No Regrets
About a ride I did last year...
You find yourself sitting in a sun-baked, school parking lot in rural New Hampshire. Spent. Dead. Finished. Someone offers you a grilled cheese and a seltzer. You…
Latest Posts Page One Op-Ed Classified Talk
A Useful Review – The POC Savant MTB Glove
If you have hands and you ride bikes, you might like the POC Savant MTB Glove. Most of my friends pronounce this brand "Pock," but I think it’s actually supposed to be P.O.C. standing for Piece of…
Robot’s Useless Reviews – Aero Bars
Blah. Blah. Blah. Aerodynamics. Those are great. If you can get some, you should, because watts. Percentages. Efficiency. FTP over time, minus drag = salvation. Etc. You should lose weight. No.…
A Series of Unfortunate Events
It’s kind of crazy the things that go through your head when you are sliding across the pavement after having been hit by a car. I was still in motion, appreciating an upside-down view of the black…
Revolting 27
Get Off My Lawn. Herein we grapple with the idea that things actually did used to be better than they are now. But which "back in the day" was the best day? Then we do some heavy thinking about the…
Video – Born from Junk – Outlaw Origins of Mountain Biking
Here's a fresh little number from Freehub Magazine about the origins of mountain biking in Colorado. Freehub is doing some really interesting and cool stuff, like this, so check them out.
Lots of…
TCI Friday
It seems like the week of the eBike in my life. My own is down currently with a bad battery. More on that story as it develops. Padraig and I talked about them a whole lot on The Paceline. He's been…
Environmentalism Re-mixed
Humans are not good at large-scale collective effort. We are selfish and short-sighted by design. We struggle to understand proper scale and are prone to dismissing our own, individual contributions…
Paceline Podcast 286
John is watching pro racing and has had a few epiphanies about what makes bike racing—and sport in general—interesting. With gas more than $6/gal. Patrick takes a look at the value proposition of…
Featured Posts
A Letter from the Editors
Hello Friends,
As we have mentioned in recent communications, we will be taking on a site sponsor shortly. Shimano North America has agreed to underwrite a large portion of our operating costs…
The Crash Samaritan
You open your eyes. Disoriented. Dirty. Details are sharp but nonsensical. Rising dust motes. The tick of a spinning freewheel. A dog with five white whiskers licking your arm. The smell of Christmas…
Enter the Deuce 1
Back in 2013 when my youngest son was born he almost died less than three minutes after his birth. He had a condition that would have been terminal when I was born. He was moved to a neonatal…
Introducing: Turtle Wandering
A good friend of The Cycling Independent, Elizabeth Allen, has started a really cool new video blog series called Turtle Wandering. In her words, this is the description:
"It is about the places…
Non-Zero Sum Gains
I have been thinking an awful lot about cycling advocacy and inclusivity. Why? Because I dream of a self-powered world, one in which all citizens glide around on a bicycle of one flavor or another. I…
A Year of Shelter
Life changed for us 365 days ago. I doubt you or anyone you know would have been willing to guess that the life you're living today was even possible. It was certainly beyond my imagination, and I…
What We Would Say
I chose cycling because it's the only time I don't feel like a klutz.I chose cycling because I can't stick the ball. I chose cycling because I didn't play team sports.I chose cycling because I'm…
We Need You On This Ride
I'll be brief.
Our primary goal at The Cycling Independent is to make our community as large as we possibly can. Part of that is selfish. We can't continue without your financial support. This is…
Editor’s Letter
Right now you might be thinking, "How can this be an editor’s letter on a website? This isn't print!"
You very well should be thinking that because we’re not just another website with a bunch of…
The Cycling Independent: a Statement of Purpose
The way I tell the story, my love of magazines, of periodic publications, began with Skateboarder Magazine in 1977, but that’s not actually true. I can trace it further back, to Boy’s…
New York to Provincetown
A single day can feel like a month. Processing a massive ride afterwards is like staring at a Salvador Dali painting. Fifty miles dissolves into a blurry moment.
Turns out it took a village…
A Series of Unfortunate Events
It’s kind of crazy the things that go through your head when you are sliding across the pavement after having been hit by a car. I was still in motion, appreciating an upside-down view of the black…
Page One
No Regrets
About a ride I did last year...
You find yourself sitting in a sun-baked, school parking lot in rural New Hampshire. Spent. Dead. Finished. Someone offers you a grilled cheese and a seltzer. You…
A Series of Unfortunate Events
It’s kind of crazy the things that go through your head when you are sliding across the pavement after having been hit by a car. I was still in motion, appreciating an upside-down view of the black…
Video – Born from Junk – Outlaw Origins of Mountain Biking
Here's a fresh little number from Freehub Magazine about the origins of mountain biking in Colorado. Freehub is doing some really interesting and cool stuff, like this, so check them out.
Lots of…
Op-Ed
TCI Friday
It seems like the week of the eBike in my life. My own is down currently with a bad battery. More on that story as it develops. Padraig and I talked about them a whole lot on The Paceline. He's been…
TCI Friday
One of my stock bike jokes is this: Every year I like riding with one fewer companion than I did the year before, and last year I was at two. That makes me sound much grouchier than I am. What I…
TCI Friday
TCI Friday works best when you chime in, in the comments below.
I felt attacked, and I got defensive. My wife sat at the kitchen counter across from her mother. I had just received word that my…
Classified
A Useful Review – The POC Savant MTB Glove
If you have hands and you ride bikes, you might like the POC Savant MTB Glove. Most of my friends pronounce this brand "Pock," but I think it’s actually supposed to be P.O.C. standing for Piece of…
Robot’s Useless Reviews – Aero Bars
Blah. Blah. Blah. Aerodynamics. Those are great. If you can get some, you should, because watts. Percentages. Efficiency. FTP over time, minus drag = salvation. Etc. You should lose weight. No.…
A Useful Review – The Kuat Sherpa 2.0 Rack
I rode with some friends this morning and one asked me what I thought of my rack, a Kuat Sherpa 2.0. I said, “Man, I love this rack,” which is the first time I’ve articulated that, and since I’ve now…
Talk
Revolting 27
Get Off My Lawn. Herein we grapple with the idea that things actually did used to be better than they are now. But which "back in the day" was the best day? Then we do some heavy thinking about the…
Paceline Podcast 286
John is watching pro racing and has had a few epiphanies about what makes bike racing—and sport in general—interesting. With gas more than $6/gal. Patrick takes a look at the value proposition of…
Revolting 26
I See You Are Also Wearing a Black T-Shirt. This episode is about t-shirts. If that seems dumb to you, then clearly, you’ve not listened to this podcast before. As it turns out we could talk about…