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Views From The Saddle / A Day At The Races

May 22, 2012
Bicycles, Bike riding, Bikes, BNIB, cycling, Golden Saddle, Golden Saddle Cyclery, Los Angeles, MASH, Rapha, Uncategorized
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Sunday was HUGE. Step 1 – wake up at 5:30am. Step 2 – Ride to Golden Saddle Cyclery to help set up for the champagne breakfast party to meet some of my cycling heroes and watch the Tour Of California ride by.  Step 3 – Ride to Down Town to see the end of the Tour Of California.  Step 3 – Ride back to the shop.  Step 4 – Ride west to the Sunset Strip tight near Book Soup to meet Alex and Jamie at the BNIB LA Shoe Truck.  Step 5 – Get a killer sunburn riding home.

It was a super long but super fun day.  I made some new bike friends, which is always great, and I got to meet one of my all time cycling heroes, Garrett form MASH and Rapha.  Not only that, I got the opportunity to make his day by telling him how much he and his friends influenced me and my friends.  Were it not for those MASH dudes I might not be on my bike at all.  It’s like that.

It was great to see Kyle and befriend more of the crew down at Golden Saddle.  It was also great to be able to help set up.  I drank way too much coffee and unsuccessfully tried to ride off the caffeine jitters.

As I got to my parents house to pick up my car I bumped into their neighbor who had what is going to turn out to be one of the all time great track bikes.  I’m not going to tell you anything about it as I plan on doing a photo shoot with him and the bike so keep your eyes here in the next few weeks for that.  What I will hint at is that the photo of the wood rim belongs to him and his bike.  I’m telling you.  It’s incredible.  Enjoy the photos.

Big thanks to Golden Saddle for a kick ass Sunday morning

Rapha

August 21, 2011
cycling, Rapha
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I come across so much flash in cycling that it seems hard at times for me to find my way to the purity of the sport.  I’m not trying to talk shit, I’m talking more about my own character defects.  The flashy hype machine definitely hypnotizes me at times.  These are the times when I find myself worrying deeply about what I need to buy, what bikes I don’t have, how amazing I’ll be if I get the next cool thing.  I find myself forgetting about all the hard work I have put in, all the hours, the falls, the sweat, blood, and tears.  More importantly, I find that I forget why I get on the saddle in the first place.  There is a certain purity I find in cycling that I have never found anywhere else in life and trust me I have looked.  This purity is what I seem to be trying to look for through a pair of dirty glasses when I am focusing more on what is on the outside of my relationship with cycling as opposed to what is on the inside.

I just watched the conclusion of the Rapha Continental USA Pro Cycling Challenge and holy shit if that wasn’t one of the more inspirational things I’ve seen.  It was such an inspirational experience watching this with my breakfast that I couldn’t help but share it with you.  So after you watch the videos below, please make sure you go to the stories link on the Rapha site and watch all the rest of their amazing videos.  While you are there also why not support.  I am not employed by Rapha, nor am I on their team, god I’d love to be, I’m just a dude that loves inspiration and when I find it a form as pure as I do within the distillation of the spirit of cycling that I find with these videos I feel the need to share my finding with my friends.  Who knows what that could bring?

A quick word about these videos.  I take no credit for the creation of these at all, it was all the work of Rapha and whoever worked with them in the creation of them.  I just love them and want you to love them too so I am sharing them here with you.  If you follow the links I posed as the title above each video you will be direct you to the page that has a detailed description of what that stage was like, amazing photos, and even the route mapped out in detail so you can see as close to first hand as possible what it was like to experience what they did.  Like I said before there are many other incredible videos in the stories link so check out those as well.  

Enjoy…

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