21 stages later it comes to this

i found this photo from the website of the german documentary "hell on wheels", featuring the 2003 tour de france. on this photo is rolf aldag, a super-domestique on the german telekom team, just sitting on his handlebar on his laid-down bike at the end of the tour in paris. man, he looks damn tired and doesn't care one bit about all the celebration going on around him. after 21 stages of giving it all for your team, it comes to this.

in minutes, the promenade will be full of parades and soon the spectators will be all over the place. this photo was literally right after the riders rode a loop around the champs-elys\'ee, the final thing that a racer has to do in the tour de france. but of course, rolf is too tired to care, after 21 days of racing on behalf of his team leaders. not for himself, but for his team leaders. very few people know about rolf, since his work is done before TV coverage comes to live and outside of those photos and clips of lance armstrong. but without his work, his telekom team would not have finished on top of the team classification, and neither would his team leader vinokourov been able to finish on the podium in paris.

i just thought that this photo had that introspective kind of poignancy, and thought that you might appreciate it, too. brad mehldau writes after goethe that memories often become the exact vessel for which the grandeur of a moment reveals itself. perhaps it's more than mere grandeur that memories amplify. perhaps it is also the hollowing of grandeur of fleeting moments. and oh boy, can i wait to get my hands on a copy of "hell on wheels".

“Oh, it is the same with the distance as with the future! A vast, twilit whole lies before our soul; our emotions lose themselves in it as do our eyes, and we long to surrender our entire being and let ourselves sink into one great well of blissful feeling. Alas, when we approach, when There has become Here, everything is as it was before, and we are left with our poverty, our narrowness, while our soul thirsts for the comfort that slipped away.”
– from The Sorrows of Young Werther, Goethe

Does crime pay?

does crime pay?

this morning started off nicely with my usual early morning schedule. got up and finished making some miso/lemon dressing and organic peanut sauce for tomorrow's party at barbara's place. i then went over to her place to leave it in her fridge with instructions, and started making my way to work.

and then my phone rang. "uh, hey... this is eric from cambridge bikes. what's the name of that kid on the team who had his bike stolen some time ago? i think we have it here in the shop. can you like, come over ASAP to ID it?"

whoa.

mark cote did have his bike stolen from his car a few months ago. it was a custom-made custom-painted GURU with Zipp 909 wheels. there is only one bike in the world exactly like his.

"i'll be over in 10 minutes!" i yelled back. started pedaling furiously on my single-speed and put so much torque on it that the rear wheel was pulled on the drive-side and i had to actually stop to reset it.

i rode over to cambridge bikes just as the cops were showing up. indeed, it was mark's bike! it was exactly as it was the day it was stolen, with the scruff marks and everything from his crashes. turns out that it had been "given" to a guy who wanted to put platform pedals and cushy seats on it, so he brought it in to cambridge bikes.

yeah, right!

mark's bike is custom-geometry, and is basically a 49x52 since mark has long torso and short-ish legs. the guy was a 6'2" guy with an enormous girth. clearly he could barely ride the bike without his gut spilling over the top tube. he was arguing and was threatening eric when he found out that eric had called the cops on him. good thing the cops came quickly.

now the bike is in the possession of cambridge police, and since mark is in canada working for cervelo for the summer, we may have to pick it up on his behalf somehow.

so kids, crime does NOT pay. thanks to watchful pairs of eyes like eric's. and i guess this is one advantage of having a custom-made, custom-spec'ed, custom-painted bike: your buddies know exactly that it has to be yours. kudos to cambridge bikes for looking after us at MIT cycling!