Cycling: Reviewing the Soul of Cycling

Cycling's Greatest Misadventures includes stories of amateur racing and weekly club rides. Tales of physical injury and mechanical failure. Vignettes from novice duffers and podium-minded zealots. Cycling provides a balanced cross-section of cycling's cultural peloton from a refreshingly grass-roots perspective. And you know how we love the grass, uh roots when it comes to cycling.

For us, anthologies connote cheaply bound three-inch-thick college "readers" with 120-page essays on environmental ethics and the historiography of the New History. Ah, but Diamond and Schweikher have done their authors and readers a favor by choosing fast-paced, compelling stories that even the most iTunes- and TV-addicted nonreaders can blaze through at the speed of a pro pace line.

There are no 60-page endless snoozers in this collection. Every entry pops to life, leaving the reader dancing on the pages, breathlessly racing to get to the next fascinating story. In this age of visual stimulation, readability is key for books, and Diamond and Schweikher have made this book as fun to read as Skeggs or Mt. Tam are to ride.

Bay Area cyclos will enjoy Michael "Bike Mike" Fee's piece ("First Impressions") on breaking his jaw in a fall on Arastradero Road in Palo Alto just before starting Stanford Business School in 1997. He describes a few routes that peninsula locals know well (Arastradero Road is still a pot-holed and cracked rim wrecker, Mike) and humorously recalls the terror that every cyclist feels -- or should feel -- when they take to the pedals. You can hear it from the man himself on July 8, when Fee will read "First Impressions" at Cody's books in Berkeley.

Another member of the Stanford family, Stanford University School of Medicine professor Randall Stafford, gives a kidney-busting account of risking total renal failure for a shot at Le Tour's most famous mountains ("Resisting the Inevitable in the French Alps") -- now that's a gamble any true cyclist can understand. Along the way, Stafford relates everything you never wanted to know about kidney disease, including meal-by-meal minutiae, and an interesting testimonial for the tangible benefits of EPO. Best of all is the professor's descriptions of glorious climbs like the Col du Telegraphe, the Col du Galibier, and of course, (drum roll, please, actually, maybe a 2001: A Space Odyssey theme, and read as Shatner) the . . . Alpe . . . d'Huez.

Veterans of the Silicon Valley wars will also appreciate, albeit through very, very wry grins, grimaces even, Steve Pucci's farcical satire, "Outsourcing." One guess what it's about. It hits the mark like a hangover-morning puke. Pucci's story is set in Boston in 2007, but it could just as easily been set in Redwood City, Santa Clara or Milpitas anywhere from April 2000 to today.

In a recent phone conversation, Diamond, an independent publisher, gave us some insight into the development of this book. Different from his last anthology, Surfing's Greatest Misadventures, Diamond hired Schweikher, a hands-on project editor with a passion for cycling, to help connect to the cycling community. Diamond told us that he and Schweikher worked closely with the authors to shape, craft, and refine each entry, sometimes even applying their own significant writing and editing skills to get the most out of each piece. According to Diamond, the editorial team spent 9 to 12 months gathering their stories from around the world. Each story then went through an average of 12 rounds of review as the editors worked towards a set of editorial criteria that included character development, narrative tension, and "compelling action." And it shows in flawlessly crafted essays that are truly interesting to read.

Who among us hasn't gotten a European ass luffe ("The Kleedkamer", Austin King); who hasn't gotten up at four in the morning, driven for hours to a race, only to feel like shit and get waxed by half the Beginner field ("Sheepskin Saddles", Eugene Etsebeth); and who hasn't taken a hammer, a roll of duct tape, and/or a saw to some piece of bike componentry hoping to make it lighter, shorter, and/or faster -- almost always with injurious results ("The Need for Speed", David Monnig)? You, we, us, anybody that's ever thrown their leg over a top tube, that's who.

Yup, the books cuts a nice swath through the entire spectrum of cycling, from recreational bikers to Sport-level dreamers to sponsored racers, from Seattle to Belgium to South Africa to Laos. And it does provide a populist view of cycling, focusing on the turning of the pedals and the spirit that turns them rather than big-name stars and corporate teams.

Though the book jacket insists that all the stories are true, editor Diamond did acknowledge to us that "Outsourcing" is fiction. The rest, Diamond maintains, are more or less true. Among the entries that seem more on the less side to us are Amy Nevala's improbable, uh, tale ("Riding Tandem with Rodent") of a rat leaping into the spokes of her front wheel and remaining there snugly enveloped by the spokes while she continued to ride. Not really buying that one. Nor are we fully buying Roland Goity's, uh, bull about jousting with cattle in Henry Coe State Park ("Hazard on the Trail"). Non-fiction doesn't really work with third-person narrative and dialogue. Goity's piece is significant though because it is bike literature, complete with plot, theme, characters, narrative tension, cycling -- it can be done!

Where Diamond and Schweikher go wrong is with the title and the marketing around the book. They want to turn a profit on this project and get their names out there in the publishing world. We get that. But the book is mistitled and mismarketed. There is not a single "Greatest" cycling anything in this book, nor are there all that many misadventures. It is not a book about huge spills, c-raaaaaa-zy bike shenanigans, or fantastical cycling scenarios.

What it is, is a book that goes right to the heart and soul of cycling with essay after essay that not only completely entertain, but from which emerges the basic character of cycling and of the people that enjoy the sport. A more appropriate title might have been something like, The Soul of Cycling, A Day in the Life of Cycling, or even The Cyclist Within.

Again, where this book misses the mark is with the marketing. Diamond and Schweiker have succumbed to a central problem with cycling in the United States -- a lack of confidence. Instead of letting the voices of cycling take the readers where they will, the editors have packaged the stories as red-line crazy. EXTREME!! As if that is the only arrow in cycling's quiver than can even hope to make a mark, any mark.

It doesn't need to be so hyperbolic -- and it's not. The stories are all excellent -- entertaining, readable, profound. And that, in a cycling context, should be more than enough said. But the perception is cycling will only sell if it appeals to the adrenaline fringe.

Here's our point: Cycling doesn't have to be about misadventures and it doesn't need to focus on being the greatest, fastest, or bestest. Cycling is a way of life, a frame of mind, a contextual relativity in and of its own.

Unfortunately, Diamond and Schweikher were kind of painted into a corner on the title by the marketing confines of the Greatest Misadventures theme, and in an effort to sell books and get people to "open the cover," they have set readers up for disappointment. Those seeking tales of 100-foot dropoff jumps and 60-mph downhill wipeouts will be sorely disappointed by the book's deeper, more contemplative entries. Conversely, those looking for grass-roots cycling perspective will probably be deterred from giving it a spin by the Mountain Dew title.

Diamond noted that Lance Armstrong, John Tomac, and other luminaries in the sport of cycling either did not return his calls or did not follow through on promises to supply pieces for this book. We see that as a positive thing. There is nothing that Lance Armstrong or any professional cyclist can tell us about grass-roots cycling that isn't already in this book. What does Lance know about making do with worn parts, or making his own parts, or changing a flat tire in the rain 20 miles from home while bleeding profusely from his labia ("It's All in the Name", Carla Axt-Pilon)?

Bottom line: this is a great compilation of cycling stories, and despite the title, we have no reservations in enthusiastically recommending it to anybody with even a passing interest in the sport of cycling or the bicycle lifestyle. In fact, friends and family of ours can expect to receive copies of this book on birthdays and holidays for years to come.

So check out Cycling's Greatest Misadventures at your peril. If you're not already, you'll be hooked on cycling by the time you finish.