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.

Last time, I discussed the overflowing-teacup minds most people have these days when it comes to taking on new ideas or refreshed points of view. Now it’s time to consider a few examples to indicate how frustrating and dangerous shallow thinking can become. Naturally, most examples surround the killing fields that car drivers make of our roads.

Consider the case of the oncoming car. You are riding up a hill. A car is coming towards you. A car is behind. The result should be a momentary delay for the car driver behind. But NO! Those seconds lost are a calamity to the turkey behind. That’s five seconds lost of reality TV; or five seconds fewer for the irrigation of his system with beer. So he overtakes into the oncoming car. Either you or the victim in the other car will have to leave the road. And so he sails into total ignorance and contempt for all others who use his road. His thoughts and consideration for others extend to the depth of cling wrap film.

And don’t we all recall the joys bestowed by those drivers who pull out from a side road directly into your path? Car drivers do this to each other quite often. They do it even more frequently to motorcyclists. They do it to cyclists all the time; with a passion and a flurry of psychotic contempt. Here’s a transcript of the mental processes involved: ‘ME, in a car. Him, a cyclist. Me bigger. Him small. Bicycle slow. Me big time fast. Off I go… (me, me, me, me, me, beer, sex, me, me, sex, beeeeeer’ – and how DOES my hair look right now?).

And how about the Charlies who measure their masculinity (or feminine charm) by how close they can scrape their cars into your elbows as they overtake? If they spare any thought to such things at all.

When, exactly, did thought become such an expensive facility to exercise? Why do car drivers drive their cars so frequently in mental power saving mode? If the world’s coal-fired power users conserved their electricity as they conserve the energy of active thought, we’d reverse global warming in a day or so.

Then there’s the get-fit-quick-gymnasium crowd. Ever spotted the car parks outside of your local gym? What spectacular depths of thought does it take to recognise the possibilities for exercise on the way to the gym through ditching the car? What feats of imagination does it take to consider just how insidious the car has become to the culture of our times?

All of which pales completely with the policies our politicians make. Even magpies know that defecating too much in your nest will kill the offspring for whom those nests were constructed. Rats know it. Possums know it. So do dogs and cats. So why do politicians continue to sponsor, subsidise and otherwise actively encourage the murderous, self-destructive treatment of biodiversity through which all life on earth is sustained? Even a psychotic pigeon would pull the pin on an economy built on the toxic non-sustainability of oil, if given the keys to the kingdom for a day.

And someone pleeeeeze tell me how it can be that those who feed their faces with chip fat and lolly water can then spend all their time moaning about the injustices of being too fat?

And don’t you dare mention the abject insanity of a bureaucracy that actually believes the inane stupidities of our preoccupation with Occupational Health and Safety these days. Just watch the very notion of riding to work send our OH&S bureaucrats into a mental black hole… When did human kind suddenly decide that hefting bags of ten kilograms or more is too much for the human frame to bear? Especially when most humans are carrying at least that much in excess fat day in and day out; everywhere.

And don’t even start on the idiocies of playing to the tune of being Politically Correct. The rules of this particular game are now so complex that it’s best just to stay indoors watching the TV instead. While there are computer programmes that can master the complexities of chess, there are no analogues with the capacity to master even the most rudimentary rules towards becoming Politically Correct. Not even the best Super Computer has the power to play that game. No wonder that kids these days engage via Facebook rather than He/She/their Laterally Challenged selves having to engage through riding bikes and kicking balls in the street.

Can someone tell me by what astounding depths of thought did it take for every economic egg on this planet to be handed over to the factories of mainland China? What mountain for foresight did it take to imagine that once we have offshored absolutely everything we do and everything we need to the Chinese that we would ever have freedom again? At least we cyclists will have our transport once the Chinese pull the final plug on the troughs of dependency through which we now power, battery-like, the ascendency of the Chinese Machine. No, I am mistaken even there… How many bikes these days are now not made in the PRC?

How blinkered are the thoughts of fundamentalist thinkers of any kind? Fundamentalist economists who still funnel their vision into those very theories that landed us all in the Global Financial Crisis of recent times. Fundamentalist Planners who plan a future only for cars. Fundamentalist scientists who believe that the Science is in (when really, it’s perpetually out – why else then do they continue to seek funding if they already have all the answers they need?)

Then there’s the fundamentalist religious types who each persist in thinking that only their own particular view is the true view and all the rest are wrong. Which view will land their faithful into the eternal Promised Land? Only one can be correct if it’s believed that all others are wrong. Wouldn’t it be fun if the Scientologists or the followers of the Urantian line had the winning ticket all along! But I bet that even then, they’ll still invent religious wars in their Heavenly resting place.

But above all, how deep do we think when we imagine that the contentment of life depends only on money?

Perhaps it’s the pace of modern life. Everything is too quick, including life itself. It’s hard to think thoughts of any depth when you are continually rushing from one thought to the next. Or when thought itself is discouraged as we engage others to think for us instead. You know the solution! We need the space to think at depths greater than the two dimensionality of most people’s thoughts these days. You know where you can stretch your thinking legs. Yes, you know where deeper thinking is free to engage: on every ride; on every run; or even on every walk. No wonder there’s so little thinking done when people opt instead for the mental oppression of the motorcar.

What character traits link interesting human phenomena like a predilection to world domination, vile arrogance, rampaging road rage, terrorism dressed up as religious fervour, and a passion for the game of golf?

What’s really bugging me about the human race right now and why should you care? Well, it’s in all our interests to understand or you too could end up as traction for the next motorist’s wheels.

I call the disease ‘intellectual bathophobia’. Bathophobia is the fear of depth. Intellectual bathphobia is the fear of thinking too deeply. And boy oh boy have I seen this baby scything it’s way through all that I hold important in recent years! This is the nuclear holocaust of human failings. This is the most pervasive and debilitating of phobias. It effects you, me and everyone else; all at the same time. Every day in every way. It explains just about everything that makes us mad. It explains just about every war and every appearance before a judge. It It explains the failure of international climate change summits and people who drive rather than ride to the local shops.

Intellectual bathophobia is all about surface thinking. it’s the fear of finding out new stuff; the fear of listening to something genuinely new. The inclination to cling to what we know rather than shift our brain into a higher gear. It’s deeply perverse, this intellectual self mutilation, because while most people shift continuously from one fad or fashion to another, so very few of us ever shift our minds. Virtually no one digs into the old mental engine room to seriously question and analyse what it is that we do and why.

And virtually no one will ever, ever, admit that they are afflicted by intellectual bathophobia themselves. Everyone else, for sure. But never, ever, me.

If we spend our whole lives surface skipping across our own private intellectual seas, our minds end up, eventually, stretched out like too little butter spread across way, way, too much bread. We invest whole lives in keeping that overstretched mental veneer intact. It’s a doomed project, of course. Over time, everything shifts. Eventually, our surface skimming minds will stretch too far. It’s like attempting to stretch out the one tube of tyre glue to repair a lifetime stream of punctures. With an ever more stretched supply of glue, each new hole in the harmony of our lives is less and less effectively repaired; until we sink into a permanently deflated state and sit our the rest of our lives in front of the TV. Our responses to everything and anything that happens are voiced with an ever fading sentient hiss.

Consider those who continue to do to themselves what we would never have them do to us. Consider those who continue to shovel food into an ever expanding carcass of fat. Eventually, the dirigible they become will burst or implode. Consider those who believe in the mantra of continual economic growth. Eventually, infinite greed will meet the realities of resources that can’t keep pace. Consider those who continue to believe in theories of life that life itself so readily disproves. Examples are economists who believe in the perfection of the market place and politicians who believe in the righteousness of the polls they pay marketers to shape. Consider those who deny human impact on climate. Consider those who believe that their own view is the only view for everyone else. Consider those who think their religion should be our religion; enforceable by death. Consider those who think that their choices should be our choices, that their politics should be ours.

There is a simple cure. It involves emptying your cup.

Years and many happy years ago, I once wrote a handbook for a PhD programme fortune found me within. Right across the front page was a cartoon of a monk serving tea to a disciple in search of inspiration. The monk filled the cup. And kept on filling the cup until tea started overflowing the table. ‘Master! the cup is full!’ ‘Exactly so’, the sage replies. ‘This cup is as with your thoughts. If you want to take on new thoughts, you have to empty your cup first. Or there will be no room for the new ideas to take hold’. That’s a classic koan from the tradition of Zen. It’s as right for now as it was right for then. The mental blockage from carrying a full mental cup has the same effect as a mind closed to new and different thoughts. You have to puncture that overstretched intellectual skin or unplug our mental drain. But so very few of us ever bother to drill the necessary holes or open our mental taps. We seem to spend our lives perpetually scared by the depths to which our minds have the capacity to dive. So we seek out stuff with which we agree and keep on patching with all the self-referentialised validation we can find. We seek that validation like a thirsty man looking for water in a desert. Every drop of validation is captured and nurtured; every message to the contrary is dismissed. We club our selves to tribes with similar points of view. We avoid those with views outside the borders our tribes protect. We build cathedrals to the ideas we cherish and condemn to hell those we don’t. We put ourselves on pilgrimages of evangelical self-referentialism through which to interpret the messages from the rest of the world. We even appoint priests to help us in that task (figureheads and heroes of our own points of view).

I am just as guilty with all this as you. I believe it’s possible for anyone and everyone to lance the boils of a closed mind – eventually – with the right kind of help. The toolbox to redress the mess can be a pretty subtle box of tricks. Like that butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil connecting to that hurricane in Japan, there are some incredibly powerful, subtle things we can do to inspire self-introspection and the blowing open of minds that were hitherto locked at fortress strength. Simple little stuff can flap towards hurricanes of meaningful change. There are simple little pricks to drag that mental skin away – to open the depths and really let us swim.

Yes, you guessed it. Cycling is a trick of that particular trade. Cycling’s just one little insidious thing to unleash our intellectual springs. Why is cycling a clever tool through which to unleash change? Because it is not a belief system (at first); it’s not a cultural construction we need to explain. It’s not a big investment to make and it does not necessarily require you to quit your job and head off on a sea change. It’s a simple sounding thing with which to become involved. Innocent. Innocuous, it would seem. Almost utilitarian. Easy to start. But it’s a spring, nonetheless. A catalyst to which passions can become attached. It’s a life changing investment via a small allocation of time. Cycling’s a classic catalyst. It’s easy to enter, but has the potential to unleash furies of change when it takes hold. But above all, cycling’s a place. It’s a place off to the side of everyone else’s routine; from where you can observe those you have left behind and contemplate the philosophical journey you have begun. Contemplation is the key. That’s the stuff you need to journey down deeper into your own intellectual depths. Cycling gives us thinking time. It pumps more blood into the brain. Your body will change; fitness will reshape your appearance and your mind. Cycling inspires the opening up of a lateral, deeper swimming mind.

When we first take up cycling, we’re like a puppy out for its first exploration of the world. Everything’s new from our unaccustomed new vantage point. Cycling shakes us into a different space of mind. We come to experience the experience of doing something outside the box within which we might otherwise have become permanently enclosed. Cycling, or other experiences of that kind shake perceptions that otherwise might cement our world views into the singular perspective of the couch. But cycling is such a seemingly innocuous choice. It’s seemingly more benign than taking on an Everest climb, or joining the Foreign Legion for a five year spell. It’s the catalyst we are looking for here. It’s a catalyst to shake things up – easy to take up, but with the potential to unleash a chain reaction or two.

We all need is to be catalysed into the chaotic potential of deeper, more reflective thought. Once that takes hold, life and living is renewed from the inspiration of a wakened mind. Cycling is, to me, the act of emptying a teacup that’s become too full. If I were to lead the world for a day, I’d be giving out bicycles to everyone who could join the queue – before the economists, accountants and bankers could start to object. Bicycle butterfly wings flapping their way to a hurricane of individual -then social renewal.

Next time, I will wade through the perils of shallow thinking via some examples with which I am sure most of us can relate. Yes, it’s time for another Bicyclism list! Stay tuned.

It might sound a little hysterical at first, but Alberto Contador’s now disputed 2010 Le Tour victory really does portend the end of civilisation as we know it.

Given my inclination to see the world through my Rudi Project lenses, I can’t help but interpret things via the chain rings of my cycling mind. I also can’t completely lose the perspectives gained and sanity lost from spending 25 too many years as an academic supervising way too many PhD research projects in the area of sustainable futures for the human race and the ecologies upon which we depend. It’s amazing how the mish mash of ideas and insights pertaining to life, the universe and everything else blend together into fascinatingly disturbing patterns via the slow grind tumble of way too much cycling time.

Here’s what I have come up with by way of a conclusion: as one Tour de France victory after another descends into the hands of the legal profession for resolution, there’s precious little potential for our civilisation to inspire (at least me) any more.

Let me explain this seemingly weird thesis (that Contador’s current issues spell the final kicks of a civilisation in speedy decline) in a manner more akin to Twitter-concise than deep compost academic diatribe. Relatively speaking, of course (I promise not to exceed 200,000 words).

Consider the bicycle.

Was there ever a mechanical contraption that is as pure and total a convergence of function and form? Every part has a visible purpose and every purpose is obviously connected to the purpose of every other part to describe a totality of function evident with breathtaking clarity from every conceivable angle. The bicycle is a masterpiece of comprehensible complexity. We can understand the bicycle as a system through simply observing it in action. Few people would require an instruction manual to enjoy the ride. A bicycle is a stunningly resolvable engineering fractal. Focus in on some part or another, and you can continue to understand and interpret the purpose and operation of each bit as we continue to delve deeper into the internals of each bit we can see. Look at the rear cogs. We can figure out what they do without much in the way of explanation. Now deconstruct the cluster and inspect each bit within. The deeper we go, the more we see, but the patterns of logical connectivity are sustained – even down to the springs that keep the freewheel pawls engaged. Even there, form and function are clear, connected and concise. There are no black boxes within. Parts mesh with parts and all the parts are as self-evidently purposeful at any level of resolution we might seek to apply.

I like to imagine the bicycle as the most complex device we can conceive while still avoiding the mental dislocations of complexity. Anything more complex than a bike begins to require partial views and increasingly specialised knowledge for interpretation. When we try to interpret systems more complex than a bike, we start to loose our view of the forest as its trees come into ever closer view. Like, say, would be the case for a car. Or even a motor bike. As complexity rises, our dissections review ever more confounding details; the fractal transforms into perspectives drawn from different places and spaces. Just try to interpret the machinations of a CDI unit from the perspective we might use to understand the workings of a motorbike chain. As we dig into engines, the colours of our understandings shift from engineering to chemistry; from solids to liquids and the behaviours of gas.

We don’t have these problems when we seek understandings of a bicycle. That’s why, for me, the bicycle represents the upper limit of ‘comprehensible complexity’. At this level, complexity is interpretable via logical intuition alone. There are no surprises or chaotic behaviours likely at less than or equal to the complexity rating of a bicycle. Chaos soon kicks in when we escalate further up the scale. No one person can see and understand all as complexity goes deeper than the level of a bike.

As so it is with the workings of society as well. Consider a business, or other organisation with which you might be involved. Managing a small independent bookshop (with a good cycling section, please), is complex enough (just try balancing the fickle nature of fad following customers and the never ending desperation of wholesalers seeking your wholesale devotions; without even considering the dimension of demented Greed Is Good bankers breathing down your neck). But add a few floors and another fifty staff or so and the can of worms becomes an ocean of maggots. Layers upon layers, and then even more. The complexity builds to preclude even the vaguest possibility that any one person can ever know all that’s going on, let alone to remain sensibly ‘in charge’.

But managing complexity is definitely not a lost cause; or even a cause without merit! No, managing machinery with greater complexity than your average bike is a challenge with huge rewards. Really, just about everything we might ever seek to manage is more complex than we might ever think.

And there’s the problem. You’d be stunned and surprised to know how huge is the gap between knowing that a system is complex and really knowing the realities of complexity as a living, dynamic thing. The almost invariable response of ‘management’, everywhere, is to suggest: ‘yeah, it’s complex and I am so unutterably talented at managing complexity that the issues therein won’t affect me!’ No worries. You see, the problem is, most managers and politicians and policy makers and academics, car mechanics and wholesalers of fruit that I have ever met or known always insist on managing the systems with which they are entrusted in the same way and with the same depth of perception as a mechanic working on a bike. As I said above, the bicycle is, in my view, the limit of comprehensible complexity. Which means that for most people, systems as complex as a bike are as complex as any person can imagine, working alone or while seeking to ‘stay in control’. So… most managers mouth a few platitudes about ‘recognising the realities of complexity’ and then proceeding as though they are tuning a derailleur rather than managing the fermenting ego turmoils of those 500 people under their command.

You might think that only ‘dumb’ managers would manage complex systems in the manner with which they’d play with Logo blocks. But no, that’s definitely not the case. If there is one generic, overwhelming, mass embedded talent in short supply, it’s talent with perceiving, interpreting and responding appropriately to complexity. Which, dear and patient reader, is why the world is in such an almighty mess.

An anecdote from my recent past might illustrate the point. Now you’d reckon that the most likely place where the theory and practice of clever management in relation to complex organisational challenges might take place in a university. Take an academic who’s familiar with the theories, who might have even written a paper or two dissecting the failures of other managers in this regard, and put them in charge. That’s what happened at my local university where my own group of ‘complexity evangelists’ had taken a firm and passionate hold. Then along came the thing we had always feared the most: a reforming professor with an intent to reshape at least this bit of the world into his own image. The image of unrelenting ego backed up by a total absence of talent. Yes, the agenda was as you might guess. ‘This place is way too complex. Why, I think I will clean it all up and put everything into a box of best fit; all pegs to go into one of two shaped holes’. ‘That’ll make the place easier to manage!’. So groups like mine, hexagonal to the round or square shaped holes on offer, were thrown out the door. Into the street. Literally. Five PhD students suddenly had no place to study! And my 25 year career was over; ‘leave your keys on the desk, return your library books and thanks for your time… Turn the light off when you leave’. So long and thanks for all the fish… Naturally, that venture of squaring the edges off an organisation naturally inclined to curves was doomed to fail. The turkey in charge was shown the door, as was his second in command, but too late for us. And for the thousands of students who are now forced to select from individually wrapped, partitioned educational offerings along the lines of a breakfast menu restricted to a Kellogg’s Variety Pack.

No, the capacity of managers to really, truly, intuitively understand complexity is as rare an attribute as the ability to win the Tour de France. But no where else are the delusions of capability in that regard so fundamentally endemic. It’s as though every person who commutes on a hybrid to work genuinely believes that a Paris podium finish is theirs for want of only buying an air ticket to France.

So what are the signs of such misplaced management expertise? How can you tell when delusion rather than talent is really in charge? Easy. For starters, beware the reformist administrator who seeks to ‘simplify and put everything into its more orderly place’. That’s what killed my own group’s passionate crusades. Next, beware the bandaid. Beware that one above all.

Imagine a complex organisation along the lines of a water filled inner tube. If a leak takes hold, you put a patch in place. When the next leak appears, another patch is applied. Then another, and another, and another again. Until the tube is more patch than tube. Then the whole mess starts leaking between the patches that start to fail with time. So you start applying patches between patches and maybe even some latex paint as well. The whole mess starts to balloon like a a dirigible on heat. When the whole show ultimately starts to fail, enter the reforming manager and the inevitable ‘restructure’ or two. So now, the game is to experiment with liquid sealants, say. So the tube that was once filled by air is now a concentrated mess of chemistry writhing under patches that are increasingly loosing their grip. Time to take early retirement, I think!

And that is precisely how policies are increasingly made. Policies, like laws, are all like bandaids in search of a hole. Rarely, if ever, do we see policy that takes the big picture into view. That would take much too much in the way of perception for most managers to comprehend. That would require taking a few steps back to see the forest again. That would require teamwork to realise. And teamwork requires the setting of our usual manager’s egotistical control freak tendencies to one side. How often do we see leadership that genuinely embraces collective vision making and taking rather than just lip service and platitudes instead? Why, that would involve a totally different culture of control than most control freaks would be comfortable with. Sharing your power is a hard thing for most ego’s to really enact. Good management under real world complex settings becomes much more a task of facilitating communication amongst all the stakeholders who might be involved than pretending omniscience and control where control is a delusion in the first place.

Unless your task really is nothing more than the management of a bicycle, the management game is a game in need of a global overhaul. Unless we want to continue to witnessing the wholesale failure of initiatives like that dismal, recent Climate Change Summit (more like a policy patch trade fair than the genuine summit it should have been) and the so-called war on terror (the recent psychotic policies to strip search all air travellers via new radiation machines is one particularly lousy glueless patch), it’s time to recast the real terror of these times as the terrorism of misguided management to conceive of every policy issue and every management plan as simplistically as the organisation of a bicycle or two.

Yes, this malady of misguided management is hitting cyclesport too. Once we accept the transfer of the organisation of our sport from our cyclist hands to the greased hands of lawyers and their warty sort, the sport is doomed and done. Admitting the lawyers into our domain is just like the terminal stages of managing that overpatched bicycle tube. Shifting authority to lawyers is the paradigm shift of playing with sealants after the patches all have started to leak. The whole show is doomed to sink; and stink. Time to buy a new tube instead! Share the leadership on an issue such as this more completely with the riders and their supporters, in turn, and the opportunities for opening up some lateral thinking and enhanced perspective will soon reveal improved opportunities for action and reaction than the psychoses of failed conventional leadership that are now blighting our sport. It’s time to dethrone the current management regime! The UCI are trying to manage our sport with nothing more than a tin of perished patches. Time to reinvent the glue we choose and the very nature of the tyres that drive at least this small part of a world more widely going mad.