Beauty and the Bike
Darlington Media Group
55 min, In English and German
DVD (PAL format only) available from the Beauty and the Bike website for £14 plus shipping.
Overall Impressions: 4.5/5

The new documentary Beauty and the Bike comes at a fortuitous time. There has been a lot of discussion within the bike industry and within transportation policy lately about how the role of women in cycling is a critical part of creating wide spread adoption of the bicycle for everyday transportation. In countries with significant bike usage, there is a correlation between the number of women cycling and how widespread cycling is adopted within the culture. The current theory goes that if we can get more women riding and get the biking gender split close to 50-50 (it’s currently 66% male in the U.S.) we’ll see an accelerated shift to more and more of the population living their life on two wheels. Since women are still the primary errand runners in most households, their choice of biking instead of driving to the grocery store, picking up kids, etc will have an even larger impact on how cycling is perceived and how many cars there are on the road.

Beauty and the Bike follows a group of teenage women from Darlington, England and their German counterparts in bike friendly Bremen to explore why so few English girls ride bikes beyond childhood. In discussions about urban cycling, it’s easy as Americans to fixate on cycling meccas like Amsterdam and Copenhagen and assume the rest of Europe is closer to these cities on the alternative transportation spectrum than American suburban sprawl. In fact when I bring up European transportation innovations as a possibility here, I’m often met with the argument that what works in Europe won’t work here because Europe is different. It’s as if we think Europeans are a different species and do not react to the same stimuli as genus Americanus.

As we’ve seen recently in Hungary, the Europeans can cling to car culture and fight infrastructure for bicycles just as well as we can. While England has a more developed rail system than much of the U.S., much of the country is very car focused with suburban development the norm (albeit on smaller lots.) The film begins by showing how car dominant the Darlington streets are and interviewing the women on why they do not bike.

Early focus of the film is on the equipment. The participants mention the fact that the sports bikes that are offered in the market do not allow you to reasonably wear fashionable clothes. Peer pressure also looms with many girls saying since none of their friends bike and biking is seen as odd, they do not feel encouraged to ride.

The Darlington project attempts to address these concerns by providing classically attractive and functional Dutch bikes and using the test group as the social network to provide support for the new two wheeled lifestyle. Watching these young women joyfully riding their uprights in dresses and heals is one of the best parts of this film and is inspiring to think about what an empowering tool the bike could be.

With their Dutch bikes chosen, the women head to Bremen, Germany, a city where 25% of the population commutes by bike. They join German counterparts to ride the city and are exposed to bike paths and other infrastructure throughout the city that invite all users to get on bikes. They also see a culture where motorists give deference on the road to vulnerable users like cyclists and pedestrians.

After an enjoyable time riding in Bremen, the Darlington ladies are confronted with the automobile dominated roads of their town upon returning home. Some are yelled at by passing motorists to get off the road while others are made fun of by their peers. Two ride to school and find no bike racks, being forced to lock up to a street lamp. Several of the women stop riding. Having the right bike is not enough. The social support of their fellow participants helps a few women get back on the bike but clearly the lack of even a bike lane on the road provides a real barrier to continued cycling.

Beauty and the Bike focuses much screen time to arguing for better bike facilities as the key to getting more people on two wheels. While I am in agreement with this sentiment, I think this film is far more interesting because it deals with the social pressures and interactions that cause individuals to make certain decisions. Alternative transportation policy usually focuses on big infrastructure improvements like bike paths and rail lines and often leaves out consideration of the interaction of persons with the improvement. Yes, we need great projects, but we also need to think about the psychology of asking people to dramatically change their lifestyle. How can the broader public visualize the bicycle as a viable alternative? We must make biking as attractive as possible while providing the social support system to encourage continued use. Most people do not want to be the only person biking or put on the costume (helmet, reflective clothing, clip-in shoes) that identify them as different from their friends. I believe addressing these issues will be as critical as building bike paths in getting more people on bikes.

Beauty and the Bike does an excellent job of discussing the barriers to entry for cycling in the majority culture in a positive, uplifting narrative. The filmmakers have provided a film that will not only spark conversation but make you want to go out and make its vision a reality. This film is highly recommended viewing for anyone who has, is, or ever will ride a bike.

(NOTE: The current DVD offered of Beauty and the Bike offered by The Darlington Media Group is PAL formatted. This European video format is not playable on most, NTSC only U.S. DVD players. It is however, playable via the DVD media players on most computers.)

The romance of Conrad and Steve, while compelling in the web series, is laborious to watch in the feature film. Image courtesy of The Bicyclists.

The Bicyclists
Craftmaster Independent
DVD available online at The Bicyclists website
Overall impression: 3/10

Last night, Portland filmmaker Carl Jameson was kind enough to provide a free showing of The Bicyclists, his feature length film about characters he developed in his online series, The Bicyclist. Both the web series and the film focus on Conrad, a Wisconsin transplant to Portland, and his eventual love interest, Steve, an unfortunately named Portlander who has ambitions to start her own fashion line. All the main characters are cyclists centered around a local bike shop with some good ribbing at the expense of many cycling archetypes. The online episodes are funny and quick paced and develop flawed, sympathetic characters that you enjoy following. Those looking for a similarly compelling viewing will be sorely disappointed in this adaptation to the big screen.

First, filmmaker Jameson jettisoned much of the humor of the serial in favor of a straight up romance story. This is unfortunate as not only does the humor help move the story along, but also helps us develop a relationship with the characters. Characters like surly bike mechanic Zach were strangely kept on a leash and the use of sex tension among the characters is largely absent. Using the tried and true formula of animosity turn romance used from Jane Austen to Cheers, the web version waits 21 episodes until Steve’s initial disdain turns to enamor with Conrad. Instead after a relatively short meeting, we delve straight into the sometimes hot, sometimes cold romantic relationship of Conrad and Steve. This quickness to the punch meant I cared little for the overly dramatic angst of the couple although the actors had a good on-screen chemistry.

Also, the dialogue was stilted and cliched including such eye rollers as “Good thing we didn’t fall in love otherwise this would be awkward.” In the web series, Conrad is a lovable dolt, straight off the farm in the big city so some of this cheesy dialogue is ironic as he tries too hard to get the girl. In the film, Conrad comes off as much more sophisticated, and the lines are played straight to unfortunate presentation.

Add to this the laborious pace of the first half of the film, and you have a movie that is difficult to watch. The second half moves at a better clip with a sudden dark turn and the realization that some of the characters are not who you think they are earlier in the movie. This C change salvages an otherwise forgettable film. If you haven’t seen The Bicyclist web series, skip this movie and go straight to the online episodes. If are a fan of the serial, skip this movie to avoid the inevitable disappointment. I really wanted to like this film, but the inclusion of bicycle culture is not enough to carry it, even to this cyclist.

Well, not a day had passed when I came across the trailer for this new film “Beauty and the Bike.” The documentary interviews several young British women about why they don’t cycle and exposes them to the cycling infrastructure and great bikes of Continental Europe. Britain embraced car culture more than any other Western European country after WW II, so this film serves as an interesting reference for our country’s struggles to make space for people over cars. The fight to just get bike lanes painted in this movies sounds oh too familiar. The film appears to anecdotally support the ideas behind the research: women want to feel safe, find biking convenient, and ride a bike that is stylish and allows them to wear whatever they want.

Their discoveries of the ease and simplicity of travel by bike appears to reawaken the joy of cycling. More on the film here which is scheduled to premier in England on December 9. We are being sent a copy and hope to have a review in the coming weeks.

Race Across the Sky, Leadville Trail 100

On the weekend of the Texas Custom Bicycle Show, I joined fellow builder Brad Cason of KirkLee Bikes for a viewing of Race Across the Sky. Brad, who did the Leadville Trail 100, is in a half second shot of racers climbing the Columbine half way through the race. This was the highlight of an otherwise average, though well produced, movie.

Race Across the Sky covers the 2009 Leadville Trail 100 Mountain Bike race in Leadville, CO. The race was started in 1983 as a off road running marathon by Leadvillite Kenneth Chlouber as a way to bring economic prosperity to the town when the local mines closed. The mountain bike race was added in 1994. Covering a brutal out and back off road course with over 14,000 feet of climbing at over 10,000 feet above sea level, the race quickly became one of the premier endurance mountain bike events in the world. The race’s profile was raised higher last year when Lance Armstrong entered the race and finished second to six time Leadville winner Dave Wiens. Armstrong credits this race to re-igniting his competitive drive and drawing him back to the Tour de France.

Race Across the Sky documents the 2009 race where Armstrong and Wiens went head to head again, and this time Armstrong emerged the victor. First, I will say I am impressed that Citizens Pictures was able to pull so well made a picture together in less than three months. The race occurs in mid August, and there is no hint of a rushed together movie.

This short time period does however limit the pathos of the film making it more very well made race coverage than any deeper examination of the race’s effect on the town or racers themselves. We get play by play narration from regular race commentator Bob Roll, who unfortunately is missing any of his normal humor and over the top literary devices. We don’t get any real behind the scenes footage of Armstrong or Wiens with any of the suffering or challenge. These men are presented as super human with little sense of what makes them tick.

There is the human interest story of a racer who was hit by a car last year, was in traction, and made it back to race this year. This story is an attempt to add a human face to the story but felt a little trite in presentation. The most emotionally engaging part of the movie occurs at the feed station about 1/3rd through the race. There is a time cut off for racers entering the feed zone that ends a lot of racers’ day. Seeing all the people who worked so hard to train and qualify rolling in and having their race number taken away was heart breaking and gives you great respect for both the course and the racers.

In the end, this is an above average race film but only average documentary. The filmmakers missed opportunities to delve into what drives the racers or its relation to the human condition. The analogy of the race to overcoming overwhelming odds seems obvious but is missed. This is probably due to its focus on Armstrong who is notoriously guarded with his public image. While the general viewer will probably not enjoy this film, those who mountain bike or want to someday race the Leadville 100 will likely find the film enjoyable and inspiring.

My experience:

Quality: 3/5

Utility: 4/5

Overall: 4/5

Availability:  Various Global Ride DVDs are available online at their website for $30 each or $75 for the 3 DVD set. 

Summary:

With cold weather approaching (or non-stop 100+ degree days), many cyclist turn indoors riding on a trainer to keep their fitness. After about ten minutes, even the most disciplined rider will be crawling the walls with boredom. Global Ride attempts to make the trainer more bearable with training videos taken from the riders perspective in scenic locations throughout the world. This virtual reality is a good, reasonably priced alternative to the CompuTrainer system but does require you know a bit about training zones to get the most out of it.

Quality and Utility

Global Ride has come up with a clever way to help people train on indoor trainers. They’ve gone to exotic locations around the world and filmed various courses from the rider’s perspective. This creates a sort of virtual reality for the rider imitating a real training ride. Each DVD has a 45 minute training session with 5 minute warm up and cool down montages of pictures from the film locations. Once the training session begins, it is a essentially a first person shot of the road occasional cutaways to a rider on the course.

In the session setup menu, you can choose to turn on/off their new age techno music and choose various coaches to provide encouragement as you are riding. One kind of funny thing in the coach selection is selecting by language. Your choice is Italian, American or Australian. This reminded me Clark Griswald needing his pocket translator in England! Included in each DVD is a bonus video of either weight training, pilates, or yoga.

Quality and Utility

First off, let me say I truly hate riding on the trainer. It has all of the down sides of riding with few of the positives and is mind numbingly boring. I will brave just about any weather element to avoid the trainer. I was a little skeptical of the Global Ride DVDs at first, but they really did work for me. Although the film quality is basic low level camcorder, the shots are done professionally and 10-15 minutes went by without really noticing it. Usually, I am a clock watcher on the trainer counting down the minutes until the workout is over.

I tried the American and the Australian coach voice overs. Being a fan of Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwin, I ended up preferring the Commonwealth accent of the Australian coach. While the coaches did help keep me focused on the ride, I do think you need to understand training and heart rate zones to get the most out of the workouts. The coaches say things like “You should be at about 85-90% right now.” I’ve done a lot of zone training, so I knew immediately what that meant, but others might not. Those just getting into training or who have never trained with zones should talk to a coach or get a book like Joe Friel’s Cycling Training Bible.

I found the course selection made a difference in how well I could forget I was on a trainer. The Maui Rollers worked well for me. It was essentially a series of hill climbs followed by downhills where you soft pedal (no coasting!) This was an interval training where you shifted up on the uphills and back down on the flats and downhills. I preferred this much more to the other two sessions Oceanside Ride and StrenDurance in Hawaii. These two focus on strength endurance, basically riding at a high steady tempo for an extended period and had more straight roads, less hills. These are necessary workouts, especially for the time trialist or triathlete, but I found that I started getting the trainer stir crazies after a while on these. The Maui Rollers kept me guessing a bit (will the hill end around the bend?) and thus engaged my brain more.

My biggest gripe with the DVDs were the cut aways backward to a rider on the course sometime for over 30 seconds. Global Ride may be doing this to mix it up a bit or to cover rough video cut transitions, but I found them extremely irritating and distracting. When I’m on an actually ride, I don’t turn around and look at the guy behind me for an extended period of time especially not in the middle of a hard climb. I found these cut aways destroyed the illusion and broke my rhythm. I’d just assume they get rid of these, or if totally necessary limit them to no more than 10 seconds.

Final Thoughts

The Global Ride DVDs are a great way to mix things up when you are on the trainer. Those challenged by the weather, whether winter or more liking in Austin mid-summer, will find these a good way to make it through. Those with children who don’t have time to get out of the house may be interested in these as well. I’m not sure Global Ride is going to get me to ride the trainer often, but when I do, I’ll definitely be reaching for one of these DVDs.

Official Site: bicycledreamsmovie.com

Overall Impression: 9/10

“The Race Across America is an epic, 3000-mile bicycle race from the Pacific to the Atlantic. First held in 1982, RAAM is considered the most challenging sporting event in the world. Top riders finish in under 10 days, riding over 300 miles per day and sleeping only a few hours per night. Amid the sleepless grind, riders must endure the searing heat of the Mojave Desert, the agonizing climbs and descents of the Rockies, the driving winds of the Great Plains, and the twisting switchbacks of the Appalachians before the final sprint to the finish line in Atlantic City. With little prize money at stake, the fundamental goal of the race is simply to finish, a challenge half of all riders fail to meet.”

- Description of the RAAM from the Bicycle Dreams website

We had the privilege of receiving a copy of Race Across America documentary Bicycle Dreams from publisher Auerfilms recently. Bicycle Dreams contains coverage of the 2005 race, honing in on a few select personalities as a display of diversity in RAAM participants. Edited and presented in a format familiar to watchers of modern documentary films, Bicycle Dreams is easy to follow and enjoyable to watch. My wife, a complete non-bike-geek, appreciated the movie quite a bit. Beautiful landscape shots really show us the land RAAM racers are traveling through along each step of the way. Filmmaker Stephen Auerbach has done an excellent job with Bicycle Dreams.

Bicycle Dreams excels at giving the viewer an up close and personal look at RAAM racers – their personalities, motivation for attempting something so insane, along with insights from families and support crews as each mile inches along taking the riders closer to the finish in Atlantic City, New Jersey – or a failure somewhere along the way. And indeed, merely finishing at all is enough accomplishment for most participants.

That is the central crux of Bicycle Dreams – the RAAM is so physically and mentally difficult, even life-threatening, why do it at all? Auerbach attempts to explain this in his interviews with the cyclists themselves, for the most part. Each has their own motivations for racing: desire for sponsorships, the personal challenge of testing one’s true limits, to raise awareness for pet causes like cancer or AIDS. The financial troubles some of the participants go through in order to finance their RAAM trip are truly disturbing, in some cases – whether it is enduring less-than-ideal family living conditions or physical conditions that would normally exclude even the thought of participation for most people. One RAAM cyclist in particular had an emergency medical condition that ended his race and resulted in the loss of a portion of his lung in a prior year’s race, and then came back two years later to try again.

While Auerbach attempts to portray the RAAM cyclists in a favorable light, their attempt viewed through the lens of an amazing physical and mental challenge that can only truly be understood by participants and worthy of our admiration, in the end both my wife and I were still left wondering, “why?” It seems that risking your life and financial situation for many of these racers is just flat out exhibiting poor judgement and misplaced life priorities. A multi-time winner of RAAM, Slovenian Jure Robic, lives with his wife and son in a tiny urban apartment. He does, in fact, have sponsorships from his athletic success, but since his costs for race participation are so high, he is never financially in the black. In other words, to fund his apparent obsession with events like RAAM, his family’s financial state and living conditions suffer. Many other RAAM participants have similar stories – spending the equivalent of several years’ salary to race, for example. Even if financing the race was not a concern, as was the case with one multi-RAAM finisher, the inherent danger of the race certainly was – without giving too much away. The impression I came away with was, for many, being a RAAM cyclist is a selfish endeavor. The comments of a certain French racer mid-documentary rang true to us: “it’s just not worth it… I have two kids who are waiting for me.”

Klunkerz Director Billy Savage. Image courtesy Klunkerz film website

Overall Impression: 7/10

Pumelo Pictures were kind enough to provide us with a review copy of Klunkerz, their documentary about the orgins of the modern mountain bike, recently. I watched Klunkerz with my wife, who (thankfully!) takes a passing interest in bike culture.

At its heart, Klunkerz contains interviews with around a dozen of the luminaries behind the early mountain bike scene in Marin County, California. No less than some of the biggest names in cycling are featured, including Tom Ritchey, Joe Breeze and Gary Fisher. This up close and personal access to these bike luminaries is the best thing about Klunkerz.

The personalities, along with their conflicts and bonds through shared experiences, are what really drives the story in Klunkerz. Without giving away too much, it is in fact the increasing popularity of mountain bikes that these individuals helped create that drives some interesting discord later on. Some of what is revealed explains how, even though modern mountain bikes were conceived in northern California, asian manufacturers quickly became the main source for mountain-style bikes.

There are some things about the film that weren’t fantastic – production quality is fairly low, and some sections are slow and repetitive. Klunkerz is really quite short as well, coming in at a bit under 90 minutes. However, the film contains some terrific vintage film of early mountain bikes along with a huge amount of insight into the origin and development of the bikes themselves.

Overall, I really enjoyed Klunkerz and would absolutely recommend it to anyone interested in mountain biking or bike industry figures. If you would like to get a copy yourself, visit the official film site at Klunkerz.com.

You can find a lot more info on Klunkerz at their official site. Looks fun!

“As Mr. Wells was driving north near Broadway’s intersection with West 74th Street, Miss Thomas was approaching the intersection from the opposite direction. Shortly after noon, near this intersection, something went wrong with Wells’s vehicle and their paths fatefully crossed. Wells los control of the Duryea, and it began to zigzag up the street toward Miss Thomas. The sight of a horseless carriage erratically bearing down on her in a zigzagging path appears to have confused Miss Thomas; Wells’s vehicle collided with her, and Thomas was knocked from her bicycle into the street.”

The first reported automobile collision, Memorial Day, 1896. That’s right, the driver lost control and hit a cyclist. Figures, right?

If something like this happens to you, over a hundred years later, you will want to know your rights under the law. Even if you are never involved in an altercation with a car, and I hope you aren’t, you may run into another situation where being more familiar with cycling laws will help: perhaps you’re getting ticketed by an APD officer and you think you may be in the right (and from what the Chief implied, seems likely). Heck, reading Bicycling and the Law may help you when you’re out for drinks with your four-wheeled friends and are getting a little tired of them bitching about how bikes should be on the sidewalk.

Uniform Vehicle Code Section 11-1202. Every person propelling a vehicle by human power or riding a bicycle shall have all of the rights and all of the duties applicable to the driver of any other vehicle…

Bicycling and the Law is an approachable book, easy to understand. It is filled with plenty of real-world examples and humorous anecdotes that keep the material from getting tedious. If you aren’t already a little familiar with the history of roads and bicycles, you will even come away from this book with a little ammo to use if you’re ever confronted by drivers in conversation, such as casually mentioning the real reason we started to have paved roads in the US (hint: not for cars).

Bob Mionske, the author, is a former Olympic cyclist who then became a lawyer specializing in bicycling law. He also runs a website at BicycleLaw.com where he and other people blog on various bike topics, law and otherwise. Bob was also recently hired to write a legal column for Bicycling Magazine, Road Rights. He currently lives in Portland, Oregon. All of that makes this book even better, as it’s written from our own perspective as people on bikes who have to share the sometimes treacherous roadways with cars. If you want to be sure that you’re on the right side of the law when you’re riding, Bicycling and the Law will prove invaluable.

Bicycling and the Law is available through VeloPress.

Rating: 4/5

Price: $25

Availability: Most bookstores and online distributors.

Cashing in on the fame and success of Lance Armstrong has been somewhat of a cottage industry in the last few years. This latest entry from former and now current Armstrong team manager, Johan Bruyneel, continues the trend with a detailed, if at times guarded, look at his roll in the successes running a winning team, both with and without Armstrong. 

The book is an autobiographically account of Bruyneel’s entire racing career and the lessons he learned along the way. For those who’ve come to pro cycling later, Bruyneel had a full career as a racer himself before managing U.S. Postal/Discovery. He had many successes racing for Lotto and ONCE including once wearing the yellow jersey himself beating the great Miguel Indurain to take a stage as well finishing 3rd overall in the Vuelta a España. While he was a good tactician in the peloton, he never had the legs to be a grand tour contender.  This mind, not his body, is what served him best both as a rider and manager.

Growing up in cycling mad Belgium, he showed promise early on as an amateur but pursued higher education upon his father’s request before giving pro cycling a go. One wonders if this education and middle class upbringing affected Bruyneel’s outlook as a team director. Most directors come from a much more blue collar backgrounds steeped in the traditions and superstitions of cycling’s past. Bruyneel seemed open to trying different strategies and tactics to see what worked best instead of repeating what everyone else had done. It was not clear at the time that his New World mindset would be successful, but he had the vision to try it anyway. This attitude paid off in spades making him one of the winning-est team directors in cycling history, and not just with Armstrong.

The strangest part of this book is its ending, seemingly frozen in time with Bruyneel riding off into the sunset. In 2007, the Team Discovery was unable to find a title sponsor and Armstrong, who co-owned the team, and Bruyneel publicly disbanded the team. Bruyneel makes much of how he truly missed his family and was happy to go out on top with an 8th Tour win with up-and-comer Alberto Contador. The problem with this story is that he was “retired” nary a few months before stepping in as the team director for Astana where he would go on to produce overall victories at the Giro d’Italia, Vuelta, and Tour of California and help Armstrong come out of retirement as well. Much of this happened before this book was published, so its odd that it was ignored. 

In order to broaden the appeal of this book, Bruyneel, or more likely his co-author, Bicycling’s Bill Strickland, makes the book more lessons in victory. This is done no doubt to to sell to the corporate crowd clamoring for the latest success book. While the book diverges into corporate speech from time to time, fortunately it quickly gets back to the subject at hand. Actually, the fact that this book focused on Bruyneel’s thought processes when it comes to planning winning strategies  is what saves it and makes it worth reading. Those looking for a true behind the scenes look at pro cycling will be disappointed. Bruyneel glosses over the darker side of the sport and does not address why some of his most successful athletes went on to get caught doping once they left his team. However, those wanting to learn more about how a great strategist thinks will find this book an enjoyable read.