There's a white plastic box on my kitchen counter that's showing a bike race going on in Belgium right this moment.
Yes, the video is terrible. Yes, it keeps quitting and I have to reboot the page. No, I don't understand a word of Flemish (which actually kind of adds to the charm).
But there's a white plastic box on my kitchen counter that's showing a bike race going on in Belgium right this moment.
Isn't that cool?
Saturday, February 26, 2011
Friday, February 18, 2011
My Own Private Ventoux
Wherever you live, you have it: Your hill.
Upon reading those words, you may already have a snapshot in your mind's eye of the closest place to your house where the road turns upward. I'm lucky, living in New England; mine is only seven minutes from home, just far enough to warm up a bit before I hit the base.
In February, just back on the bike after months of maintenance-level fitness and not using cycling muscles, that little bump seems far longer and harder than I remember it. In September, after 20,000 leagues of climbing, sweating, huffing and puffing, it's a piffling pimple, to be surmounted out of the saddle and forgotten the moment I complete the descent.
But I am always glad to see it. Mine is a short stretch of road with homely little farms and perpetually half-renovated homesteads lining the sides, and even a brief patch of forest. At the bottom of the descent is a picturesque little lake on one side, and an old mill building perched over the stream on the other, recently converted into a simple but elegant home.
Wherever your Ventoux is, go climb it the next moment the weather allows. Climbing is a metaphor for life, or something close to it, and reaching the top feels good every time.
Upon reading those words, you may already have a snapshot in your mind's eye of the closest place to your house where the road turns upward. I'm lucky, living in New England; mine is only seven minutes from home, just far enough to warm up a bit before I hit the base.
In February, just back on the bike after months of maintenance-level fitness and not using cycling muscles, that little bump seems far longer and harder than I remember it. In September, after 20,000 leagues of climbing, sweating, huffing and puffing, it's a piffling pimple, to be surmounted out of the saddle and forgotten the moment I complete the descent.
But I am always glad to see it. Mine is a short stretch of road with homely little farms and perpetually half-renovated homesteads lining the sides, and even a brief patch of forest. At the bottom of the descent is a picturesque little lake on one side, and an old mill building perched over the stream on the other, recently converted into a simple but elegant home.
Wherever your Ventoux is, go climb it the next moment the weather allows. Climbing is a metaphor for life, or something close to it, and reaching the top feels good every time.
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