill 2 – 170bpm, ok, all good, I’ve learned I can do this for 20 minutes if I have to; Hill 3 – 180bpm, this isn’t good, what the f, and then, unbelievably, at the crest of the last one Mark had dropped back to see if I was alive and I looked down and noticed I’d hit 191bpm. A middle age man record for me! I think I have an unusually high heart rate though. When I was in my 20′s I’d seen 210 or 211 on occasion.
All the other guys are sitting upright and talking and laughing and I’m waging warfare with parts of my body that have decided to just mail it in today. I’m feeling like I’m trying to breathe, underwater, in a submarine, with concussions going off all over the place. I imagined some Czech-accented sailor running around slapping at big red buttons as alarms in all these disparate parts of my body would scream at me – AH-WOOGA! AH-WOOGA! AH-WOOGA – trying to call my attention to the fact that we were under attack and the shit was going down and maybe I should have a look and can we please stop pedaling now.
Gel stop and south to town for lunch
I should’ve brought more food as we clocked close to 90k before stopping for a full on lunch. I was starting to get a bit woozy with just a single gel to take me that far. Once the sun and traffic started to loosen up the stuff on the roads it became a bit of a sloppy mess and you really had an understanding of the saying ‘fenders make friends’. We were slathered in road grit and mud by the time we rolled into the Java Jamoboree in Cochrane. Rad coffee shop. I felt a million times better after eating some pretty awesome carrot cake and a sandwich. Mark and Andrew mauled a couple of sandwiches each and Cesar let us us in on his secret beet-orange-spinach-green-stuff-super-drink that we was sipping on and, eventually we left and began the climb up Cochrane hill through the GlenEagles golf course before descending back down into the new Glenbow Ranch Provincial Park. On the way in my legs spasmed like Linda Blair in the Exorcist. I had to jump off and stretch to get the muscle to release. Mark suggested I ride bow legged to help ease the cramping, but then suddenly remembered it wasn’t bow legged, it was knock kneed to relieve that particular area, but it was too late I’d done exactly the wrong thing and had to leap off again to do more panicky stretchy. Thomas hooked me up with some Endurolites and in something like ten minutes I felt absolutely brilliant. We rode the gravel and dual track through the park until we hit a paved pathway and rode through some awesome coulees in the river valley. A way better return route than highway 1a, for sure. It was very quiet as this was the first day it wasn’t a million degrees below zero and I think people were still waiting it out a bit to make sure.
"This one time we lost a couple of guys to a pack of wolves."
We hit the end of the serviced part of the road and decided not to venture further considering the coming darkness and fresh snow that had fallen. Instead we punched it up this insanely steep climb that I only made it up on account of being on a carbon fiber racing bicycle with ‘cross gearing. It was a push, for sure. After a brief regroup at the top we hit the highway for maybe 35k into the city with a wind at our backs. That was a pretty good feeling after logging over 100k mostly on gravel. We had a quick stop for Mark to change out a flat right inside the city limits as the sun went down and then rode mellow on the bike path all the way back into Ramsay and home. I needed a blow torch to get my shoes off, but hey, I was home and there was beer and pizza in my future. I went out the next day and scored some winter riding shoes and some super sweet winter tights. James at Campy hooked me up with a nice deal and I’m ready to go for more weekend epics and looking forward to seeing just how lost and how weird we can get. Honestly, its way more fun than riding roads packed with hammerheads in 30 degree temps during the summer. Ok, well, almost more fun.
A week later my toes are still a bit tingly.
I needed a blow torch to get my shoes off, but hey, there was beer and pizza in my future.
Posted by Kevin 
