The Bike Butterfly: An Idea Whose Time Has Finally Come

Cycling: The New Golf? continued...

Not only does it appear that the 23 golf courses in the Oakville-Burlington-Milton triangle might be threatened by the rise of pelotons of aggressive carbon-mounted cyclists taking over the Niagara Escarpment, but Ontario also offers the Paris-Ancaster race (no, not THAT Paris) which is our own Paris-Roubaix, kind of.  Held on gravel roads, farm lanes and dirt trails, it promises no cobblestone but the chance to get dirty in Spring.  2012 will be the 19th edition.  Info can be found here.

And nothing says good racing action like a film!  Here is the 2011 race:

Return Ride on the Ruhr

With absolutely superb weather in Düsseldorf on Thursday and Friday, and with basically no mileage in my legs for 2012, it was clearly time to get out on the road again.  While I was away in Canada or doing other things, Tom and Rudiger had been putting in some training in the rolling hills of NRW and Tom volunteered to put together a reasonable route for my first ride of the Spring, and my first time on racing bike since January 1.  We would be travelling over some well-known roads but also there were a few surprises in store.  I had asked for around 60-70 kms, so naturally Tom gave me just over 80 instead.

The only time I can keep up to Rudiger and Tom is when I make them stop for a photo

 After our glorious few Spring days Saturday dawned grey and chilly of course.  I rode out around 8:45 feeling a bit chilled with shorts and a wind vest and armwarmers but after a few minutes of brisk cycling I felt warm enough.  The route was the usual one to Ratingen, where the weekend market was taking place.

Saturday morning in Ratingen

I found a side street to ride instead of the usual bone-jarring cobblestones of the pedestrian district which, besides cobbles, usually has lots of pedestrians on it and found myself the first to arrive at our usual meeting place, the Ratingen outpost of the Backwerk chain of bakeries.  It was 9:30.

Backwerk in Ratingen: Still Life with Tarmac

Soon enough both Tom and Rudiger arrived (both dressed a lot more warmly than me) and without our usual coffee/croissants we set off.  We were training!  The first little hill out of Ratingen went quite well for me, to my surprise.  We enjoyed the quiet roads and soon mastered the first little climb at Hösel and then headed north towards Essen-Kettwig and followed the Ruhr bike route.  There were quite a few other cyclists out and if the weather was not ideal at least it was calm.

To make it more challenging, Tom and Rudiger added a little climbing loop to their ride while I just kept on into Langenberg.  At 48 kms it was time for a coffee!  Unfortunately the bakery where we had gone before did not have any outdoor seating set up yet and had nothing indoors, so we wandered around a bit disconsolately until we asked a local about a cafe and were directed to a tiny bakery with an tiny coffee shop, Barista, across the hall.  As the slowest, I bought coffee for the group and it was really excellent.

Tom enjoys a fine cappuccino at Barista in Langenberg

Rudiger gets fortified for the last half of the ride

Soon it was back on the bikes, feeling fully caffeinated, which was good because Tom's devilish route included an impressive new hill 10 kms down the road.  After passing through Neviges we had a long, long steady climb to the highest point on the ride.  I was careful to ride inside my limits as I really did not want any cramping on my first big ride of the season and everything went well.

Soon we passed through Mettmann, one of NRW's less attractive towns, but then were on the excellent road that takes one through the Neandertal.  Soon enough we were in my neighbourhood and we split an enormous bottle of Soest Zwiebel Brauerei Weihnachtsbock beer to celebrate a ride well done.  84 kms and 800 m of climbing, and after the others went on I had a relaxed afternoon watching live coverage of the Milan-San Remo race, having finished my own La Primavera.

Cycling: it's the new golf!

Who would have thought this?  I grew up in Oakville, Ontario or, more precisely, Bronte, which was a village until incorporated into the bigger town in 1961.  It was always the poor end of wealthy Oakville but a good place for kids.  I enjoyed riding my bicycle in the surrounding countryside (there was a 100 acre field directly across the street from our house!) and on longer rides with my friend Karl we never ever saw anyone else cycling.  In fact, after the brief bike boom in the 1970s almost nobody rode a racing bike in our area.

Today Bronte features a high-end bike shop, masses of cyclists on expensive equipment out every sunny day and the provincial park, which is just north of where I lived and is now surrounded by housing developments, is the setting for an annual bike race, the Tour de/of Bronte.  This year's series of races will be on April 28/29.

Is cycling the new golf?  With 23 (!) golf courses in the Oakville/Burlington/Milton area, there is still some way to go but we can live in hope.

L'Eroica 2012 Sold Out!

Oh, no: so much for one of my planned rides for 2012.  L'Eroica's 800 places for foreign riders under 60 are all gone on the first day of registration.  They were gone by noon on March 1, European time, so no chance for me here in Canada this week.  At least there are lots of other places to ride so perhaps we will organize a non-official Classic ride somewhere.

It’s Hammer (and Sickle) Time!

Germany has not been considered a great cycling nation on par with France, or Belgium or Italy.  Sure, a German, the quite sturdy Josef Fischer, won the first Paris-Roubaix race in 1896, and more than a few Tour de France stages (and one overall) have been won by Germans but probably the country’s greatest two-wheeled tradition is on the track and Berlin continues to host the oldest Six Day Races in the world, which began in 1906.  There were large-scale manufacturers of bicycles (Opel comes to mind) but as Germany industrialized and produced the first electric trains and (arguably) the first practical automobiles, attention turned elsewhere and the individual victories recorded by German cyclists were not the stuff of legends.  Even now, the German Sports Hall of Fame only includes two cyclists.

Gustav-Adolf “Täve” Schur at speed

The division of Germany post-1945 meant that those behind the Iron Curtain would end up with races and heroes and stories quite different from those in the West.  A colleague in Berlin sent me an article about a museum near the capital that covered some aspects of this and on a recent weekend I persuaded relatives to take me to the Radsport-Museum Wünsdorf.

Around 30 kms south of Berlin’s shortly-to-be-inaugurated international airport in the state of Brandenburg is the small and sleepy town of Zossen, which was consolidated from a number of villages in 2003. It was not always so sleepy as Zossen, and particularly the area that is Wünsdorf, was once the command centre for the Wehrmacht, with massive bunkers and its most modern telephone communications system.  After World War II’s end the town housed up to 70,000 Soviet troops, who departed in 1994, leaving a bit of a shambles behind.  Subsequently efforts have been made to renovate the old military buildings and many have been turned into very attractive housing developments.

The museum is on the top floor

With the departure of the troops and nothing much in the way of industry or agriculture, Zossen-Wünsdorf looked to new ways to survive.  It offers tours of sections of the huge old bunkers, along with a great number of used books.  It is categorized as a “Bücherstadt,” or “Book City,” such as the much more famous Hay-on-Wye in England, but it also refers to itself as a “Bunkerstadt.”  There is what appears to be an unsuccessful restaurant seeking new management and a small art gallery and village centre, along with some souvenirs.  Above the art gallery there is a sign made from an old bicycle fork and we figured this was where the bike museum should be.

Billboard outside the museum

The bike racing museum is above the gallery

We had called first to make sure that the museum would be open on this ice-cold Friday and the man answering the telephone had seemed astonished that we wanted to visit.  He confirmed that it was in fact open and also helpfully warned us about a police speed trap on the outskirts of town.  He told us to come into the bookstore to get our tickets.  We found the store without much effort, passing a big sign on the road advertising the Wünsdorf Radmuseum, and met our interlocutor.  He still seemed nonplussed that we were there to see the museum but he sold us our 3 Euro tickets.  I bought some postcards but we had to invent a price as he had no clue.  But he happily enough took us back outside to the museum and unlocked the door for us, telling us we could also tour the art gallery if we wanted.  He also mentioned that the museum, which is on the top floor of a long building, was not heated and in summer had no air-conditioning.  He reflected with amusement on the seasonal sufferings of visitors and then left us to ourselves.

Walking up the stairs, we went by a mid-1930s Derny track pacing bicycle and then past a very nice green Wanderer racing bicycle that was used by Bruno Roth to win the German pro road championships in 1935.  The bike was displayed with his jersey and a nice photo, showing him in a natty eagle-and-swastika (!) outfit.

Bruno Roth's Wanderer

Moving into the museum proper, there was a nod to bicyle pre-history, with a copy of Baron von Drais’ “Laufmaschine” and an impressively crude high-wheeler.  Then there is a stand with two Diamant road bikes from 1924 and 1940.  Diamant (“Diamond”), founded in 1885, has produced bicycles since 1895 near Chemnitz, Saxony, and after various changes in ownership (including that of Opel from1928-1930) and conflicts the firm ended up as the predominant manufacturer of bicycles in the DDR.  While in the 1950s its products were considered state-of-the-art, it gradually stagnated and by the end of the Soviet era it had been combined with another bicycle company, Texima, under the control of a knitting machine collective.  The company was privatized and since 2003 has been part of the Trek group and continues to build non-racing bicycles in Chemnitz in what is probably Germany’s oldest existing bicycle factory.

Diamant Road Bikes (1924, rear and 1940, front)

The organization of the Wünsdorf collection is not completely clear but seems divided into discrete theme areas.  The first part really seemed to cover East German (DDR) international success and there is a big emphasis on the exploits of Gustav-Adolf “Täve” Schur, nine times DDR Athlete of the Year and, as part of the single German national Olympic teams of the era, winner of a bronze and a silver medal in 1956 in Melbourne and 1960 in Rome in team events.  Six times national DDR champion, he was World Amateur Champion on the road in 1958 and 1959.  His green Diamant road bike is on display with supporting documentation.  “Täve” was the DDR’s most popular athlete and became a member of the Communist legislature after his retirement from racing and after the reunification of Germany in 1990 continued to serve as a parliamentarian in the Bundestag, still representing the East German Communist successor-party.  He is now 80 and apparently supports, in addition to the Wünsdorf museum, another museum dedicated to the famous Peace Race in Sachsen-Anhalt.  He is not without controversy in German sports circles as he has consistently denied institutionalized doping by DDR atheletes, contrary to statements by other East German atheletes.

Schur's Diamant

Close-Up of Schur's Diamant

The Peace Race, known as the Course de la Paix or, to the German, the Internationale Friedensfahrt, was the Soviet Bloc’s answer to the Tour de France and clearly the most important race in Mitteleuropa.  Beginning in 1948 on a route from Warsaw to Prague, it included East Germany in its itinerary in 1952.  One of the highlights that year and in subsequent editions was the inclusion of a brutal little climb in Meerane, a small town in Saxony.  The “Steiler Wand” (“Steep Wall”), as it came to be known, is 342 m in length and averages an 11 per cent gradient.



The race (won by the above-noted Täve Schur in 1955 and 1955) was an event for “amateurs” which continued in that form until 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Bloc.  Its subsequent history was a gradual decline as East Germany, Russian and other cyclists migrated to Western professional teams and competed in the Tour and other big name races and the final edition, after an uninterrupted 57 year run, was in 2005.

Peace Race Display

Wreath for the winner of the 1960 Peace Race: note the DDR "Hammer-and-Compass" insignia

Many winners of the Peace Tour went on to impressive careers: 5-time winner Steffen Wesemann, for example, was a force in the Spring Classics  won the Tour of Flanders in 2004 and Jens Voigt won in 1994.  The race is marked with a display case of medals and clippings at the museum as well as the pristine blue Colnago Master ridden in 1983 to an unexpected victory by Falk Boden.  The race was also a proving ground for younger riders.  Winners of the junior edition of the Peace Race include Fabian Cancellara, Denis Menchov, Roman Kreuziger and Peter Velits.  I cannot resist adding that a British team, made up of semi-pros and real amateurs, won the Peace Race in 1952, with Scotsman Ian Steel taking the overall, undoubtedly to the shock and astonishment of the other “amateurs.” 

A section of the museum is dedicated to the four man team that won the silver medal at the 1960 Olympics in the Four Man Pursuit event on the track.  Althought the Italians were supreme in cycling at the games that year, the East Germans (competing as part of the combined East-West team) won silver on the track and on the road (Täve Schur leading his four man time trial team); as well, a West German, Dieter Gieseler, won silver in the 1 km track event.  In addition to the various Olympic certificates, jerseys and photos, the museum also has an impressive silver trophy awared to the pursuit team when the riders set a world record of 4:32.8 at the Vigorelli Velodrome on October 26, 1959.

1959 Trophy for World Record in Team Pursuit

Positioned next to Falk Boden’s Colnago is an evil-looking all-carbon FES time trial bike which was ridden by Jan Schur (son of the inevitable Täve) to a gold medal in the 100 km team time trial at the Seoul Olympics in 1988, bringing the family haul of medals to a complete set of gold, silver and bronze.  FES, which is an abbreviation of the less-snappy Institut für Forschung und Entwicklung von Sportgeräten, was established in 1962 in Berlin by the East Germans as a research and development institute dedicated to sports equipment.  It continues to operate today financed by the Federal Republic.  It began working on bicycle technology in the 1970s and in 1984 produced its first carbon disc wheel.  FES is involved in a wide range of sports projects, including speed skating and kayaking.

1983 Colnago Master (left) and 1988 FES Time Trial Bicycle (right)

The museum is worth going through slowly as there are lots of interesting artifacts, including plenty of signed jerseys from German stars.  Here is one from Jen Voigt; another from Erik Zabel.  But some of the stories are a bit more obscure.  I was very much taken with a lovely silver Rickert track bike hanging from the ceiling.  It had a big sign on it and I was delighted to learn of the bike’s Canadian connection:

Rickert Track Bike

Heinz Dieter Reinhold lived in West Berlin until immigrating to Canada in the mid-1960s.  Shortly thereafter, legendary Dortmund framebuilder Hugo Rickert constructed this track bike for him and it was brought to Canada by Gussi Kilian, son of Germany’s famous track star Gustav Kilian, who was then retired but serving as a coach on the West German national team.  Reinhold competed in seventeen Six Day Races, placing well although never enjoying outright victory, and rode in races in Montreal, Quebec, Toronto and Delhi, Ontario before retiring from racing in 1973.  He returned to Germany and the Rickert continued to see service as Reinhold was a trainer at the track in Kaarst-Büttgen, near Düsseldorf. 

Bernd Drogan's World Championship Time Trial Bike

In addition to Reinhold’s Rickert, the museum displays two more track bikes, representing the outstanding success of DDR athletes.  Both are Diamant/Textima bikes and one was ridden by Bernd Drogan to gold in the 1979 World Championships at Valkenburg in the 100 km team time trial, and the other one of the team bikes used by 5-time track World Champion Detlef Macha in the same era.

1989 Rund um Berlin winner's certificate: 210 kms in 5:15:27

Rund um Berlin jerseys

The final part of the museum tells the story of Rund um Berlin, the oldest German road race with its start in 1896 and, sadly, extinct since 2008.  The race had national signficance primarily and was only won three times by non-Germans but the winners’ ranks include, yes, Täve Schur, Erik Zabel, Jan Ullrich, Olaf Ludwig and Robert Bartko, as well Wolfgang Lötzsch, who was probably the DDR’s finest cyclist in the 1980s but denied opportunity to compete in big races for his refusal to join the Party and contacts with the West.

Rund um Berlin Trophy

Rund um Berlin ran uninterrupted, with the exception of the war years, from 1896 until 2000 and then a final time in 2008.  The museum has posters, jerseys, photos, certficates and medals spread out over the entire time of the race.  Included is a trophy that is apparently modeled on Lady Godiva, probably the only nude-woman-with-long-hair-on-a-horse trophy ever awarded for cycle sport.  The first race originated in Zossen and made its way in a big loop completely around Berlin without ever actually entering the capital.  Recently, a professional road race has returned to Berlin with the expansion of the Velothon gran fondo in May to include a pro race managed by Erik Zabel and won in 2011 by Marcel Kittel in its first edition.

German national team jerseys

The museum also features memorabilia from cycling clubs in the region, which have a long and impressive history as well.

The museum was opened in September 2009 and I believe that much of the collection originates with its curator, sport journalist Werner Ruttkus.  He has written a book about the numerous cycling World Championships that have taken place in Germany, as well as a book about the history of the BDR, the national cycling organization.  As a personal collection, the museum is impressive but visitors should not expect much interpretive presentation.  The difficulty of any bicycle-focused museum is the problem in conveying the speed and excitement of racing in a static display of artifacts.  Some big-screen videos of historic races or interviews with stars would help but I suspect the museum is not really equipped to invest in this kind of thing.  Wünsdorf is not an obvious place for a cycling museum (Herr Ruttkus lives there) and the surrounding countryside is not necessarily going to bring in many passing cyclists.  Inexpensive but modern media has not been used to promote the Radsportmuseum and it is not easily found on any lists of bicycle museums in Germany or even on search engines.There are questions about the continuing operation of the museum given the few visitors.

As a person with a good knowledge of the history of bike culture and races in Western Europe, I found the Radsport-Museum Wünsdorf to be well worth the visit and very informative about chapters in European racing that were new to me.  See it if you can!

Radsport-Museum Wünsdorf
Gutenbergstraße 1
115806 Zossen/OT Wünsdorf
Germany
Tel: +49 (0) 33702) 9600
Website: http://wuensdorf.radsportmuseum.de/
(Please note that the Website and all exhibits in the Museum are in German only)

Opening hours:
Monday to Friday: 10:00-18:00
Saturday and Sunday: 11:00-17:00
(Tickets are 3 Euros each and can be bought at Haus-Oskar, across the street)

Happy New Year! Resolutons for 2012

I suddenly find myself here in 2012, regrettably unable to train due to a sinus infection for which I have been given antibiotics and orders to lie down a lot. This is clearly interfering with my ambitious training plans for the coming season, particularly sad as here in Düsseldorf we have not had anything much like a winter. There was heavy rain in December but the start of the year is quite pleasant so I hope to do something out on the road soon!

Every year I set out my resolutions for the coming year out here in public where the world can see them. My planned efforts for 2011 did not work out so well.

To recap:

1. Weight down to 78 kg by mid-June 2011. Not remotely close, so this will have to be a recycled resolution for 2012.

2. Complete my high-intensity training (HIT) program on the home trainer. Nope, didn't happen. Try again.

3. Do more writing on the blog. 61 postings for the year doesn't seem bad at all, although I still need to finish writing up the 2010 Lost Boys Tour of Europe before starting to post the 2011 one from June! Still, it is my lowest total since setting up the blog in 2007. Must Do Better.

4. Organized rides. The list is very short due mainly to the horrible weather we had this past summer. I did not make those chosen for Amstel Gold but I did ride the dreadful Bonn-Eupin-Bonn ride, along with the Berlin Velothon, several RTFs and l'Eroica. The Lost Boys trip this year did take place but the distances were short, made up for by the steepness of the roads. And I did several rides with the Klassikerausfahrtgruppe of old people on old bikes.

5. In touring rides, there were a few successes, including the Erft, the Ahr and the Sieg bike routes, the Sauerland Radring, three days of great riding in the Ardennes with my friends from Cycling Camp San Diego and three days of Münsterland riding to check out castles. Nothing multi-day, however.

Although I was pleased that the world was not destroyed on May 21, I regret that I still have made no serious effort to learn Italian.

So here we go again: Resolutions for the Coming Year

1. Get serious about training, and get the weight down fast. 78 kgs. Now.

2. Organized rides:

6 Hour Charity Spinning Event, Netherlands (January 28)

Amstel Gold Sportif 150 km (April 14)

Lake Garda (1), including watching Giro d'Italia team time trial (May)

Lake Garda (2) Pezcycling Camp with climbs up the Gavia and Stelvio (May-June)

Gran Fondo Damiano Cunego, Verona, Italy 85 km (June 3)

Paris-Roubaix Sportif, France 210 km (June 10)

2012 Lost Boys Tour of Europe: Corsica, France (June-July)

L'Eroica, Chianti, Italy (September)

3. Touring

Roman routes, including the Xanten-Paderborn route and beginning the Limesstrasse
Pfalzer-Wald weekend
Bad Driburg weekend
Critical Dirt Revisited

4. Do something about learning Italian.

So, let's see how this shapes up over the coming 12 months!

And since I cannot do anything bike-related except cleaning and polishing at the moment, I have actually been watching television. Here is a clip from a rather silly 1968 French comedy, "Les Cracks," starring a once-famous comedian named Bouvril. He portrays an inventor of a new and improved brake system who ends up in a bicycle race going from Paris to San Remo around 1900. A review of entire movie will follow on the blog, sooner or later!

North Rain Westphalia: New Year's Eve Challenge Ride

Bernd and Nick: 2/3 of the mad cyclists out in the rain on New Year's Eve

What could be better than to take advantage of the lack of snow in North Rhein Westphalia and try for one more long ride in the Bergische Land, east of Bonn? It seemed like an excellent idea at the time and my friend Nick in Neunkirchen-Seelscheid and Bernd, who accompanied me at l'Eroica, were game.

Of course, waking up to pouring rain this morning was not what I had planned but I still wanted to manage one more ride. I had rented a car and loading it up with the bike and gear (including my spare wind trainer in case we would end up doing a workout at Nick's place) I set off at 9 am. The drive along the A3 was okay as there were none of the usual traffic jams but it continued to rain.

By 10 I had arrived at Nick's but we elected to wait a bit in the hope the rain would lessen. I thought I had packed everything but as always seems to be the case in the world of hobby cyclists I had forgotten something important but luckily Nick had a spare helmet.

We decided to leave after 11 and it was still pretty cold. The first road was quite busy with traffic but I was surprised to see another cyclist out. This turned out to be Bernd on his recently-acquired Pinarello. I had my trusty Basso rain bike and Nick, who clearly needs more bikes, had brought his titanium Serotta.

At 5 kms in our first climb began at Schöneshof and in the next 5 kms we gained 200 m. I felt pretty good as the rain was not too heavy and in spite of the Basso being rather over-geared for climbing I was going well. I even stopped to take a photo of Nick and Bernd climbing up on the quiet road we were travelling.


Another steepish climb and the rain began to fall more heavily and during the subsequent long descent we all got very very wet and cold. It was at most 4C and with the windchill it felt like the last day of the year. We all looked forward to a coffee in our favourite cafe in Eitdorf, which Bernd said would be open until 2 pm today.

We reached Eitorf at 25 kms into our trip and went into the crowded cafe for some coffee. We were soaking wet and left big puddles on the floor. We had had no incidents in the ride but at this point Bernd lost his footing on the tile floor as his cleats slipped while he was sitting down and he fell over, taking two chairs with him and bringing even more attention to us. Nothing hurt but pride, we enjoyed excellent warming coffees courtesy of Nick. We also noted that our ostensibly "waterproof" socks were not in the least so.

Bravely setting out again, we found that the temperature had dropped even more and it was a wet, cold group that made a quick dash along the main road out of Eitorf. Ahead, at Km 27, was something to warm us up. The road to Höhn climbs one of my favourite hills in the Bergische Land, gaining 130 m in less than 3 kms. It is a great read, barely travelled, and I dug in hard to get to the top, followed directly by Bernd, with Nick a bit behind.

Bernd, who was suffering from a cold, soon left us at Schreckenberg to go home, and Nick and I had two more climbs to return to his place. After the first of these, a descent brought us back to Schöneshof and the bridge over the swollen Sieg River. NRW had the wettest November in history but it seems like December must be one of the wettest as it has rained most of the month. Nick said that the river had been quite low, and the tributaries completely dry, but at the bridge the river had flooded its banks.

The last climb was a marvellous quiet little road that took us back towards Neunkirchen-Seelscheid but I was getting very cold and a bit tired and had to stop for a Clif Bar. The last few kilometers back were enough for me to end the day.

I had a very welcome hot shower (although the warm water really made my frozen feet ache!) and Nick kindly revived me with some excellent tomato soup before I packed up my soaking wet gear and hosed-down Basso and got back into the Mercedes-Benz for the drive back to Düsseldorf, again in pouring rain. Along the way, I saw the odd outburst of fireworks in the darkness as people began to celebrate the end of the year and the start of 2012.

Although I cannot recall ever having willing begun a ride in pouring rain, having good friends to share the adventure with makes it possible to enjoy even the most trying conditions. It was also the first time I have ever ridden anywhere on New Year's Eve, so 51 kms and over 800 m of climbing was something of an accomplishment.



To all those reading my blog I hope you had a good year of accomplishments and wish you many more in 2012!

My Latest Book Review! The Peloton

The Peloton is a beautiful and elegant book from the folks at Rouleur featuring the superb portraits of pro cyclists by Berlin photographer Tim Kölln, who spent five years on the project. Capturing the riders at that moment directly after a race, the photos display a wide range of emotions. The one of Rolf Aldag (above) is one of my favourites: the cyclist-as-boxer.

My review can be found at Pezcyclingnews.com here.

And people laugh at my bicycle storage...

A couple in Portland, Oregon, have had a $1.5 million custom house built that features fine views of the city but, more importantly, a separate structure for their 22 bicycles, including a fitness area and a sauna. She is a pro racer and he rides as an amateur.

"They ended up spending over a million dollars building a dramatic three-story wood-and-glass contemporary with a roof deck far above neighboring roofs, giving them a 360-degree view of the city. A separate 600-square-foot "garage" houses their 22 bikes plus many other extras a bike enthusiast might want, from a hot-water washing station for muddy bikes to a sauna, fitness room and fix-it station."

If you look at the slide show in the accompanying article here you can see the bike room which, frankly, looks a bit crowded to me. I would envision something involving a podium for the Colnago Mexico (under a spotlight) and some space to walk around and admire the other bicycles. But it is good to see priorities set properly.