Ride with the Bike Rabbi
Decades of cycling experience, riding, racing, working in the bike business, dispensing knowledge and wisdom, and sharing the lore that has animated our culture for more than a century.
Riding With Terry Fox
I will be riding more than 100 miles on Sunday. Maybe 120. 17 September is the date of the Terry Fox Run in Canada. Many of my readers will remember Terry Fox, the young athlete who had lost his right leg to cancer and ran into history as one of the Great Canadian heroes. Terry began his Marathon of Hope near St. John’s, NL to raise money for cancer research on 12 April 1980, he began. He ran a marathon every day, but had to stop on 1 October outside Thunder Bay, ON, after running 5,373km (3,339 mi),...
Ain’t Gonna Ride on Saturday: Cycling Yiddishly
At summer camp, we used to sing a song every Shabbes by the Canadian writer Yosaif Silverman. Jewish summer camps, even the ones operating today, have deep roots in the soil of the Labor Bund, European Social Democracy, and Labor Zionism.* And the one I attended was like that: a strange mishmash of history, identity, labor politics, cookouts, and lusty singing. Silverman’s song “The Big Gedalia Goomber” captured much of that spirit and mined the deep roots of the Jewish labor experience. I’m big Gedalia...
Lessons Learned
I had just turned onto the D&R Canal tow-path off Quaker Road. I was riding Le Mouton Noir, my cyclocross bike, laden down with about 50lbs of groceries from Wegmans in my backpack, under a torrential late-June downpour. In other words, it was a perfect ride. But then, something didn’t feel right, my back wheel suddenly felt squidgy and unable to get a grip in the wet gravel and mud of the path. I pulled off to the side of path (a sensible thing to do even when you’re the only person out in the...
Le Tour de COVID: “(Just Like) Starting Over”
The rain started on Culver Road about five miles into the ride. I don’t like riding in the rain – I don’t like getting wet, and the lack of visibility and the slick pavement makes me a little twitchy every time a car hisses by. It started with big drops, spaced at bout two second intervals; I counted them off until they came too quickly, and felt the water pooling in my shoes. I was in heaven. Even though I hate riding in the rain there was something truly glorious in that moment. The asphalt on that...
It Ain’t Professional Wrestling
That moment when Michael Woods surged past Matteo Jorgenson on the final climb of the Puy de Dome in stage nine of the Tour de France was full of what the kids call “the feels.” Here was a fellow Canadian winning at the top of one of the most storied climbs in bike racing in the most dramatic fashion – it was something to cheer about. Yet, as I watched the life go out of Jorgenson, who had gone out on a breakaway 40 km before, I knew at least some of that disappointment. I always cheer for the breakaway,...
Mmmmmm… Pudding!
I’m dying here! Okay. I’m being melodramatic. I’m not dying, and never was, despite the fact that it sometimes felt like I was over the last few days. I caught COVID on a visit to Philadelphia last week, almost certainly when I took my mask off to eat indoors in a restaurant – something that I have done very rarely since 2019. I had managed to completely avoid the plague for all these years through a combination of obsessive germaphobia, a willingness to abjur eating indoors with strangers, and...
Cross-Training on the Middle Path
I ran today. The weather in central New Jersey has been, to coin a phrase, unreliable. There was a high chance of thunderstorms all morning – which, it turns out, held off until early afternoon – and I didn’t want to get caught in a downpour as I battled traffic on a county road. So, I laced-up my running shoes and went for a run along the Lenape Trail. It was a welcomed return to a sport that I love, but which I have neglected for almost a year. I used to be a runner – 30-40 miles per week, 10ks,...
Let’s be Careful Out There (In Memoriam Gino Mäder)
I received the Global Cycling Network notification about Gino Mäder’s death just as I was setting out on my Friday morning ride. I had been following the Tour de Suisse, one of the last big races before the Tour de France begins next Saturday, and I knew that the young Swiss rider had crashed on a descent in stage five. It was a bad accident, as any crash at 60 mi/h on a narrow alpine road would be, but crashes are a part of bike racing. I hoped for Mäder’s speedy recovery, confident that, even if he...
Is This Thing On?
I get an absurd thrill whenever my friend Karen posts updates in social media about her epic rides in far-away Maryland. It is a thrill because I advised her through the purchase of her first road bike, a Specialized Roubaix, and I feel a tiny bit responsible for the jouissance in every one of her updates. I smugly tell myself that I am deserve credit for this and I put another metaphorical feather in my imaginary cap. It’s absurd because I know that my friend’s joy in the sport of cycling isn’t about me;...
Just a guy who rides, repairs, and races bikes, and has a lot of opinions about riding, repairing, and racing bikes.
Matt Friedman, the Bike Rabbi
