And just like that, ten years of happiness was wheeled out the door.

There’s no easy way to say this, but after many happy years and I-don’t-know-how-many thousand kilometres of riding, my beloved and well-used bike has been stolen.  Man, that bike and I had been places, from the start to the end of the very first Tour de France, the cobbles of Paris Roubaix, to the heights of the French Alps. And a LOT of commuting around Wellington Harbour.   It’s not worth much to anyone else, but it was worth a lot to me and so it’s really sad to see it being wheeled away at the hands of a bolt-cutter wielding bike thief and his high-heeled accomplice.

Always keep riding: five years of Thousandth Fastest.

Has it really been five years since I started writing this blog?  Apparently so. As the bumper sticker tells us, life is what happens to you while you’re off making other plans. One minute you start a blog about biking up a hill, then five years later its, well, five years later and the gap between ‘plan’ and ‘reality’ is quite a bit wider than you were expecting.  Sure, I biked up the hill, but this blog has been an excuse for all kinds of other stuff.  I’d like to think that five-years-ago me would be quietly impressed that I’m still at it.

Netflix’s “Don’t Look Up” is a sort-of funny satire on American politics but a sort-of terrible film about climate change

Don’t Look Up: No-one’s listening (image from here)

Ever since Christmas my social media feeds have been full of posts imploring me to watch Netflix’s star-studded political satire Don’t Look Up.  Actually, that’s not quite true. My social media is still totally dominated by cycling stuff and ads about artisanal running shoes because I bought some running shoes online that one time. But there have been quite a few posts telling me that I should watch Don’t Look Up because it’s funny and a great allegorical tale for our times. So sometime between Christmas and the New Year we gave in and watched it, and I have to say we were pretty underwhelmed.  It feels heretical to say it, but I think Don’t Look Up is a sort-of-funny American political satire, but a terrible film about climate change.

“Phil Liggett: The Voice of Cycling” is a kind and generous documentary tribute to a kind and generous legend of Cycling. Go see it.

From Demand Films, here

Most people who read ThousandthFastest will know who Phil Liggett is, and if you don’t know the name you’ll almost certainly know the voice.   For the English-speaking world Phil really is the voice of cycling and his ebullient Tour de France commentary has been either the soundtrack to summer or the aural caffeine keeping you awake during the long dark nights of a southern-hemisphere winter since the 1970s. Phil’s story spans the narrative arc of pro-cycling as we know it, from the start of the Merckx era through the Hinault, Indurain and Armstrong years to the post-Team Sky world we’re in now.  In 2020 Australian duo Nickolas Bird and Eleanor Sharpe released an absolutely wonderful documentary about Phil and his life.  It’s a kind and generous tribute to a kind and generous fella, and I saw it last week as part of a great bikes-in-schools fundraiser (more on that below).  It really is a lovely film, and I encourage you to see it when you get the chance.

First ever women’s Paris-Roubaix was a cracker, and a long awaited step in the right direction.

First ever women’s Paris Roubaix winner, Lizzie Deignan. From here

It’s been an historic week for cycling.  This weekend just gone saw the 118^th running of the men’s Paris-Roubaix and – and this is the truly historic and awesome bit – the first ever running of the women’s Paris-Roubaix.  Yep, a race that has been running since 1896 has for the first time allowed for a women’s race.  But park your outrage about that for just a minute (we’ll get back to it later…) and revel in what was one of the greatest editions of the greatest bike races of all time.

COVID daydreams: La Père Auto, Ville d’Avray, and the finish line of the first Tour de France

Ce n’est pas le départ, c’est l’arrivée!

It’s always good to let your thoughts wander a bit.  Doing it while riding your bike is arguably the best possible time to do it, and cycling and daydreaming were pretty much made for each other.  But in these COVID Times, we don’t always get to ride as much as we like; we do our bit to stop the virus’ spread by staying at home, or staying close.  So I’m not riding at all, and have to grab daydreams when I can.  I have a favourite one, and when I’m waiting for the next Zoom meeting to start I jump across to it and build it in my head like my kids build their Minecraft worlds. My dreamscape is a wonderful place of counters and coffee machines and display fridges full of tasty food for sale and walls covered in cycling memorabilia and happy cyclists sitting at tables under trees in the shade eating hamburgers and drinking craft beer and happily talking crap about bikes.  My daydream got a huge shot in the arm last week with the discovery of some wonderful photos on the internet that have not only brought history and daydream together, but also given me a wonderful opportunity for mansplaining some cycling history. Which I am about to take full advantage of.

Interesting things I discovered biking around Paris #6: The Vel’ d’Hiv

Go kiwi. Great photo of the Velodrome d’Hiver in its heydey Copyright Getty Images.

It’s hard to believe that we’ve been back in Aotearoa New Zealand for nearly eight months now. Goes fast. But while it seems like a lifetime ago my phone and Facebook feed prompt me with those “three years ago today” posts that remind us that yes, we really did spend four-and-a-half years living in France. One of those reminders was a couple of photos that I’d taken with the intention of writing a blog post, which I’d intended as another of those part travelogue, part history lesson posts that I really enjoyed writing while we were there. But I’d found this one really tricky to write, because it intersected with one of the darkest times in France’s history, the holocaust, and France’s efforts to come to terms with those.

Interesting things I discovered biking around Paris #5: Parc Saint Cloud, the Siege of Paris, and the birthplace of cycling.

Paris is a great place to be a bike nerd. As well as being the terminus of the most famous and awesome bike race in the history of everything, the history of cycling and the history of Paris are two threads in the same cloth. Cycling was born in Paris and it’s history is there too, if you know where to look. The first ever road race left Paris in November 1869, just around the corner from where we used to live. That was the first city-to-city road race, but legend has it that the first actual cycle race was held in the grounds of the beautiful Parc Saint-Cloud, about a 30 min bike ride from the Arc de Triomphe, on the outskirts of Paris. That in itself would be enough to land the Parc Saint Cloud a place in my heart. But its history is a fascinating window into the city’s turbulent past.

Interesting things I’ve discovered biking around Paris #4: Ancient Rome!

Paris is chock full of history. It’s one of the greatest cities in the world, and for good reason. What’s a little bit surprising is that so much of what you see in Paris is both relatively recent, and relatively manufactured. Thanks to the fact that Paris has been built and rebuilt over the top of itself over the more than two thousand years of its habitation, including through the deliberate destruction and re-shaping of Paris in the last half of the 19^th Century, there’s actually very little here that can really trace its history back to Paris’ most ancient times.  Which is why it’s rather a nice surprise to be able to find a few traces of ancient Rome history. 

Interesting things I’ve discovered biking around Paris #2: Forests!

Paris is not known for its forests.  It’s usually all about the coffee on the terraces, the boulevards, boulangeries, and bistros.  It took me a while to figure out that within a short ride you can be out on quiet paved roads through beautiful forest that you can, if you time it right, have entirely to yourself.  But now that I know where they are are and how to get there, I’m scampering off my bike just as often as I can because that’s just about the most tranquil and pleasant riding you can get.

The UN declared June 3 as World Bicycle Day. Let’s celebrate!

I was completely unaware that on 12 April 2018 the 193 sovereign states that together make up the United Nations got together and decided to declare 3 June as World Bicycle Day.  Together, they invited the world to cooperate in observe and celebrate the Day and to promote awareness of it.  To which I respond “Mate.  No invitation needed.  You know I’m there already”.

Good Sorts of cycling: Karl Woolcott

Wherever you look these days there’s been a Covid-shaped hole kicked through the Gib-board of someone’s hopes and dreams. Pro-cycling is one of those things. And while in the general scheme of the global Covid crisis a lack of pro-cycling doesn’t matter all that much, for some people it matters a great deal and there are a lot of people who depend on cycling in one way or another for their livelihoods. One of those people is Karl Woolcott.  I met Karl when we were preparing for the WW1 centenary commemorations of the NZ Cyclist Corps, and I think it’s fair to say that not only is Karl a top chap (more on his Bikes in Schools charity work below…), but also that these days a lot of what he does is looking different to what he was doing only a few months ago.

With pro-cycling on hold is New Zealand ready for a new National Series? History says “Yes. Yes we are.”

Timaru to Christchurch, sometime in the early ’80s. Old School.  Credit: Tony Fuller, from Facebook.

During the Covid-19 lockdown back home a New Zealand cycling Facebook group that I’ve somehow managed to get let into has been sharing a fantastic array of photos and memories from New Zealand cycling from the last 50 years or so.  It’s a closed group so you’ll just have to trust me that it’s awesome.  People post old newpaper clippings, and Technicolor-hued photos that evoke That Scene at the start of A Sunday in Hell when Eddy Merckx rocks up to the start of Paris-Roubaix like some kind of cycling Elvis. It’s wonderful stuff, and it’s got me thinking.  For a while there we had a very lively national road racing scene, with events that could attract some of the best riders in the world to come and race in New Zealand.  Is it time to re-ignite a blast from the past, and kick-start an elite men’s and women’s National Racing Calendar in New Zealand?

A Tour de France this year? Unlikely. But I think it would be awesome, and here’s how it could work.

Don’t give up hope! It might still happen! (Photo by KEYSTONE, from here.)

What a difference a month makes.  It’s hard to even know what to say about all.  Covid-19 has pushed ‘pause’ on the world, turned everything upside down, and we’re all of us scrambling to get things back under control.  Here in Paris we’re in the gutter getting dropped of the back of the echelon that is our third week of lockdown.  It’s hard yakka, but there the earliest glimmers of optimism that the numbers here in France might be improving.  Based on where in the world people read this blog I’m pretty sure that all of you are in one form of lockdown or another, so you’re all getting used to it.  And wishing you were good at cutting your own hair, because we’re all starting to look a bit feral.