It’s always a bit curious how cycling manages to attract so many spectators for what, really, is a pretty difficult sport to watch. Track cycling besides, the best we can expect when we go out to watch a race is a fleeting glimpse; a blur of speed, colour and noise. Then they’re gone. And we contemplate the two days it took to fight for our position beside the road, on top of the cliff, and for that motorhome parking lot that European alpine passes become whenever a Tour is on the cards. 

So it’s no wonder that the fans try so hard to add a prologue of entertainment of their own, to string out the fun. There’s the company of fans intent on alpine peaks of inebriation; the Tour village fair, and the fun of the pre-peloton parades. Our glimpse of bikes passing by becomes just a fixed point in a much bigger day of cycling social display. 

Think of the character of roadside celebrations we can watch as the season goes on. They are at least as entertaining as the bike race to which they are attached. 

If we could imagine some kind of scale through which to measure the passions of spectator display, the far left would have to belong to the bemused, frigid indifference beside regimented Chinese roads. The Chinese tifosi  are a bit like a plague of satiated zombies just after feeding time. Here, cyclists can almost hear the sound of one hand clapping as they jostle for points. These threadbare crowds are a bit like professional mourners at the funeral of an accomplished anti-social recluse. 

Then we move on through the quiet, controlled, still bemused, but definitely curious Middle Eastern cycling crowds. Here, the officials all seem to be wearing swords! In France they just rely on Bernard Hinault’s fists for crowd control…

The Malaysian Tour of Langkawi offers more of the same but with rain forests instead of sand. It’s always fascinating to watch the roadside crowd segment itself into the order of men on one corner and women-only on the next. I always wonder how the dressed-for-modesty spectators might perceive the rather less modestly attired cyclists they have come to watch. 

And of course, at the rampaging other extreme, the Italian tifosi rule supreme. How far can you get from those unimpressed Chinese cycling fans? How far is Mars? About that far. Watching those alpine Giro ascents we get another dimension added to the race. The peloton must peak the hill. And thread itself through the raucous, screaming hysteria of the tunnel of cycling fans. Thanks to the crowd, these roads become as narrow as an economist’s perspective on the social benefits of sport. 

Italian cycling fans are the true pros of the spectator side of our sport. Their colleagues in France are slightly less rabid depending on how many drunken dutchmen have taken up possies beside the road. The Belgians are scary for the intensity of their dedication; The Spanish seem to confuse the peloton with a running of the bulls… The English are very polite when the yobbos are all off watching their football instead. 

There are deep labyrinths of social nuance and history to inform why and how the European crowds perform. This stuff is in their DNA. Have you ever watched the miraculous parting of the wall of fans as the peloton threads its way up a mountain pass? It’s as though these crowds have a collective intelligence of their own.  If you could wrap such a scene through the language of mathematical Chaos, you might win a Nobel Prize. 

But there is an emerging New World of cycling fans. Most of them are in the US of A. In California, to be exact. Until recently, they simply grafted the appearance without the substance of the European cycling scene. Nutters with horns and funny sumo suits. The emphasis seemed to be on being seen on TV rather than seeing the riders at least some came to watch. These American fans were, once, a bit like one of those American remakes of already successful European movies; like the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and the US rendering of The Office. All super whitened teeth with the intricacies of nuance all squashed out. 

But now I am not so sure. Something is afoot. This bear is waking up. These American fans are starting to actually understand. I mean, here we are, ready for Stage 3 and we’ve not seen one single naked American ass… Those fans with wet suits and surfboards running inland up a Cat 2 hill were making some kind of statement I’m still keen to understand… But these four with their Motivational Poster sign are showing some serious class. Now that is a sign of the times and one for the book. It’s now the wallpaper on my iPad home screen. Well done. And what a stunning landscape for a ride! I am starting to really relish this race. Actually, I am enjoying it more than the Giro that’s on at the same time…

My one surviving association with the university to which I have devoted 25 years too many of my strictly rationed non-cycling time, is to ride straight through to better places with peaceful lakes and the like. Blissfully knowing that the time of my ride is my own time, and my direction is one dictated by tail winds rather than via the wind of some managerial academic dressed for death in a black polyester suit. But there’s a bit of a buzz going on around the leafy tracks, roads and ruts of that academic mini-town. Just like a bunch of flies, or a trail of ants, the highways, bi-ways and one-time walking tracks are now perpetually plastered with twenty-somethings riding e-bikes.

I am one of those who once declared that these things would never, ever, take off. An obesity of sub-contemptable chain store e-motorised two-wheeled bloatware with all the aesthetics and performance of a trolly-wheeled farm gate. Who would ever want to insult cycling with one of those! But taking off they are; just like a fly-by-wire Airbus full of people sipping gin rather than contributing to the dynamics of their ride. Cycling without aesthetics. Cycling with the chain broken between physical prowess and performance.  Cycling without cycling. eCycling is cycling for those who don’t understand cycling. eCycling is a foot propelled toy car to daddy’s Ferrari parked alongside.

There’s a deep perversion at work here.

I am reminded of scientists dissecting brains in search of the mechanics and chemistry of pleasure.  If we extract this bit of the brain, and short circuit that bit over there, we might isolate out the bits that make us appreciate art and the irrationalities of sport. If we unhitch a few neurones and kill a few synapses here and there, perhaps we can construct a kind of cycling that a zombie, or an economic rationalist, might appreciate! Let’s take the utilitarian essence of cycling and remove it from all the I-Love-Campagnolo, I-Love-Shinano Tour de France hysteria bits. Let’s reduce cycling to the level of what the Tax Office might appreciate!

There they go. Every e-cyclist seems to wear exactly the same benign, disassociated frown. I know that look. I have seen it plenty of times before. It’s the look car drivers have.

e-bikes are the bikes a car driver might ride! When they loose their licence after being caught with drink on their breath.

Which is not to deny that there is a kind of a pleasure to be derived here. If only the pleasure an economic rationalist might derive through knowing how many cents are saved from not having to drive their car. But how much insight could an e-bike rider get into the pleasures of riding a real bike? As much as you could get from only ever watching cycling on TV? Which is not to deny that there are pleasures to cyclists watching e-bikers riding the hills. Have you seen the way they always parody pedal while their motors work hard against gravity? It’s a kind of faux pedalling; pretend pedalling just like the grown ups do when they ride a real bike up a hill… You have to do something with your legs when the gradient heads north. Else you’ll get deep vein thrombosis from lack of use. But it’s the look on their faces that gets me every time. Determined detachment; austere un-pleasure. Robot faces. Faces of people neither here nor there; unknowing the pleasures of muscle powered pedalling or the thrill of riding a real motorbike.

And how must they feel when real cyclists dump them on hills? Or away from the lights, or on a flat in-the-drops stretch. How must they feel? Why, with no feelings at all. Someone who would ride an e-bike would not feel any of these important cycle-snob, psycho-social compulsions at all. They’d not even understand the critical nuances of mountain bike-road bike competitive mutual disdain, let alone the intricacies of masterful race facing et al. Hell, e-bikers probably don’t even know about fixed gear/hipsters let alone the perversions of Shimano on an Italian master-built bike!. They are the kind of riders who, if they were ever to ride in such a thing, would think nothing of wearing their cycling nicks with the chamois on the outside…

OK, so e-bikes are not for me; and probably not for you. But should I be so smugly dismissive of a device that takes patronage away from cars? Isn’t it better that we have e-bikes on the road when otherwise these folk would be driving cars? Could e-biking be some kind of front door into the world of cycling? Possibly, but there is a big problem here. And it’s all to do with the disconnected dementias of the car driver’s brain. Can the simian sensibilities that combine to condemn an individual to a car possibly be sufficient to distinguish an e-biker from a muscle-powered cyclist?  Probably not. In the two-way switch of the car driver’s brain the world reduces to the simple polarity of bikes bad: cars good. Anything more complex than that and their brains would fuse…

So with all these e-bikes wobble riding the roads just like motorcyclists who aren’t and cyclists they perhaps might vaguely resemble, the poor old car driver is getting seriously confused. This is worse than the hybrid/chain store no-mountain bike commuter plague. Motorists are used to hybrid commuters treacle pacing up hills. They are tuned to overtaking when ever and where ever they encounter a bike on the road; no matter what. But these e-bikers, while riding with even less than the prowess of their hybrid rider kin, are riding the hills with speeds approaching that of the lycra-carbon clique that at least some car drivers had hitherto come to realise were cyclists otherwise to avoid. Perhaps. At the advanced level of the car driver brain domain.

What will be the consequences of e-bikes should they really take off? While a real cyclist learns handling and road skills through the progress of hard won muscle-tuning time, an e-biker flicks a switch and joins straight in. An e-bike, remember, is still a bike. It was not conceived or designed as some kind of de-powered motorbike. It’s a bicycle with electric motor assist. To ride a bicycle, you need to develop a certain set of physical skills. A cyclist wears into the riding game. Our bodies adapt to the design realities of the bike. Bikes are designed to be pedalled. pedalling requires muscles and muscles provide the balance.  Bicycle dynamics are a synergy of mechanics and biology. That’s why a first-time rider usually pains-out after a few miles or so. We need to break our selves into the cycling game. If we were born to ride we would have been born with wheels attached. e-biking takes all this evolutionary adaptation away. It’s like throwing a non-swimmer into the deep end of a pool. e-bikers are now mixing it with car drivers without the armour of physical-skill adaptation. How can you direct a pedal power dynamic-derived machine out of the danger zone when you have yet to master the dynamics of simple control?

We are all going to wear the consequences of heightened car driver rage. We are all going to be relegated to the cycle paths. Get ready for the re-regulation of cycling on our roads. It’s not going to be nice.

Riding up to a roundabout with the due caution of potential death, disfigurement and, worse, damage to one’s bike, I noticed the peculiar sound of a screeching yobbo projectile vomiting every four letter word that his 24kb brain could muster.  I don’t know what, exactly, he was saying despite his efforts to elevate his thoughts via sticking his ugly foam drooling face out the window of his penis-statement-making SUV, because I was listening to a vastly more entertaining podcast instead. But, I got the gist as he started to honk his horn while wildly conducting a flabby arm and one finger routine through which to choreograph his vocal wit. I was, you see, in his way. For once, I simply ignored the tirade, but I do confess I did slow down even more so that others could more completely savour this scene. Particularly the policeman standing beside his car just over the road. Outside his police station.Watching and shaking his head. Oh well, I guess that kind of behaviour is no longer a crime. I rode on, the troll drove off – seething and fuming over the 0.000006 second delay.

It’s irrelevant that my speed is usually at least matching the pace of the traffic in this car bloated town. Or that, indeed, we cyclists usually negotiate roundabouts with greater precision than the crash derby set ever achieve with their 2 tonne SUV’s. It’s irrelevant (if not horrendously disconcerting to) these NeanderCarls  that we actually have the legal right to be on the road, or that we are saving fuel for them to use, and gassing them less, and taking up less space. No matter.  To their 24kb minds the complexities of the world reduce to: bike bad, truck good. Big important, small not.

I’ve been reading Tom Vanderbilt’s interesting book ‘Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What it Says About Us). While not exactly a revelation of extraordinary insight, the book is a handy synthesis of notions scanned via what must have been years of library trawling (or, more likely, a few intense Google sessions). There’s an anecdote for all occasions. And I was in search of insight to explain my recent roundabout incident, not to mention my other pet cyclist-car driver peeves:

• why do car drivers always try to overtake serious cyclists when riding downhill; especially when we are at least keeping up with the cars in front
• why do car drivers always try to overtake cyclists (of any kind) when a car is coming from the opposite direction
• why do car drivers hate coming up behind cyclists at traffic lights, roundabouts and every other place where we are more than matching everyone else’s speed
• why the seething hatred some drivers are so keen to display
• why do car drivers never, ever, give way to cyclists with the right of way
• how is it possible for drivers to be blind to a cyclist wearing, say, a full fluoro-green Green Edge cycling kit while being completely tuned to cars colour-matched to the road, or to a grey rain challenged sky.

It seems that eye-to-eye communication is a key. Apparently, humans have evolved to resolve the complexities of communication through the proxy of a good old eye-to-eye stare. Think of The Look made famous by Lance Armstrong: a momentary eye-to-eye contact through which to establish who is predator and who is prey. Smash the enemy with a piercing glance. Prick their confidence with a single Look. Better than words, or a neon sign. A simple connection from eye to eye can make your message incredibly clear. Yes, connections from eye-to eye will certify all kinds of messages when you are out on the road. And that is one big problem when it comes to cars, or more precisely, for their drivers shrouded by a wall of sun-tinted glass and opaque tin. Cars filter our capacity for eye contact like a desert sand storm or a veil of hail. How do you make your connection when you can’t see to person to whom your thoughts are aimed? It’s like trying to make eye contact with Darth Vader. Under that disguise, who knew the man within is a feeble damaged mess propped up by an electronic array? Who new that the horn blasting troll giving you a hard time is really a flab-bellied, retirement-aged history teacher letting loose the frustrations of a lifetime of being beaten up by his wife…

With the disconnect of being unable to see eye-to-eye, motorists tend to behave differently than they would when their gaze is more exposed. Humans deprived of eye-to-eye contact tend to interact with less restraint than they would when standing face to face. How many people do you know who would scream abuse over such minor matters as a contested right of way when standing face to face as they might when under the shroud of anonymity afforded by their cars? Eye-to-eye contact tends to keep us civilised. We are adapted to transmit petabytes of evolutionarily accumulated social nuance and context via the electric shock of eye-to-eye contact. Take that away and we revert to social-context disarmed anarchy. Just as can be observed in internet chat rooms and the like. Or anonymous hate messages graffitied on public walls. It’s all to do with firing off our base primitive dysfunctional urges via the safety of being out of range. Of retaliation. Or recognition.

This all goes some way to explaining the behaviour we see on the roads. And bad behaviour is certainly not just targeted at cyclists. It’s all about the otherwise meek and mild awakening their beasts within once inside their cars. Everyone becomes a target of a road-raged tin-shielded troll.

So what happens when a car-shielded road troll encounters the blazingly lighthouse-like beacon of a cyclist’s unshrouded eyes? It’s at this point that Tim Vanderbilt’s book runs out of steam.

Car drivers can be breathtakingly anonymous. Cyclists (and middle-aged open topped sports car drivers) are at the opposite extreme. Not withstanding deep-tinted cycling glasses, helmets or tweed driving caps. It’s as though we cyclists are making an extreme statement of un-anonyminity. Perhaps we are like peacocks with tails to display. When we ride a bike, we are as stripped of a place to hide as a swimmer clad in nothing but speedos on the beach. We become a magnet in search of eye-to-eye communication. The anthesis of hiding under a shield of tin. Provocatively exposed to the communicative possibilities of face directed at face. Could this be construed by the 24kb NeanderCarl brain as something of a threat? Could be we construed as a confrontation; a I-dare-you-to-say-that-to-my-face assault to those who prefer to fire their tirades from the safety of a two tonne automotive shield?

When you think about it, most car driver road rage is executed much more by way of a drive-by assault than as a man-to-man* engagement on the front line. Yes, sometimes road rage unravels to the physicality of fisticuffs, and only then when a cyclist is silly enough to take the extraordinarily unexpected turn to fight back. But that’s much rarer than abuse delivered via a car horn along with a finger out the window. Road ragers would rather hit you with their car than they would with their fists. They are cowards by definition. But irrespectively, if you de-shrouded these people from their cars and put them eye to eye with those to whom their abuse is aimed, I’d bet their behaviour would be cooled quicker than the engines they’d be forced to leave aside.

If you doubt the power of eye-to-eye contact to defuse a road raged scene, try this experiment. I have tried it many times. It has worked every time. If you can, pull up beside the troll giving you a hard time (maybe when you are both stopped at a set of lights). Turn you head and give him* the eye. Don’t say a word. Just give him* The Look. Think of Lance Armstrong. Watch the abuse fizzle out. Watch the turkey embarrass himself* out of rage as quick as a punctured tyre. Watch him* flounder in defeat and plant his* foot to escape. This works particularly well if you are commandingly fit and lean; a menace of cycle fitness is ever more intimidating the more you can establish The Look.

Naturally, there will be exceptions to my theory. Perhaps giving The Look will ignite explosive decompression when the road rager’s brain power runs out. It’s probably best to simply ride away from any beer branded red neck ute with penis extension antenna masts whipping fifty feet  up into the wind. Let Darwin do his work instead.

*Road rage is definitely not constrained to men! Some of the worst offenders are women. Cars do something to over-liberate the conventions of femininity as much as they do to emasculate the conventions of masculinity; road ragers become sexless beasts one and all.

It is unwise to pay too much. But it’s worse to pay too little. When you pay too much, you lose a little money, that is all. When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the thing you bought it to do. The common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a lot. It can’t be done. If you deal with the lowest bidder, it is well to add something for the risk you run. And if you do that, you will have enough to pay for something better.  John Ruskin, 1819-1900

That’s a funny quote to stick on the price tag of a tent (in this case, a Mont Moondance 1). But that pretty well sums up the ethos in which I’d prefer to invest when the choices I make are really put to the test. Not too heavy (or I’d just leave it behind), not too light (and flimsy when the wind picks up); water proof within the limits of reasonable rain without having to pack a submarine instead… Our choices always involve a tipping point over some razor edge of pros and cons.  Finding that seat on the edge is the hardest part. Marketing and merchandising muddies the stream. I have 6 tents; but only one that sits right on John Ruskin’s pin-point, tipping-pointy edge. I also have around ten bikes in my shed (well, shed, living room, dining room, office … the bedroom is still out-of-bounds). Finding the micron spot that can hold Ruskin’s value-perfornance balance in place is a bit like a Trek to Shangri-La: hard to find and probably shrouded in (marketing) myth.

There’s a few routines you can run to guide making a good choice. In the case of buying a new road bike, you could simply buy the most expensive bike in the shop and hope the margin you paid will insulate you from all the unforeseens that might otherwise convince you to take up golf instead. Buying a new Pinarello Dogma2 is a bit like that. You KNOW that the price for that thing is padded with the mystique of the brand. You KNOW that this mystique is pretty much as much a myth as the cycling skills to which we might secretly aspire. You KNOW that people who pay that price are pretty much all middle-aged dentists with too much money rather than an excess of talent. We all know about ‘pride of ownership’ (unless you are into Zen). We all know that the premium for this pride also explains the perversities of Ferrari’s and the Rolls Royce. And frankly, spending too much on mystique is, really, all just a bit naff.

I’ve been saving for a BMC SLR01. That’s the bike that Cadel used to win the Tour de France. Priced at around $8,000, it’s at least $6,000 cheaper than the new Dogma2. Yes, I know Cadel could have won on a lesser bike. And no, I am not a Cadel Evans fan. And yes, I DO love the new Dogma2. But not in the colours of Teams Movie Star or Sky. But, if it’s good enough to win Le Tour… it must surely be good enough for me without having to spend $6,000 more for the Pinarello. Isn’t that what this search for John Ruskin’s value-performance balance is all about?

Well, I was saving for a BMC SLR01 until I visited my local bike store two weeks ago. I think I was just after some chain lube and a new inner tube. I got my tube and my lube, but I also left with a brand new Giant TCR SL Rabobank 2012 team issue under my arm. That’s the first time I have ever purchased a new bike without a deeply researched technical plan. If there ever was a bike to which I had never, ever, aspired before it would have to be a Giant. I mean, you can’t get further away from the mystique of the Italian thoroughbred bike maker – while still be standing on Planet Earth – than buying a Giant. Isn’t that the brand with all the mystique of a generic supermarket no-frills bottle of milk? All through this year’s Le Tour I was feeling sorry for poor old Luis Leon Sanchez (my favourite pro-cyclist) having to ride the new Giant TCR when, last year, he got to ride Dogma’s for Caisse d’Epargne. No wonder, I thought, he wasn’t doing too well… Giant? Not for me. That’s the choice an economist would make. But wait a minute… I am an economist (or was). I have the PhD in a cupboard somewhere. But even then… Giant? Nah!

But when Mark Bullen, owner of the Armidale Bicycle Centre (who by now can read me like a book, being my bike fix dealer for going on 20 years…) pulled out his brand new 2012 Giant TCR Rabobank team issue bike. ‘Whatdoyoureckon about this?’ Errrr… First thought that comes to mind: wow. Stunning. Step 1. My interest is pricked. Prejudice is put on hold enough to get to Step 2. Lift it up. This thing is light. Step 3: it’s ALL Dura ACE (right down to the chain and every single cluster cog). If you can’t have Campagnolo, Dura Ace will satisfy. Even the wheels. But Step 4. That’s the killer. $6,500. As is, out the door. Now my thinking was, well, if it rides like a gate, I can always stick all the good gear it comes with on a new Dogma frame. Because at this price, the Giant frame is pretty well thrown in for free.

And then on to Step 5. The ride. After 500km (in a day over a week), I had to return to the shop and have a great big moan. Looking Mr Bullen in the eye with more than a hint of displeasure to impart, I presented him with the issue I now had. ‘What, exactly, am I supposed to do with all my other road bikes now?’ This new Giant is better in every way (except, perhaps, in valueless prestige) than all my Pinarello’s and my S Works Roubaix.  Actually, I have never ridden a bike that performs like this. I never imagined that one could. Not at this price. Or any other price for that matter. This is what I was anticipating the new Dogma2 would be like. Which no doubt it is. But remember, this Giant is one third the price!

Let me unpack this startling claim. What does ‘better in every way’ actually mean?

My daily ride starts off with a hill. It’s a nice short, steep, out-of-the-saddle sharp attack kind of hill. The new Giant felt like it might have one of those micro engines Fabian Cancellara was supposed to have hidden away to (ludicrously) explain his speed. I have never, ever, ridden a bike as stiff as this. Every possible micro watt of power is transmitted to the road. Every single bit. This thing has what I’ve always imagined ‘direct-drive’ might imply. OK, but that’s just the first five minutes of my first ride. Cynicism is setting in. I am betting that once the ride takes hold this thing is still going to ride like a farm gate on wheels of steel over the rough roads we have around here. It has, after all, got a dirty great integrated seat post connecting the frame to my seat. Those things transmit every bump straight through to your bones; or so I thought.

No. This new Giant is, somehow, vastly more compliant than that. Actually, it’s marginally less harsh than my Pinarello Prince and slightly more so than my Pinarello Paris (my all-time most sacred bike). It’s about 20 per cent harsher than my Specialized S Works Roubaix, but never to the point that I would wish to be on that particular bike instead. And our roads resemble the crater-scape of the Moon. There’s none of that urban city-slicker smooth tar around here. Indeed, our roads don’t seem to have any tar at all, being largely aggregate rocks held in place more by the persistence of double trailered cattle trucks than via the bonding of our city cousins’ lovely hot mix boulevards. For years I have been thinking that integrated seat posts were for city roads in Europe or the US of A. Never, ever, for around here. Myth busted. Now I never need to worry about carbon assembly compounding my seat posts again.

Next up is a good 20 km of undulating flat. Flat out. I cannot believe how fast this bike is. But perhaps that is just a symptom of first-ride enthusiasm. I’ll reserve my judgement until I have more miles on the clock. And then onto the endless hills. My rides all involve hills. Either that or drive someplace else by car to start off a ride. My daily ride involves 20km of min. 8 per cent hills. Time to test out myth number two. Big deep dish wheels. Now I know 50mm wheels are not particularly deep but the wheels I always otherwise ride are the skinny little things that climbers usually ride. These C50 Dura Ace rims are like time trial wheels to me. Surely they won’t be too great when I get to the hills. I bet I’ll be dreaming of my Fulcrum Racing Lights before this ride is done! Nope. These wheels cut a power trench up every hill on my ride. Far from being a handicap on the hills, these Dura Ace C50′s are at least as good as my climbing rims. What, exactly, is going on around here?!

Next is the long wind blown bit in the valley below. Now that’s where I bet these ‘deep’ dish wheels are going to put me into a tree. I am thinking of wheels like sails; to be caught by every side-wind gust. And side-wind gusts were on tap on this and my next ten rides in this wind blown valley of mine. The actual effect is like a gentle but slight pressure to the side; not at all like being blown off the road as I’d imagined. Indeed, the aero effect of the deeper rims at least counter balances any tendency to catch a side wind when the gusts pick up. I am thinking that these rims are so well-behaved because they have such thin bladed spokes. I bet if they had the big flat paddle-spokes of something like a Ksyrium SL I’d be having different thoughts.  These wheels are a perfect choice for this new Giant TCR.

Now I have been keeping records of all my rides for well over 20 years. I have been riding this particular morning ride now almost daily for all that time (the rest of the time I am off on my mountain bikes). On my first test ride, I posted the fastest time for this regular ride for any year in the records I have. But any good scientist will know that experiments need to be repeated. So I kept repeating this experiment of time for the next two weeks. Every ride is always faster on the new Giant TCR than any other ride in my record books. Under any conditions. And that includes the rides on my Pinarello Price. And the rides I used to have when I was 20 years younger and racing at A Grade (Cat 1) at my supposed peak. After over 500 km on the clock, this bike continues to amaze. It’s fast. It’s comfortable, even on extended rides. It’s smooth. And it corners like it’s on rails. Especially flat out down hill.

Indeed, it’s the downhill part I have come to appreciate best. The combination of superb frame stiffness, light weight and the airstream rail effect of my new deep dish rims all combine to open an entirely new dimension to going down hills. I am reminded of down hill skiing at the level of my most fervent skiing dreams. Astonishing.

But that’s not all. There is one other part to this bike’s allure. Something I would never have previously associated with the Giant brand. This bike is quite probably the best looking bike I have ever seen. It’s a total stunner in it’s 2012 Rabobank team issue white, blue and orange. But looks are only as deep as the paint. A top-end bike needs to evidence a flawless finish right through to the inside of its carbon tubes. I have been trying ever so hard to find a flaw of any kind in this bike’s build. There isn’t one. It’s finish and construction are robotically flawless. I am looking hard; I am inspired to look hard to justify the $18,200 I spent on my Pinarello Prince. I am as flawed in this endeavour as the finish and build of this Giant is, almost spitefully, flawless.

And there are some lovely little bits to confirm Giant’s attention to detail. Like the included cadence/speed sensor implanted in the rear chain stay. This little beauty is ANT+ compliant which means that it connects automatically to my Garmin Edge 800 GPS computer. A very nice touch. The integrated seat post is also very well considered. Via two choices of metal mast ends, you can have over 45mm of adjustment if, by some chance, you suddenly discover one day that your traditional post extension has always been way, way, too short (as I did about five years ago). The supplied all carbon PRO handlebars are also a nice choice, and not some token cost saving effort to keep Giant’s accountants happy. While being relatively shallow, if your hands are not too huge, they provide a wonderful ergonomic grip in all positions. The Fizi:k Arione seat is one that most of us would likely choose as first option rather than as a standard offering for future upgrade. And, again, to repeat myself, those Dura Ace wheels are an inspired choice in perfect keeping with the ruthless efficiency of the rest of the bike.

Now I know what it’s like to ‘live’ the concept of John Ruskin’s advice. I have found the perfect balance between paying too much and too little.

But, after all, I do have ONE complaint. Not cynical or snide. I do have a complaint. Presumably Giant are building millions of these things and they can pitch them onto the market on a margin that would send anyone else broke. I am deeply concerned that by pitching their new pro-level bike at AUD$6,500, Giant are going to be sounding an assault on the likes of Pinarello, Colnago, Trek and even Specialized that those makers might not survive. I am wondering if, by buying this bike, I am now complicit in the final decline of the family bicycle artisan traditions  so glorified by the Italians, the French and the Belgians since the beginning of bicycle racing times. I deeply care about the continuation of those traditions and the passions for bike building that define them. Is the vastly more clinical, robotic, economic-rationalist Giant empire going to kill off the culture and traditions that so define our sport? I promise to make my next bike purchase one more supportive of those all-important traditions. Maybe I will wait for the Pinarello Dogma3.

Specifications

2012 Giant TCR SL ISP (Integrated Seat Post) Rabobank team issue (size M/L tested)

Are there any truly wild places left on earth? Are there any places where the local ecology is completely unspoiled? Well, that depends on your definitions of ‘wild’ and ‘unspoiled’ and on your appreciation of Chaos Theory. If a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil can chaotically unleash a hurricane in Japan, then no place is safe from at least the most subtle influences of mankind. Perhaps a wild, ecologically coherent place is simply defined as one where the disturbances of adjoining ecologies are somehow contained to the level of ‘hard to observe’. Present, but you need to really look to notice. If that’s our working definition, then I am wondering how to classify the pure, un-taintedness of the place where I have just walked for the past three days.

You see, I’ve just been walking in my favourite wilderness church; a remote wild river gorge. I’m not going to say where because the ‘disturbances’ I noticed enroute might encourage our park management bureaucrats to take to their helicopter gunships again. Last time the wild horses flashed too much hoof, our Park managers unleashed a holocaust on this seedstock of the Australian Lighthorse.

I can understand the thinking to a degree. But the basic premise is as ignorant as their militant response. Wild places are rare these days. And this place is one of the rarest, most magnificent and most human-unaccommodating of all. If any place was worthy of ecological lock-down, this would have to be it. Wilderness end on end from one seemingly infinitely remote distance into another. There are no accommodations here to man. No paths. No huts, no mobile phone connections! The only way to navigate is via a good set of maps, and a GPS if you really want to come back. Too steep even for mountain bikes (unless you want to carry a bike on your back for the 3 hour 50% gradient hill you need to climb to enter or leave this wild spectacular place).

Horses don’t naturally belong, in an ecological sense. But then again, they belong there more than us. Horses don’t unleash toxic spills; they don’t level forests; they don’t build dams across wild streams. And they certainly don’t sit around campfires chucking beer cans after a wild afternoon of bush-taming conquest via the wheels of their oversized phallically suggestive 4WD’s.

So it’s more than understandable why there’s a will to lock such places away. Especially places where the depradations of humans are contained via inhospitality rather than locked gates. There are so few people willing to take up genuine wilderness walking these days. Thank the gods of this unimaginably gorgeous place.

The path down the river was made by horses’ hooves. You know this every time you step over a stallion’s personal patch. Walk quietly and you will find a family of mares, foals and their vigilant stallion grazing the lush riparian grass. Walk on and they follow via the compulsion of equine curiosity moderated by rightful suspicious fear. I can’t imagine any domesticated horse not wanting to immediately escape to a place such as this. This must be a horses’ vision of heaven. If ever there was a sight to signal harmony of place, this would have to be it. You just know in a deeply intuitive way that it’s you, not the horses who really do not belong. You with your heavy backpack of life-sustaining connection to the alien place from whence you came. Could you survive like they can as permanent residents of this place?

These are the smart, human-shy residues of a population culled by zealous park managers overburdened with good, but ill-conceived intent. These days, the best survivors are those horses who have learned to hide at the merest scent of man and, in particular, at the faintest sound of their noisy flying machines. Over my walk, I observed their hiding places under deeply thatched casaurina stands.

As my bearings re-aligned with the solitude and pristine purity of this place, I too began to reel at even the vaguest hint of man. On the second day, I found some historical catching yards; a bit of wire strung to a tree; a few stakes in the ground; a fire place long long gone cold. Those are the remnants of men who ran cattle through here. Inconceivably tough men who’s heroic pathways could only be described on an Everest climbing scale. All gone now. Locked out by World Heritage dedication and intent. Which only makes me feel even more out of place. A privileged observer who has earn’t this prize to observe and admire via legs cramped via unaccustomed strain (I’ve discovered that cycling fitness does not translate to fitness on the level of a bushwalking boot!). On my third day I came upon a tyre washed up against a river standing tree. What a flood that must have been! But other than that, the world outside has disappeared.

What a lonely, slightly more barren place this would be if the horses were gone. I am sure this place would retain its status as a sacred awe-inspiring wilderness with all the horses gone, but it would be a different place. It would be a more flora-balanced kind of place; a bit like those lichen-moss drenched rain forests found in shaded ridge hollows and straddling river banks in more tropical climates. It would be a quieter, stiller kind of place. It would become (or revert to) a place where you need you to look deeper and with even greater dedication to find and observe wildlife than it takes to notice the in-your-face presence of trees. All this means that my culture of aesthetics is probably skewed towards places with the noisier, busier dynamic of horses and other mega fauna than being a true fit to Australia’s more secretive wildlife ecologies. And I am sure I would still visit this place with the horses gone; and adapt back to the place it would become. But I like what it is now with a passion I am sure others find in church. So I’ll keep hoping that our park managers can manage to maintain a more pragmatic stance in relation to the rather pointless and unreachable goal of ecological purity to which they seem to be rather over-esoterically attached.

I bet you can’t immediately figure what the picture on the left is all about. Especially if you are 30 years or newer. Even if you do know, I bet you can’t immediately figure how the mystery object relates to cycling… Read on.

A short while ago, I discovered that my local second hand book shop has a secret cache of vinyl records; all hidden away in a secret room. 30,000 LP’s all racked and ready for purposes still unknown to the brave proprietor who, hitherto, has kept his stash under lock and key. Through some intrusive persistence on my part, I discovered a treasure within a treasure. Many of those 30,000 LP’s are still factory sealed!

Just like the stash in Tutankhamun’s tomb, these treasures have been sitting undisturbed for going on 30 years, just waiting for re-discovery and finding, at last, an admiring home. Well, say no more, welcome home… I am grabbing as many as I can afford, which is far fewer than I could afford if only desire could pay my way… But even with modest means, I am now living in a regular time warp of glorious analogue sound once more. Those were the days and those days have come around all over again!

But it’s not nostalgia that’s happening here. I am not one of those who spend a lifetime living in the past and I am definitely not a technology avoiding Luddite. Indeed, I have a regular passion for the eternal upgrade path that ever newer technology brings. I suppose I am a ten second delay early adopter when it comes to technological stuff. So why the fascination with vinyl records in these days of the digital CD?

Because LP’s sound better than any CD played on any twice removed from affordable CD player could realise. (Provided your turntable and cartridge are up to the task). Truly.

Here’s an instance, then, of old technology being replaced by technology that’s worse. LP’s don’t pit with age. LP’s can play way over and under the frequency constraints of ‘Red Book’ CD’s. LP’s present a sound that’s warm and round, wide and deep. Just like its meant to be*.

If you can accept this basic premise, why, then, did we all let the LP almost disappear? Why have we almost universally adopted the lesser CD instead? There are lots of reasons, some simple (like convenience) and some un-sound (like gullibility to mass marketing spin). Read Greg Milner’s most excellent book Perfecting Sound Forever if you have a desire to explore this a bit more.

But it got me thinking. My ears do not deceive. At least one piece of ‘old technology’ is better than that with which it was replaced. And don’t even get me started on the overcompressed, lossed-out rubbish the recording industry is foisting on us via MP3 files and the like these days.

It occurs to me that most of us also know another bit of ancient technology that’s resisting the techno black-boxing of this ‘digital age’. Yes, vinyl LP’s are a standout from the ‘analogue’ days. But so too are bicycles. Let me explain.

Consider the definition of ‘analogue’:

relating to or using signals or information represented by a continuously variable physical quantity such as spatial position, voltage, etc. Often contrasted with ‘digital’ (Oxford Dictionary of English, 2nd Edition).

The concept of ‘directly relating’ is the key. With an LP, you can, if you try, directly relate with – if not replicate – the mechanics involved in making sounds for our ears to hear. Observe record grooves. That’s the picture at the top of this page. See all those bumps and troughs? A physical needle bumps its way over that rough vinyl road and vibrates sound back to our ears. The earliest ‘mechanical’ records vibrated sound back to us via a metallic horn. These days, electronics carry the vibrations via voltage fluctuations, but there’s no sending the music off into the mathematical domain as digital rendering involves. You can stay connected to the concept of sound from its making through to listening at the other end. It’s all about vibrations, from the vibrations of the original sounds through vibrations picked up by a needle, to vibrating the hairs in our inner ears. Digital is a darker, black box affair. The link from sound to hearing is broken by a black box of algebraic tricks in between. Remember, dear human, that we hear in analogue. If we were to hear in digital, we’d have to become robots first.

‘Directly relating’ is what we still get from bicycles too. Riding a bike sends us all manner of information represented by a continuously variable physical quantity such as spatial position… See a bump, feel a bump. We don’t feel bumps via their translation into a string of zero’s and one’s in between.

Indeed, I reckon that the practicalities of ‘analogue’ happens whenever we can trace cause and effect without recourse to translation into the black box of secret-handshaking, jargon encrypted science. Analogue sure is easier to fix when your caught out beside the road with nothing but a tyre lever and patch at hand. Try wrenching a string of zeroes and ones. Analogue lets us wipe the clicks and pops of dirt via a good old fashioned cleaning cloth. Analogue lets us replace a worn stylus or change a worn cog. Analogue lets us change a cartridge tracking weight or adjust the pressure in our tyres to better fit the bumps and troughs of our travels down any road.

But it’s not just a matter of easy repairability and manual control. Here’s my basic premise: keep the mechanisms of our pleasures within the possibilities and responsibilities of self-control. If you don’t fancy taking a soldering iron to the black box transmission that disconnects traction with your pleasure trail, stick to analogue connections instead.

There is a huge pleasure to be had from exercising direction, empathy and understanding over all the cogs in the box that power our lives. Simpler chain lines are easier chains to keep in gear. Why disconnect yourself from the source when the source is the source of the experiences we seek? I don’t want to rely on a ‘digital mechanic’ running behind my bike every time I want to go for a ride when I could simply reach down and re-rail a de-railed chain**. The whole point of bike riding, and listening to music, is to understand and control the chain of delivery as far as I can. There’s a total joy to be had from enjoying the mechanics involved. That’s why some of us still go into the woods with a back pack on our backs rather than play that journey on a PlayStation instead. That’s at the root of my love affair with bicycles. That’s at the root of my re-inspired love affair with vinyl LP’s. Give me the holistic experience of analogue over the disconnect of digital any time. Don’t forget, we humans can only feel in analogue, despite what the digital boffins would make us believe.

*If you are an audiophile like me, you will know that the Super Audio CD (SACD) is a parallel universe of a story to the story I am telling now. Yes, the SACD can approach the oh-so breathtakingly wonderful subjectivity of sound that vinyl LP’s provide. But that particular black box bag of super technological tricks was sidelined by the ruthless cynicism and patronising contempt of a record industry run by accountants, deeply, perversely, connected to business models as antiquated as those that prevailed in the days when they sealed Tutankhamun’s tomb. So perverse is the SACD story is that it’s easier to find LP’s than SACD’s in any half decent record shop…

**Speaking of de-railing chains, keep the black box of electronic shifting well away from any bike with which I would choose to be involved!

We seem to be getting overheated on the subject of doping in cycling. The current debate over Mr razor-sideburn el Pistolero Contador reminds me of that poor old ant nest that the Nest Administrator insisted on locating right in the middle of my driveway. Always getting driven over, ants always swarming to repair and patch. Never ending, always furious. If only they moved the nest a bit to the right or we chose to drive a bit to the left, peace would return. BEND a bit, people!

What’s the fuss all about? Recall that the incriminating dose of Clenbuterol was just 0.000 000 000 05 grams per ml. What’s that as an enhancement for a rider who would still be the world’s best cyclist even if he rode Le Tour on a hybrid shopping bike?

To my mind, what matters when it comes to earning my wrath over illegal doping is a simple question: would he (or she) still have the capacity to win a race without doping of any kind? If the answer is no, and the person doped, that person is unequivocally a cheat. If the answer is yes, then things get a whole lot more complicated.

The first step is to enquire into reasons. Why would anyone who had a serious chance of victory without recourse to chemical enhancements choose to dope anyway? Uncovering that particular story is the real enquiry to be made. Because when we dig into that, we might learn something that could benefit our sport; and reconcile the loyalties of we, the followers of cycle sport who are all feeling somewhat shortchanged right now. Remember that if there were no passionate followers of cycle sport, there would be no cycle sport to follow. There’d still be racing going on, but only at the level of amateur club rides. Pro cycling needs audiences (for the racing and the products its promotors are keen to sell). Pro cycling needs the continued loyalty of its legions of fans.

Just how satisfying is it to the world’s cycle-nuts to be simply told that so-and-so has been caught out with 0.000 000 000 05 grams per ml of Clenbuterol in his blood? No explanation of why. No explanation of how such a miniscule trace could possibly push el Pistolero faster up a hill. No explanations, just a ruling from the top. The bureaucrats have delivered a verdict. From behind closed doors. Like the monster wheels of a mega truck riding over the international ants nest of cycling fans. This does not satisfy. This does not explain.

I don’t want my passions for cycle sport managed like the way the Tax Office manages the delivery of tax return. I don’t want a bunch of chinless bureaucrats interfering in my sport. Surely these last outpost places where passions rule can be one last place where the bureaucrats are unable to interfere. Perhaps that’s actually one of the big attractions of cycle sport in the first place: absence of bureaucrats and their odious managerialist rule. To hell with the Nanny State and with Big Brother Faceless Bureaucrats in charge.

Places where passions matter are places where more collaborative processes for addressing issues are required. By definition, places where passions matter are places where followers SHOULD be involved in the discussions that reconcile how our passions play. So, cycle sport should be one of those rare places where matters that matter should be considered from the bottom up. From the ranks of those with the passion to explore and understand.

Why did or would any rider cheat? Please explain. Tell us why. Let the doping testers do their test, for sure. But let we, the fans, be the judge and jury, and the community through which matters such as these are resolved. Nothing is ever black and white. Mistakes happen. Pressures drive us to be at least temporarily insane. Let’s hear the explanations outside of the specialised language of the law. Let the accused address accusations directly through the language they, and we, rather than the lawyers, most naturally understand. Don’t translate and loose the essence of the argument and the complexities of the situations involved through the emasculation of translation from the language of cycling into the language of law.

If, perchance, Contador (or Lance) did dope, there is much to be learnt through understanding why. In those explanations we might find some things about our sport itself that is in need of repair. Perhaps it’s these things about our sport and the way it’s run that are in greater need of repair than are the misdemeanours of any particular cyclists on trial. How are we supposed to address these more important things when we push the whole matter off to the legal courts? Do the wig wearing bureaucrats on some court bench understand the nuances and the very culture of our sport? Hardly. Not likely. And why would we ever want to consult them on matters such as these? Do I ask the Tax Office for advice on what colour to paint my house?

If Contador cheated, I want to know why. I want to really know why. Deeply, critically, understand why. Not so much IF (which can be resolved with a relatively simple test), but WHY. Because only then, when we understand, can we even begin to formulate a response. Only then can we be best placed to figure out what to do.

Contador’s case is simple relative to the fifteen story ant nest that supports Lance Armstrong. Lance’s nest is a nest nestled right in the middle of an international airport runway. Under there is an Everest of things we need to understand. The more we look, the less and less simple that story will become. As will be the search for prescriptions in relation to what we need to do by way of response.

If we left Lance to the courts, and the courts decided to put him in jail, what would that achieve? Resolving matters such as that through deferring the entire story to the courts would be like expecting us to follow a story after taking away all the pages where that story could otherwise be explained. Instead, all we get is the first page and the last. All the story between the first and the last page has been removed; seconded off into someone’s official files; for the deliberations of those who probably don’t even follow our sport.

So, my call is for a new kind of process through which to resolve issues in our sport. Stop trying to graft the structures of corporate and government onto a sport which should be a refuge from managerialism of that kind. The answer, I believe, is in collaborative deliberation via engagement with the community of cycling. Facilitating such a process should be the real job for the UCI. That’s what the UCI should really be for. The UCI’s role should be about facilitating transparency and understanding, not shifting the story to those who would not otherwise be involved; or worse, to those who would only be involved for the receipt of a fee.

Most people are at least aware of Apple’s ‘magical and revolutionary’ iPad. I still recall, exactly a year ago, when Apple pulled off what was quite possibly the most extraordinary ‘magic’ marketing feat of all time: unleashing a tidal wave of demand for a device with a purpose and value that, to nearly everyone then and still most of us today, is almost a complete and total mystery. Six million units were sold in the first 60 days. Forty million units will probably sell this year. It’s a revolution! It’s a game changer! But what’s it for? And why would you be interested (if you don’t have one already)? And what, exactly, has this to do with cycling?

The pundits tell us that you have to use an iPad before you really know how invaluable to your lifestyle it will become. So we are expected to hand over anything between $579 to $949 for a device that we can’t possibly justify via the the usual (at least intuitive) cost benefit criteria most of us apply to discretionary purchases of this kind? Now that’s a clever marketing pitch. No wonder Apple has $66billion in cash sitting in the bank.

But it really is true; and it certainly was for me. We don’t really get a grasp on what this iPad thing can do until we live with it for a while. But when you think on it, isn’t that a familiar kind of purchasing plan for the more fanatical cyclists some of us are and who most of us know? How, exactly, did you justify that exotic carbon high end bike you’ve been busy pretending was an essential necessity of life in lieu of shoes for the kids and a holiday for the wife? Apple is just standing by to satisfy loose logic of that deliciously irrational, economist-defying kind.

I have to say, though, that while I did wonder about the uses to which my iPad might be applied, these days, I can’t imagine life without one. Like the soles of those oven-shaped carbon shoes that mould to the contours of your feet, the iPad ingratiates itself into the intimate eccentricities and peculiarities of each of us who fall into Apple’s marketing plans. This is probably the most individualistically adaptable piece of technology of all time. Non-iPad users are a black iPad-shaped hole waiting for revelation to fill the gap! Almost every day we iPad users find a new application through which to tighten the knot that now ties this machine to the contours of our lives. If this sounds like the impact of a bad drug habit, you are probably not far off course. But then again, so too are those voracious bicycles that keep me prisoner for at least two hours each and every day.

So how useful is an iPad to a cycling obsessive like me? Does it live up to all this hype? Can I live without one? Can I live without clip-less pedals? You bet. Do I want to? No way.

OK, let’s make a start. Let’s consider a few key iPad Apps (applications) to illustrate how it all works.

Zinio Reader

Do you read cycling magazines by any chance?

I must confess to wearing a trench into my local newsagent in my pre-iPad days. Cycle Sport, Pro Cycling, Cycling Weekly, Single Track, Peloton, MBR (Mountain Bike Rider), RIDE Cycling Review, Bicycling Australia, Spoke and Bike. Too much to read and far too many dollars spent. So let’s just pick the essentials. Cycle Sport and Pro Cycling, say. How much to subscribe to these? Nearly $200 pear year. Or $310 if you buy them monthly off the shelf.

One of the first Apps I installed on my iPad was the Zinio magazine reader. This amazing (game changing, newsagent nemesis) application allows you to choose from literally hundreds of magazines, one off or via subscription plans. You get the exact same magazine as the one in print, but now you read it on the screen. Yes, the screen is smaller, but you can zoom in and around in a most ergonomic way. I now prefer to read my ‘zines this way. Fonts can be any size you want and you can view in portrait or landscape depending on the layout of the page. Just swivel your iPad around to change the mode and the page resizes in a millisecond or two. And the price? Pro Cycling is AUD$36.46 a year and Cycle Sport is the same. $73 a year for both instead of $200 plus for the printed option; and you get each issue on the day of release. No longer do we have to wait until after the Tour de France to read the pre-race reviews each magazine presents. It’s like having a personal courier system direct from the publisher to your door. Way faster than even an air freighted paper subscription will allow. And you don’t have to store all these magazines somewhere in your house. You just archive them when you’re done for re-download if you want to re-visit in a year or so. If your favorite cycling magazine isn’t on Zinio, it may be available as a standalone App; like Single Track. Sometimes these standalones are even better presented than by Zinio. Do a search in the Apple App store and see what you can uncover. What you won’t find, though, is a e-version of Ride (but you can install an App that allows you to purchase Ride’s bicycle reviews – probably the best reviews available in print). No doubt the folks at Ride will give us an iPad version soon. Looks like I still have to visit the newsagent at least quarterly, for now. Oh, and by the way, I have paid for my iPad just in savings on my usual magazine subscriptions. Three times over.

News Readers

If your taste extends only to free media, fear not. If you currently read blog news sites like Cycling News, there’s an App for that too. Actually, if you are into reading news feeds of all kinds, be sure to check out Flip Board. This one is an iPad exclusive and you can populate it with any cycling (or other) news feed you like. I subscribe to about 50 cycling blogs and related news sites through the free Google Reader setup. Flip Board grabs those feeds automatically and displays them in an extraordinarily clever magazine format (stripping out all the adverts and other annoying stuff in the process). There are other readers like Flip Board with different variations of the same theme. Pulse and Zite are two others that I also have installed (both free).

Just to demonstrate that I am not quite the single interest cycling obsessive I might otherwise appear, the iPad is a seriously astounding device on which to read other journals too; like the New Yorker and the Economist Newspaper… I used to subscribe to the paper version of the New Yorker a few years ago. The sub was around $150 and you’d end up with a linear metre of magazines to store by the end of the year. The new digital iPad version is only $75 and is way, way, better to read on the iPad than on paper (you even get some great interactive stuff like embedded videos and photo libraries to scroll through).

Watching (Cycling) Videos

Of course, the iPad has a web browser and you can look at web casts all you want (so long as those feeds are not displayed via Flash – Apple rightly hates that buggy format and has exiled it from the iPad). But you can play really clever games with video if you want to explore. For instance, I am a keen advocate of the EyeTV technology available for the Macintosh (there are other options for those who insist on owning a Windows PC). EyeTV works via a small USB dongle that is actually a TV receiver that connects to related software on your computer. You can watch TV on your computer and record whatever programming you want. For instance, once a month I do a search for ‘cycling’ in the EyeTV program guide and then schedule a recording for all those cycling related shows I want to see. As long as your computer is turned on, EyeTV will record automatically and you can then edit all the advertisements out! You can then install an iPad version of EyeTV and watch either live programming or your recordings from wherever you are in the home (via wifi connection). This works a treat for recording and watching Le Tour each year! No stupid DVD R’s to play around with. If you have a private corner in your home, you can settle down with your ear phones plugged in and watch the cycling without interference from or with anyone else. A real marriage saver if you are watching Le Tour live at 2AM.

Mobile Library

This one is probably the killer feature for me. I like books. I have a grand design to own the best cycling books collection in the country. Any collection is certainly better than what’s on offer at my local public library… or available in my local bookshop for that matter. But, if you are a cycling book collector, you will know that many titles are rather hard to get, and very expensive if you can. I was browsing away at my local bookshop a week or so ago when a guy fronted to the counter asking about a new title he’d just found via a review in Bicycling Australia called ‘It’s All About the Bike’ by Robert Penn. The ever helpful bookseller did a search and was able to offer in indent import deal for $50 and a month for delivery. I grabbed my iPad, opened the iPad version of the Kindle App, located the title for $9.95 and had it installed within two minutes. So too with the Bicycle Snob NYC’s new book. That one would otherwise be a special import with uncertain delivery. And yes, you can indeed download the entire collection of Lance’s greatest works…

Reading a book on the iPad is seriously refined. This is the ebook reader we have all been waiting for for 20 years (or at least, that I have been hanging out for since my first foray into ebook reading on a Mac Plus way back in 1988 – when books came on floppy discs and cost over twice what you’d pay for the paper version).

Logbooks and Record Keeping

Do you keep a log book of your cycling endeavors? I am blessed with a Garmin Edge 800 that connects to a seriously clever bit of software called rubiTrack. You can then export all your records from rubiTrack to Apple’s own world beating spreadsheet software, Numbers. Of course, Numbers is also available as an iPad App so you can sync your all important cycling logbook between the desktop and your iPad. You never know when you will need to consult your vital statistics and you can direct enter your stuff on your iPad if you are away from home, like on that dream tour of the French Alps.

Other Stuff

The iPad has the full compliment of photo Apps, is a full on iPod music player, has a calendar program, address book, camera (on the iPad 2), video conferencing, is a recording device, alarm clock; you name it. There are over 40,000 Apps awaiting your attention.

Do you subscribe to any cycling Podcasts? I am a regular for the Two Johns Cycling Podcast, the Real Peloton podcast from Pommy journalist Matt Rendell, and 26 others!. Yes, you can even listen into the Fredcast. All these podcasts can be downloaded direct to your iPad via wireless or GSM if you buy the GSM version (I have the 64GB wifi only version).

Oh, and by the way, I wrote this blog entry with the iPad App Blogsy. In between reading the latest edition of Peloton magazine on another App called GoodReader. All the time while broadcasting music from the iPad direct into my home hifi system via inbuilt wireless networking. Yes, the iPad2 has multitasking… All this for the price of a pair of Sidi Ergo2′s…

Just imagine if the bicycle had been invented by a Government Committee.

The first 20 years would have been all about the specification of an agreed working brief, wherein 19 of those 20 years would have been all about coming to an agreement on the Terms of Reference for the Brief. Then there’d be the exhaustively important process of setting up a Working Party (WP) to oversee the overseeing of the process of writing up that brief from it’s earliest forays via a due participative process of exhaustive review with a view to Green Paper (GP) documentation. With the white hot excitement of Real Progress (reportable against sixteen duly agreed Progress Milestones (PM’s) (overseen and assessed via a properly constituted External Review (ER) process populated via an appropriately credentialed Expert Panel of Industry and Community Authorities (EPICA) working through an existing system of Regional Development Authorities (RDA’s) and their own (in turn) Regional Review Panels (RRP’s)) the breezy path-breaking next step would be to write up the entire show as the Official White Paper (OWP)!

With the White Paper to hand, it would then be time to select some appropriately credentialed consultants to advise on a short list of Community Relevant Design Briefs (meeting all appropriate specifications for environmental-friendly, low carbon footprint materials and manufacture and dutiful compliance with Occupational Health and Safety Guidelines, Equal Opportunity Protocols, and Indigenous Sensitivities).

Once done, our fevered white hot innovators would field a short list of five recommendable design briefs over which we, the intended Target Audience (or Adoption Community) could indicate relevant preferences via the machinery of a cascade of State-Local instrumentality Community Consultative Committees (SLICCC) – Slick, for short, just like the process…

Onwards to the benchmark quality assured milestone-meeting Deliverables!

From the esteemed Department of Industry, Trade and Philately, we’d have a duly and exhaustively considered Benchmark Quality Assured Delivery to do us all proud. We’d have a roadside Sign depicting the ultimate prize of the Committee-Selected winning Bicycle design. A mock up illustration. Together with 4.6 million industry Best Practice full colour brochures (printed on paper with no less than 46 percent recycled consumer waste) for distribution to all interested parties. And a $6.6million advertising campaign on TV espousing the immeasurable (but OH&S measurable) benefits of using this new, wonderful machine (should it ever be built).

From the Department of Transport and Infringement Revenue Collection – Purveyors of Take-a-Ticket-and Wait-Until-You-Are-Called Traffic Collectioneering, we’d have a brand new (Best Practice) (Quality Assured) Bicycle Inspection and Registration Protocols and Administration Service (BIRPAS) (Working for the Interests of Community, Safety, and Making big piles of cash). Together with a $19 million web INTERACTIVE! (we are even on Facebook…) website for further information (toll free for your (in)convenience).

From the Department of Privatisation and Pretending We Really Do Know What Happens in the Real World, we’d have an issue of the Largest Roll Out Programme This Country Has Ever Seen: with a bicycle planned for direct delivery to each and every home (no matter where those homes are located – as long as they are not located in the country in which case you should move to the city and stop being a nuisance to Governments of all jurisdictions). All pending the appointment of a tender winning Implementation Contractor (that is, someone who can actually manufacture a bike) meeting full government specifications (notwithstanding the secret but nevertheless widely reported, if not leaked, provision for $1billion in Risk Assessed likely cost overruns).

From the Department of Roads, we’d all receive a carefully demographically tested brochure (in sixteen languages with translator services available for the illiterate and profoundly ignorant) explaining that you really do need to give way to bicycles on the left as you enter into roundabouts, or is that to bicycles already in the roundabouts, or is that to bicycles on the right that are already in a roundabout but not yet turning left. Or something. So there. Fines apply.

And then we’d be able to purchase our new bike.

And what a bike that bike would be! 65kg of first grade carbon sequestered steel (which is real) surrounded, surmounted and subsumed by 50kg of Industry Best Practice Safety Gear (for your protection). Colour choices of safety fluoro orange or yellow. Flashing yellow lights, protection bars, air bags, inertia reel retractable foot straps, and a safety hazard label panel heads-up display to display on your handlebars – designed to remind you to ride with a helmet, check your wheel nuts, check your handlebars are screwed on, check your seat bolt, check your tyres, check your brakes, avoid sitting passengers on your handlebars, else they’d cover up your hazard label warning display… Speed is limited to 28km/hour on the Standard Use Plan, extendable to 36km/hr via Special Registration Premium Plans subject to suitable special OH&S licensing, testing and payment of a usurious fee, subject to Reserve Bank indexing and current Market Conditions (assessed quarterly).

All problems, issues, complaints and solicitations for assistance will be considered via a queue based support service outsourced to Delhi. Just dial 0100 999 666 999 444 999 BIKE for help. And then enter your Tax File Number. And your Date of Birth. And your credit card number because these calls are charged; at a prevailing market rate. Of $100 per minute. Even while you are on hold. Which is all the time.

And two years on, the entire show would be sold off to the Private Sector via an appropriate Public Float. And two years after that, the Government would bail them out and take over once again. Until the next election. When everything will be reviewed and referred to a brand new Green Paper – White Paper Task Force all over again… Round and around just like our wheels.

I had been riding my new Felt carbon 29er mountain bike for about two hours along the most wonderfully un-trafficked roads in New England (Australia, that is). Since leaving home, I’d been passed by only two cars, both farmer 4WD’s replete with dogs out back, elbows out windows and hats on heads. The way things should be, in my view. Farmers and 4WD’s are a natural fit. They give friendly waves and don’t try to run me off the road.

The great thing about this particular ride is that the further you go, the more remote and wilderness-like the road becomes. As you can see from the plot from my bike GPS, I was heading for my favourite river; the most special place I know of on this earth we all share. The mighty, small, ever furious River Styx. It’s a ride through mega tall trees, ferns and thick, thick bush. There are cliffs on each side of the road with drops so steep you’d need a parachute to pull you up if, somehow, you left the track. There are lyre birds on the road, bush turkeys in the undergrowth and tiger snakes everywhere. Not to mention leaches in the grass and that overwhelming wet wilderness mossy smell that only places like this can provide. Even the wind has a special sound tuned by tree- filtered, slightly chilled moving mountain air.

When I think of a top-shelf mountain bike ride, this is the place to be. It’s one of those so very few places where the sublime realities of mountain biking will always outpace even the best efforts of escapist marking spin. And yes, I have indeed been to Whistler BC. This place is vastly more intense. You have to be here to know what I mean.

So, you’d probably expect that riding down a remote forest road like this would be the last place you expect to see a convoy of cars.

You can hear them coming for miles. A gear changing howling, fuming rage of human contempt for the wilderness through which they tresspass. The first thing you notice is that all the birds disappear. Then the whole forest goes seriously quiet. The air goes still. Then the onslaught appears like a tsunami of rage. An invasion is probably the closest word. Here they come. A convoy of polished monster aspirational tough-man townie trucks. Metallic capsules of transplanted urban space, protecting their occupants from the wild wilderness void outside. Like a convoy of spaceships, their occupants see the world from the perspective of mobile lounge chairs, un-natural music and artificially conditioned air.

I pulled off the road, just like everything else around here with legs. Or wings. On they come. Metallic monsters, headlighted and howling down the trail. You can see the drivers. Baseball capped, middle-aged men. Staring vacantly ahead. Piloting their ships as a swimmer dives through the depths. Looking out from the goggles their windshields provide. They don’t look like they are enjoying the ride.

As they pass me by, I am struck by a most curious sight. Plastered on the facing passenger windows are the pudgy faces of a hoard of children; noses squashed on the glass, hands pressed up beside. They are looking at this most curious exhibit beside the road. Me. Their expressions are as vacant as the driver in the front seat. They stare. Like people looking into a fish tank. Like people watching a show. They are observers. From outside.

I feel depressed for these people. They are experiencing this place like a video game. Watching; but not a part of. Removed. Missing out on the full agenda of sound, smell and space that constitute this unique place. There is little reward for effort so easily spent in superficially visiting a place like this. The hills of this place are abstractions to the oil-fueled mechanical grunt of their cars. The challenge of travel is simply to hold onto a wheel. There’s nothing to reap when you spend so little to harvest. You are relegated to the status of observer. The reality they see is as virtual as any video game.

They have gone. The sound of their passing is dissipating into the wind. The place is now like it was before. They left little trace because they consumed, experienced, so very little of what it has to give. Back to the walled silos of urban life they return. Little repaired through connection to the alien realities of existence outside. All the worse. They may as well have never bothered to make the trip.

Perhaps mountain biking is a key to escaping life in the concentrated human-scape of our towns. Perhaps if more people could leave their urban bubbles behind they would value these wild places as more than a distracted vision from behind a wall of air conditioned glass.