Category Archives: History

I’d Rather Be Klunking

Posted on August 1, 2011 by josh| 6 Comments

I came across this historical gem on youtube. Evening Magazine, a 1970s television news magazine on a San Francisco CBS station, produced a segment about the new craze sweeping Marin County, Klunking. The clip has some excellent footage of a race down the Repack course as well as interviews with Charlie Kelly, Gary Fisher, and others. It’s obviously not as comprehensive as Klunkerz, the 2006 documentary on the subject, but it’s nonetheless an amazing peak into the early history of mountain biking.

→ 6 Comments

Posted in Cycling Media, Everything Else, History, Mountain Biking

Tagged , , , , , , ,

Your Dad Did It First

Posted on April 26, 2011 by josh| Leave a comment

From the hilarious Tumblr blog Dads: The Original Hipsters:

Your dad donned cycling caps before you did and he has the bike sweat-filled brim to prove it. Back when Lance Armstrong was swinging two deep and Velocity was only a term used to reference speed, your dad was hyping bike brands on his head. He would flip the shit out of that brim so all the pedal honies could see his laser gaze. He was raw, unbridled, rolling seduction that left a contrail of masculinity with every crank turn.

So hipsters, next time you’re dick up to a bike seat on a fixie, flashing velo gang colors on the brim of your “trying to hard to be original” hat, remember this…

You’ll always be training wheels in comparison to your dad.

→ Leave a comment

Posted in Everything Else, History

Tagged , , ,

File Under Bad-Ass Women In History

Posted on April 4, 2011 by josh| Leave a comment


Alfonsina Strada

Though today’s major European stage races like the Giro d’Italia and the Tour de France are about as difficult as any form of bike racing, their early incarnations were brutal beasts in ways the modern races are not. Racers would set out for 300km stages over unpaved roads on single speed bikes with little if any organized support along the way. Winning was as much about surviving as anything and the winner would often finish hours ahead of the lanterne rouge. Simply completing these races was an impressive feat. To do so as the only woman in history to race in any of the three Grand Tours elevates Alfonsina Strada to “serious bad ass” status.

Adventure Journal posted a link to the Wikipedia entry on Strada last week. She was a dedicated racer in early 20th-century Italy known for winning nearly every race she entered against women and many of those against men. Her reputation once earned her an invitation to race the Russian Grand Prix. Thanks to some clerical slight-of-hand, Strada was able to enter to enter the 1924 Giro d’Italia.

Continue reading →

→ Leave a comment

Posted in Everything Else, History, Racing

Tagged , , , , ,

Bike Camping 1972-Style

Posted on March 10, 2011 by josh| 3 Comments

I rely on Google for too much, arguably. My email, my calendar, the analytics for this site, searching the Internets. Now, thanks to their mad attempt to scan every published document in existence, I can use Google to get cutting-edge bike touring tips from 1972.

Laura and Russ of The Path Less Pedaled (two previous Bicycle Story interviewees) posted a link on Twitter to a Google books scan of the April 1972 issue of Popular Science. The issue contains an article by A.J. Hand with the straight-forward title “Bicycle Camping–What you need to know to join the fun.”

Continue reading →

→ 3 Comments

Posted in Bike Touring, Everything Else, History

Tagged , , , ,

Lucho: Cycling Inquisition’s Intersection of Snark, Colombian Cycling, and Metal

Posted on March 3, 2011 by josh| 2 Comments


Lucho riding the famed Roubaix velodrome.

Lucho, the mystery man behind the blog Cycling Inquisition, is part sardonic, Bike-Snob-esq cultural critic and part Colombian cycling historian. He’s as likely to write about Mario Cipollini’s luscious mane as he is a sincere and in-depth post about Colombia’s first professional cyclists to race in Europe or the difficulties up-and-coming cyclists face in his home country. He was born in Bogotá and lived there until he was 12, which gave him enough time to discover cycling and metal (Lucho also writes for the blog Metal Inquisition) before moving to the United States with his family. Though he chooses anonymity and refused to tell me his real name, Lucho did tell me about his introduction to cycling, the interweaving of violent politics and cycling in Colombia, his work as a an unofficial historian, the evolution of his writing, and more.

Continue reading →

→ 2 Comments

Posted in History, Interviews, Racing

Tagged , , , , ,