Nostalgia Attack! In Search Of... A Cool Cycling Jersey

The title of this post (for those too young to know or others too smart to have watched) is an homage to the In Search Of... TV shows hosted by Leonard Nimoy, aka Spock from Star Trek. The show premiered when I was 7 years old and finished when I was 13. Here's a sample:

Those were some pretty formative TV viewing years, but thankfully I was the second youngest in an intelligent and completely cynical family of groovy monster and paranormal naysayers. Whew.

The thing is, cycling jerseys can be just as freaky. I don't even currently own a real cycling jersey; I've always opted for the cheaper, wicking, and  generic athletic shirts sold by gigantic cut-throat unethical big-box retailers because, well, I'm selfish and cheap.

What got me on to this topic was thinking about creating a RANTWICK shirt to wear when I go out collecting SARATS votes. I figure it would promote the blog with local readers and add some legitimacy to the freak asking people to look at tree photos out of the blue. So, which to choose: The more widely accessible and cheaper to produce cotton T-shirt, or the often visually striking and much more expensive to produce Cycling Jersey?

I personally wanna go cycling jersey, because they can look so damn cool. Trouble is, there are SO MANY that could trump anything I could come up with. I visited a major online retailer looking for inspiration, and man oh man...

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Who wouldn't be into sporting a navel-sniffing (or is it grazing?) giraffe, or for that matter a giant giraffe butt mocking all those you overtake? The maker of this jersey also makes this intimidating item:

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Whoa. You just don't mess with a tiger, especially one worn by people who appear to have time-travelled straight out of the 80's... they are hardcore, for sure.

Although I started my browsing with an eye for weird jerseys of any kind, I ended up finding several novelty cycling jerseys I really liked. When I look at the ones I chose to post about here, a theme has emerged... nostalgia. Perhaps it was the blast-from-the-past hairdos of the tiger wearers, or the "In Search Of..." thing I kicked off with... who knows? Nostalgia is a symptom of growing older, I guess, and I expect it will only get worse. Just the same, check it out; there's a cycling jersey for every stage of my young life, starting with pyjama-clad cartoon watching:

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What can I say? Awesome. After some early-morning TV, I might well have been served something rather alarming for lunch...

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In the interest of total accuracy (which is of paramount importance in a blog post of such gravity) I must make a couple of notes here. First, although I believe Spam was available on Canadian store shelves, it was more likely that I would receive a Canadian equivalent called Klik.

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Secondly, my Mom wouldn't normally put a slab of the stuff in a sandwich, but rather create a "ham salad" kind of mixture with it and do the sandwich that way.

Moving from cartoon and mystery meat nostalgia to the musical, this jersey really took me back...

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The album cover art from Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd is imprinted on many people's brains. In my case, it was featured on a big poster that graced the wall of the bedroom that I shared with my two older brothers when I was a kid. That bedroom was in the house I wrote about in a different nostalgic post over a year ago. Sigh. Those were good times. As I grew older, the band providing the soundtrack for my life became...

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Every guy I hung out with was into RUSH, the extraordinary Canadian power trio that featured three remarkably talented individual musicians all in one band; Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson and Neil Peart are widely regarded as among the very best at what they do. They also wrote songs that appealed to my adolescent brain. Though it sounds kind of childish to me now, I still get pumped listening to "Red Barchetta" in particular. Strangely, I have never met a girl or woman who liked RUSH, even a little. If you happen to be such a woman, don't tell me, because I might have to visit you in person just to confirm that you are for real.

Soon after those teenage years, my memories become somewhat more fractured and clouded. I can't imagine why.

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When I emerged from the haze, I found I was a fully formed old man, well ahead of literal old man status:

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So there you have it; my life as told by cycling jerseys. I started this post meaning to write mostly about RANTWICK shirt design considerations, but this blast-from-the-past tangent has already hijacked your time for long enough. I'll write about my RANTWICK shirt production planning and woes another time, for which you will no doubt be waiting in a state of breathless anticipation because it is just so fascinating. All I can say is...

Keep Yer Shirt On!

R A N T W I C K

Snow Will Come. I Am Totally Unprepared.

It is a minor miracle that we have not yet seen any snow here in London Ontario. Yet, despite the fact that I am excited to once again ride in winter, I am woefully unprepared. Mutant Winter has seized cables/brakes plus two broken spokes in the rear wheel. Whether they let go due to corrosion or pothole or both I am uncertain, but the wheel looks quite truable (new word there, I think). I have been procrastinating since I put the bike away in that deplorable condition last Spring.

Speaking of procrastinating, the space I would like to use to work on the bike looks like this:

I can hardly believe that I am considered a grown-up. I mean, who lets this kind of thing just sit there, month after month? I do, it would seem. I'm hoping to clean up that room well enough to use it tonight. Wish me luck.

On the brighter side, I've received another SARATS entry, this one coming from JAT in Seattle. JAT makes this observation in his email:

It's amazing to me how geographically disparate your entries are, since (having grown up in soggy Doug Fir land but having gone to school "back east") I think of colorful trees as being the province (no pun intended) of the "northeast" not sure how Canadians relate to USofAians perceptions of northliness, obviously for you Northeast would probably start at Torngat Mountains Nat Pk...).

Yes, I love the way the trees that come in are from all over the place. The Internet has this "everywhere" element to it that makes one feel connected to people and places never seen in person. I really like it. Here's some more of JATS email:

Attached please find my entry to the SARATS extravaganza.  I took this photo with my almost smart phone on my way to retrieve my car and offspring from crew practice (my car doesn't row, but my kid decided he wants to, so I dropped him off (in the car) at morning Jazz Band practice before school, then drove to the boathouse, parked and rode in to work.  Anyway on my way to the I-90 Mt Baker Bike Pedestrian Tunnel (known as the echo tunnel during the Trail-a-bike days hence known as the mugging tunnel) the light was just right.  We generally don't get great trees for fall - not enough deciduous / too much sort of warm green followed by too much kinda cooler rain but (until today) it's been a dry (ish) Autumn.

The light was indeed just right. Thanks JAT, it is a beauty! He even included a link to a map to show the area he was talking about. I followed the link, took a screenshot and then made my best guess about which tree it was based on the background in his entry...

I'm thinking JAT will set me straight if I was wrong with a comment. Have a great week everybody!

Yer Pal, R A N T W I C K

Tired of Trucks and Tragedy

I was alerted to another tragic cyclist death by this post on Waterloo Bikes today. The author, Rob, is really angry about the angle taken by CBC's coverage. Sadly, one-sided and ill-founded assertions always seem to abound when stuff like this happens. I agree with Rob, but have become weary of commenting on the fear-mongering that always comes along with such events.

What I think is likely about how the accident went down is not any more relevant than anyone else's assertions. When somebody dies on a bicycle or in any other way, it isn't about who was right or who acted stupidly. It is about profound loss and what might be learned from it. When police officers, reporters and yes, Internet bloggers and commenters use such events to start pointing fingers or advance their own agendas it just leaves me feeling sad and tired.

I have no statistics, but since starting this blog it feels like fatalities involving right-turning trucks have become a terrible recurring theme. It has had a direct impact on how I ride. Whether painted lines indicate I have a right to be somewhere or not, here's my own personal rule:

Where there is any opportunity on the road ahead for a truck (or any large vehicle) to turn right, I will not willingly ride beside one. Should a big truck overtake me anywhere near a right-turn opportunity, the driver has very likely seen me. Just the same, I will slow dramatically in an effort to put myself behind that vehicle.

Will this guarantee that a truck will never ever take me out turning right? Nope. My strong suspicion is that my personal policy will cut the odds deeply enough that it will never happen. I remain completely convinced that bicycling is as safe as just about any other activity you can name, with almost innumerable benefits to both self and society. As such, I have just this moment decided to stop posting anything about cycling tragedies. That news gets around so quickly and is so readily available that I think I'll leave that to others from now on. I'm gonna promote safe and effective cycling whenever I feel like it, but stick with the joy-joys angle from here on out. Thanks, as always, for reading.

Man, do I ever love Riding My Bike!

R A N T W I C K