Wannabe Bike Girl

It’s probably too late for me to be writing coherently, but I am. Not that it’s too late to be awake, as I was up until nearly two am last night. But this isn’t about my sleeping habits, but instead about movies. Okay, one movie.

I love sports and I like (not love) movies about sports. One of my favorites is, of course, Any Given Sunday. Recently I purchased and then watched Friday Night Lights, I immediately fell in love with it. It has become my favorite football movie (my favorite baseball movies will always be the Major League movies, but that’s just because I’m an Indians fan. I love 61, though). Up until Thursday, the only cycling movie I’d ever seen — well that was about cycling (and Amélie doesn’t count) — was Les Triplettes de Belleville, which I loved. Then, a week earlier, I found Breaking Away at our local library and rented it (along with Chinatown, but that has nothing to do with sports, though I did like it). I didn’t watch it until Thursday, but when I did, I feel in love.

It seems I fall in love with material things easily, and it’s true. Sometimes it sticks, sometimes it doesn’t, but this movie … It’s not that it was well done or well acted, but I just fell for it. I loved everything, from Dennis Christopher leg-shaving scene (I know, most people find it weird, but shaved legs are sexy) to the encounter with the Italians to the French at the very end. Not only did it reaffirm my status as a geek and my love for cycling, but it was more proof that I was born at the wrong time (earlier proof being my longing to go to the Civil Rights rallies my parents went to).

I tried to explain to a woman at work why I loved the movie and I couldn’t. I fell in love with Dave, of course, and I always love Dennis Quaid (the first movie I saw him in was The Big Easy). But there was something, and I know I say that a lot, about the movie that just grabbed me. The cycling scenes were fantastic and the music was perfect. I loved how Dave rode his bike and sang Italian. I love how he cried. I loved the race at the end of the movie. I loved everything about it and I’m sad that I can’t find a copy on DVD.

I’m not always fond of love stories, but Breaking Away was a great one. To me, it’s the love story of a boy and his bike. Which, much to my surprise, was exactly what I wanted.

Music: Friday Night Lights Soundtrack – Your Hand In Mine (w/strings)

I didn’t think I’d be excited (after all, I’ve been paying more attention to European Football, American Football golf and basketball, rather than cycling), but the Jacob’s Creek Tour Down Under starts tomorrow — well, tonight rather.

Some of my boys are racing. Some being Matt and Jurgen. It’s sadly really exciting.

I’m ready for the season to start. Ready for new pictures, updates. Ready for all the stuff that accompanies pro cycling. If only I got OLN (and ESPN2, but that is a totally different topic and related mostly to tennis). Oh well, maybe my parents will tape the tour for me.

Anyway, that’s all. Just a quick post.

Music: Alias Season Two Finale

Somewhere in the back of my head I have this post, it has to do with an article I read in procycling on the even of Christmas day while waiting to watch something on television, I’m not sure what — I think it was my season three Alias DVDs. The article talks about the history of doping in cycling and it’s fascinating. But I’m not going to talk about it.

Instead I’m going to talk about what I love about cycling.

Tick of cycling4fans wrote, sometime last year, the follows on the Daily Peloton site:

“But I still love to see the sport: the seriousness and joy on the face of these well-trained young men as they talk about their sport; the frantic sprints; the strenuous, exhausting climbs; yes, “the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat”; the graceful and liquid flow of the peloton, like a school of fish; falling down and getting up and rider further; the heart-stopping descents with the riders nearly flat on their bikes; the feelings of friendship so obvious among this group of men — and their occasional spats; the concentration and intensity in the eyes of an expert time-trialer; the deceptively motionless upper body of a cyclist, with his legs pumping away furiously, automatically and endlessly … all these are the things that make cycling so special to me.”

She was, of course, referring to why, even though all those cyclists may or may not dope, she loves the sport. I agree, completely. And well, this blog is about cycling (and, on occasion, other sports) and I spend not enough time talking about the sport.

So, for today, we’ll talk a little bit about a part of cycling I don’t know much about (well, that’d be most of the sport — but I am just a newish fan), cyclocross. I know that a lot of road cyclists ride cyclocross during the ‘off’ season, I’ve been following the careers, this cyclocross season, of three of them.

Tomorrow, when I’m more or less awake (and waiting for 24 to finish taping), I’ll post pictures, but for now, here is my short (very short) list.

1. Francis Mourey

2. Sven Vanthourenhout

3. Tom Vannoppen

These boys, especially Sven, have done well this season. It’s nice to be able to follow (though not watch, as I still live in the wrong country) cyclocross. It’s nice to go over to cyclingnews and see that one of the boys (or both, as was the case the other day) have won races.

Sometimes I forget that there are other parts of cycling than just road or track. It’s nice to be reminded.

Music: New York Jets vs. San Diego Chargers on ABC

International aid organizations:

UNICEF (United Nations Children’s Fund)

United Nations’ World Food Programme

Medecins Sans Frontieres / Doctors without Borders (donate!)

CARE International

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies

UK/Europe:

Disasters Emergency Comittee (DEC) – comprises a raft of aid agencies, including the below and others

British Red Cross

Save the Children UK

North America:

American Red Cross

Canadian Red Cross

Save The Children

Anders Jacobsen: Webloggers: Give to tsunami victims and I’ll give too!

Music: Talk of the Nation on NPR