What the Soigneur Knew

With the Tour de France a scant three weeks away, the 2011 cycling season has thus far been squeaky-clean as compared with previous years, when team cars full of enriched blood samples, EPO and performance enhancers of every stripe were being apprehended on montane byways, elite riders were failing post-stage urine tests, and top seeds were sitting out the Grand Tours like Denver Broncos at Super Bowl time (what do you call 45 millionaires sitting around watching the Super Bowl?) It seemed that little had changed since the Festina team doping scandal of '97 opened that can of worms to the purview of a fascinated world.

Watch  that stomach

The most urgent question in cycling these days is, not whether Alberto Contador will be permitted to ride in the Tour (he will, apparently), but whether Lance has been altogether forthcoming about his own use of banned substances in past championship years, beginning with his first Tour win in 1999. In fact, Bicycling Magazine has devoted an entire subsection of its online edition to the matter under discussion.

Lance has denied all charges to the point of harrassing, bullying and even suing detractors and any potential witness for the prosecution, which is actively investigating charges levelled by former teammates. A recent New York Times article relates an encounter between Armstrong and Tyler Hamilton in an Aspen, Colorado restaurant frequented by Armstrong and his entourage. 

Hamilton, who recently appeared on a segment of "60 Minutes" devoted to doping allegations against Armstrong, has been subpoenaed to testify in grand jury hearings concerning Armstrong's drug use while a professional cyclist. The FBI is interested in securing footage from the restaurant security camera that may record a case of Armstrong "tampering" with the witness, Hamilton. The stories surrounding Armstrong and his former teammates are beginning to smack of a "Goodfellas" outtake . . . 

"Whaddaya want fumee?"

Hitherto, the ritual has been the same in almost every case of doping - denial, rejection by former friends and teammates, silence, and finally abject confession. Whether it plays out according to form in Lance's case I have no prediction - the verdict will establish the fact, whether or not he actually doped. But it seems appropriate, at this balmy time of year and in these unfolding circumstances, to recall more lenient times when drugs were simpler, and to remember a cyclist who seems now more gentlemanly, forthright, and cultured than many of the current lot.

Jacques Anquetil, ca. 1952

Jacques Anquetil was the first cyclist to win the Tour de France five times, beginning with the 1957 Tour (and consecutively in '61, '62, '63, '64 - he was subsequently joined by Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault, Miguel Indurain and Armstrong, who added two Tours to the record). Anquetil was short, dapper, well-dressed and courtly. He was a Norman and was said to be partial to the rich fare of his home province - preferably washed down with champagne - to the point of not altering such a diet even for the rigors of the Grand Tours. Never a roisterer, his training regimen was never what you could call spartan. His fans would rush out with glasses of the bubbly for him as he finished a stage. He never seemed to suffer for that (though he did suffer in the mountain stages). On the rest day during the 1964 Tour (one story goes), Anquetil feasted on a slab of roast lamb while the other riders were out for an easy ride and a day of rest. The next day, he was dropped on the first climb, losing over four minutes to the stage leaders. A champagne-filled water bottle supplied by his team manager Geminiani finally soothed his troubled stomach, and he eventually regained the field.

Anquetil (l), Poulidor contend le Puy de Dome, 1964 Tour

He was an elegant cyclist with a classically steady cadence. The journalist Owen Mulholland wrote of him, "The sight of Jacques Anquetil on a bicycle gives credence to an idea we Americans find unpalatable, that of a natural aristocracy. . . . that indefinable poise was always there. The look was that of a greyhound. His arms and legs were extended more than was customary in his era of pounded post-World War II roads. And the toes pointed down. . . . His smooth power dictated his entire approach to the sport. Hands resting serenely on his thin Mafac brake levers, [he] appeared to cruise while others wriggled in desperate attempts to keep up."

"Toes down, boys, and wriggle."

Nonetheless, he could be maddening to fans, onlookers and teammates. He calculated everything by way of expending the least possible effort to win. In all his Tour victories, he only occasionally won a stage. He never took a chance, never attacked except when necessary, never assisted his fellow riders. He remained a cipher, a superb cyclist but never an animateur.

Doping predates the Grand Tours, beginning with the notorious indoor "six-day races" of the 1890s, when riders dosed themselves on nitroglycerine or strychnine. Doping included ether, always alcohol, and after the Second War, amphetamines. It was only in 1966 (the year before the Englishman Tom Simpson collapsed and died in the Tour from amphetamine overdose) that France passed its first drug law - a law which did not govern the Union Cycliste Internationale, cycling's governing body.

Anquetil, who took amphetamines, probably said the final word on doping and the European Grand Tour circuit - in a debate with a government minister on French television, he remarked quite frankly that no one could ride the Bordeaux–Paris on bread and water. Cyclists, he insisted, had to ride through "the cold, through heatwaves, in the rain and in the mountains", and they had the right to treat themselves as they wished. "Leave me in peace," he concluded; "everyone takes dope."

He was, like anyone else, a man of his time, unapologetic, candid about his doping, willing to forfeit the world hour record to spare himself the indignity of a urine test in a public stadium. Presumably Armstrong is also a man of his own time, though the times are different and call for tactics less seemly, less forthright and manly. For my own part, I can't get breathless over the final issue of Lance's doping allegations. I've always assumed that he doped, but whether he did or didn't, I'm almost too old to have any more heroes. Besides, no man is a hero to his soigneur.

 My heroes have, on occasion, been cowboys.

The Lower Depths: Deconstructing My Plumbing

"No man can be judged happy until he is dead."  -  Solon the Wise

This cautionary ethical adage, instilling as it does the virtues of prudence, patience, humility and taking the long view, is the wellspring (if you'll pardon the expression) of my theory of plumbing. Aristotle demurred, on the grounds that happiness is not a state, but rather the active exercise of the virtues. My namesake on the other hand, with admirable perspicuity maintains that there's something to it. In this I am not an Aristotelean. It is, in a word, the whole matter, the kernel, the meat, the essence of plumbing. I have touched on this before.

If you give me an ordinary bicycle, let's say, I can probably fix it. I can usually figure out my way around it and, with a little trial-and-error and a modicum of profanity, I can put it right. It's quite simple, really. My technique is simply to buy the latest issue of Bicycling Magazine . . .

,

. . . riffle past all the articles about Lance's doping charges, go straight to the "Gear & Bike" section, and proceed to buy every tool the magazine recommends I own. So, for example, just to give you some limited idea, I now own the Crank Brothers multi-tool 19 ($33) . . . 

. . . Pedro's torque wrench ($140) . . . 

. . . the Giustaforza torque wrench ($185, just to be on the safe side) . . .

. . . the Lezyne Carbon 5 minitool ($80, also just to be safe) . . .

. . .  the Gimp Emergency multi/hanger tool ($40) . . .

. . . Pedro's Trixie ($30) . . .

. . . and a penis necktie for the post-ride pub crawl (priceless).

(More than just a) phallic symbol

Having assembled all my tools about me on the front terrace, my workplace resembles a shipyard.

In mere moments I can take an ordinary bicycle, disassemble it so that all the parts are laid out and visible, like this (always more parts than you expect there might be) . . .

. . . reassemble it, discard any "extra" parts, and Bob's your uncle. 

E pluribus Elliptigo.

But when confronted with a breech in the household plumbing, as I have been of late, no matter how simple on the face of it, I quail. Memories of past attempts haunt me. Investigating something as obvious as a leaky faucet, I encounter in the lower depths what seems (at first) easy enough, if always somehow inaccessible and usually something I've already fixed at least twice before . . . 

Investigating further, the system begins to branch out a bit, fractillate (if I may coin a word) beneath the house. The exact pipe I had located further up towards daylight seems to be deliberately sequestered by its compeers from discovery in the subterranean murk . . .

Following the tangled mass of iron onwards, I emerge into a neighboring back lot, where the system begins to build unaccountably into some hellish Escher puzzle based on exponentiality, the Simpson Paradox and Godel's Theorem . . . 

At last, having crawled on bloodied hands and knees for several miles, I encounter the source of the problem in a neighboring city . . .

There, with prayers and burnt offerings, I loosen the offending joint, valve, fitting, nut, or whatever is the source of the leak, putty it, tape it with plumber's tape, replace whatever needs to be replaced (after 27 returns to the hardware store and the plumbing supply), tighten it with bloodied knuckles and whatever remains of my vital force, and return to my home a shattered man. I hasten to the neighboring city several times during the night to ascertain that my repair is so far holding, the pipes are sound, the leak is dry, the water pressure normal. 

Thereafter on subsequent nights I lie half awake in a troubled doze, imagining that molecules of water are massing once again behind my shoddy work and my pathetic teflon plumber's tape, and having failed by main force to burst their bonds are insidiously attempting to undermine me, never sleeping, filing up silently behind the lead molecule to follow it through the microscopic breech that will open behind its escape, the whole mass of water tumbling through the tiniest issue in the valve, submerging me in my feverish plumbing dream.

Hence, after Solon, my compleat theory of plumbing - that no leak is ever finally repaired until a man is dead.

New Ways to Spend Old Money

A fool and his money are famously but nodding acquaintances. Particularly risky is the fool with disposable income who reads Bicycling magazine. Someone else is certain to dispossess him well before the Cat 4 season has ended and cyclocross has begun.

Bicycling is the premier shill of the industry, an indispensible driver in a relentless marketing effort. From bikes to clothing to aftermarket upgrades, Bicycling's fundamental premise is that everyone who rides a bicycle either races or wants to race, wants to go faster and will pay any amount of money to be able to do it. None of this is to fault the magazine for reporting on trends in the business or for collecting large advertising revenues or for taking a narrow, if profitable view, of a sport which was first a reasonable and civilized mode of transportation.  Still, its advertising and its articles commonly trade on that haunting feeling of inadequacy in the inadequate. It reminds them that, in the world of cycling, a primal fault separates the feckless nerd . . . 

Feckless Nerd

. . . from the True Cyclists. (As it happens, the feckless nerd in this photo is a feckless Rivendell nerd, so he's already spent at least as much on his fecklessness and nerdiness as the True Cyclist spends on Truth in Cycling.) The two worlds are as irreparably sundered as are the rich and the poor, the proud and the humble, the saint and the sinner, the halt and the strong, the sleek and the rumpled, the Republicans and Everyone Else. Follow the dictates of Bicycling as you would the counsels of your physician or lawyer, and Everyman can be a Cipollini. Nowadays I never go out on a bicycle unless I'm appropriately attired, as in the photograph below, and only to ride a time trial from my personal starting ramp.

 

Lookin' good, Mario 

Off the bike, of course, one should opt for a looser, more casual look - strive for the panache that comes of proper breeding and cannot merely be picked up at the newsstand. For my part, I like a pair of well-washed jeans, a nightshirt, and some stylish little poultice for my bad knee.

The smart consumer knows how to look every bit the professional cyclist by shopping for bargains - something you needn't admit to, but it's no crime to stretch the purse where one can. For 2011, Bicycling informs us, Sidi, the Italian shoe manufacturer with factories in China, has lowered its 2010 prices by 11 percent - the limited edition "Ergo 2" has dropped from $500 to $450 this year -  and money well spent. They'll look elegant beneath those Assos bib tights you've always wanted. (Assos is a Swiss manufacturer of cycling apparel whose corporate slogan is "Sponsor Yourself," as in "sponser yourself, sucker." At prices from $330-$440 American for bib tights, who else is going to pay for you to dress like Mario?)

The magazine's advertisements are as informative as the product reviews. For example, the Cosmic Carbone 80, a wheelset (hint: never say "wheels" when you can say "wheelset," "frame" when you can say "frameset," "brakes" when "brakeset" sounds better) - a wheelset, as I was saying, that's the "first wheel and tire specifically designed to work together as a system . . . and opens a bold new chapter in wheel-tire development."  This would explain why I've never been able to keep my tires on my wheels for even the length of time it takes to go from Paris to Roubaix - nor have any of my friends nor anyone I've ever known been able to, but then who knew that we needed to "control the variables between wheel-tire interface," for crying out loud? Nor, for my part, can I see how to "open a bold new chapter" and keep my eyes on the road at the same time, but the prospect is certainly a heady one. Cost of the Cosmic Carbone 80 "wheel-tire system": $1094.50.  

Of course you could wait and get the Mad Fiber wheelset for $2,600, gaining the satisfaction of knowing that they were made in Seattle, which is the next best thing to being made in Portland. Further, this "wheelset" or "wheel-tire system," the ad claims, "can save 14 seconds on a 40K time trial over its closest competitor." Much of the marketing of framesets and wheelsets strongly suggests that you needn't really bother much with pedaling the damn contraption - it just goes by itself, like predestination through a Pentecostal church camp, and you'll have all you can do to stop it. 

Which is where brakesets come in. A "brakeset" can stop you before you even buy it. The 'eebrake' (marca registrada) will set you back, if not stop you, by $569. They do however possess the recondite ugliness that attests to your seriousness as a cyclist: The name 'eebrake' seems an unfortunate one for a brakeset though, since "ee!" seems the last thing you'd want anyone to be saying as you apply them.

 eebrakes

And you'll need some cables to go with those brakes - Bicycling's gear gurus suggest the Gore Ride-On Professional System sealed cables at $65, which seems a bargain if you consider that, being sealed, you'll never have spiders in your brake cables.