Dugs. Digs. Dug.

This is how interviews should be conducted.

Had It Right Here, Now It's Gone.

Oh man, I'm so wrecked right now. The omnium has come and gone. I knocked another second off my kilo time (1.11.?), finally broke twelve seconds over the flying 200 (11.7) and did a weird middle distance two kilometre pursuit in about two and a half minutes. Scrounged a second in the scratch and the points and came home with a medal. Pretty happy with that.

But what I'm even more happy about, in my current state of exhaustion, is the next six weeks. In which I intend to still ride my bike, but without any intensity whatsoever. As I mentioned here, my body needs the rest. I'll roll around, do some long rides, sleep late on the weekend and drink more coffee. If you've barely seen me for the past twelve months, now would be a good time to give me a call.

Somebody's Sins, But Not Mine.

There's a little event being planned over here, but you better be quick - I hear it's almost fully subscribed. I would've missed out myself but for a quick call from Mr White.

But I'm Not Afraid Of My.

I Consider It A Measure Of My Humanity.

I don't know Marx (well, other than Karl and his brothers Groucho, Harpo, Chico and Zeppo), but I gotta love his attitude to racing.

The best thing about this is, he keeps coming back.

"The thing is, winners do it easy. They have support, natural talent & people cheering for them, slapping them on the back all the time, getting awards, trophies & prizes for just about everytime they throw a leg over a bike.

But me, I’m rolling through when people are packing up. When I look at results I always start at the bottom & work my way up. No one to cheer me on, or pass me a biddon. I have to lay my bike on the ground in the pits, I get the dirt in my face & cop all the rutts. I take the B line & have to walk the tricky bits when course is blocked with riders. I have to pick up after myself & pack it all away at the end of the day. I know every km of the drive back from Mt Beauty & Forrest after a long, long ride. I wash my bike, my gear, clean out the camping gear & vacuum the car so my wife can use the car the next morning. I know how much brake pads & cassettes cost & how long it takes to fit them. My hands are always dirty. When I get caught in the rain, I have to ride home in the rain. In winter I ride at night because I have to do everything else during the day."

You Don't See Us.

This guy takes sweet photos and seems kinda stoked when they appear on other people's facebook pages. He doesn't ask any money for them and doesn't make any money from them. I guess that's one way to go about doing things if you're going to use other people's images for your art. I'm ok with this.

This guy also takes sweet photos. I once called him up to see if I could use one of me on my facebook. He said "Fifty Bucks!" but was just taking the piss, later confiding that I was perhaps the first person to ever actually ask him, after years of seeing them crop up all over the internet. The photos are watermarked, and the watermarks lead viewers back to his blog. His blog makes money from advertising. Although he occasionally has dubious taste, I'm also ok with this.

This lady sometimes also takes a good photo, but is pretty keen on you not using her photos without paying, which kind of makes her the cycling photography version of Metallica. But boy, does this rub me the wrong way. It raises all sorts of question about who owns the image, especially when the image is taken as seperate from the artistic representation of it. There are lots of photos of me in her various galleries. Does she have the right to profit off my image? I'm not sure. But like Metallica she seems to be picking the wrong demographic to complain about. Metallica fans were generally also Napster users - dorky white teenage boys - and these fans deserted the band in droves after the suit succeeded. The people that Ms Cole is asking to cough up are the people in her photographs (and incidentally, are also - generally - dorky white boys), and if they ask her not to photograph them - or keep stealing her photographs until she decides not to take pictures of them - then she won't have anyone left to shoot.

Don't get me wrong. I've got no issue with people wanting to make money from their art. But in this digital era, taking photos of people and then asking them to buy them off you seems almost quaint, like a scam some hustler would try in a third world city. Like musicians before them, photographers are being forced to think of new ways to make a profit. And that's alright - perhaps even a good thing - but there's not much worse than hearing someone complaining about being left behind.

Not By Pennies, Dimes Or Quarters.

Punk's not dead. Or perhaps it is. Perhaps it is and we should quit living in the past. Or perhaps it is, and that's a good thing, because it has morphed (and continues to morph) into something more interesting. Punk, however, doesn't have layers of bureaucracy, administrative bodies, government subsidies - punk is not, despite the best efforts of a bevy of major corporations, institutionalized. Perhaps this why punk, in its different forms, continues to thrive.

Cycling, unlike punk, is institutionalized, which is why it ends up in situations like this or this. It's pretty easy, however, to simply blame the governing bodies in question. That's how things work in an institution - when something goes wrong, you blame those above you. But perhaps, if cycling - and in particular track cycling - is going to continue, we need to think more like punks. We need to take events out of the hands of the institutions and run them ourselves. The events we run and the track cycling we race won't look the same as the events and races that have been organized by Cycling Victoria and Cycling Australia over the past one hundred years, but they will be more inclusive, more vibrant and, what's more, they'll be ours. For us, by us.

This Broccoli's Dead.

Also this:

Maybe She'll Come Back To Me.

My relationship with handicap racing is a relationship that features the odd moment of glory, with a whole lot of domestic violence in between. And like a battered spouse I keep going back for more, you know, because it might just work out this time.

My first handicap races were in Bendigo, at the Madison Weekend. I'd had a win in a scratch race, and was feeling pretty confident. The outcomes quickly destroyed this confidence. Pretty much my whole family had come out to watch, and my brother Miguel captured the moment perfectly when he informed me that I had just been "swallowed up like a hamburger". Because I'm still something of a newcomer in this game, I generally get a pretty decent mark, which only really works ok until the backmarkers come through like a steamtrain, express to the finish, not taking any passengers.

I say that I generally get a decent mark, but that's only generally true. My first road race was a handicap. By the time the road season rolled around I was riding in A grade at on Tuesday nights, and someone, somewhere obviously equated success on the track to success on the road. I was with a pretty fierce group, and got dropped after about fifty kilometres, suffering some fragrant humiliation in the process.

Occasionally, though, things work out. If there's enough distance between your group and the next; if everyone in your group is prepared to work their arses off; if the groups behind you aren't particularly well organized; if you get a good push; if you're lucky, then you may be able to stay away. And this was the case in the Melbourne Cup on Wheels on Saturday night. I was with a bunch of guys I knew, and who I knew would be able to keep the pace pretty high. There was forty metres between my group and the next. And we worked our arses off. With about two hundred metres to go my training partner Joel 'Chopper' Leonard came past. I expected him to be leading a train of Olympians, Six-Day Racers and World Champions, but they were nowhere to be seen. So I hit it. So did the two guys in front of me. I saw Chopper cross the line, his fists in the air, and must've sat up a little bit, which allowed Barry Forde to pip me for forth by a tire. Still, fifth in the Melbourne Cup on Wheels is ok by me. Even if it means I might not stay in the frontmarkers group for much longer.

Keep Having To Tell Myself That This Is Real.

I'm sure I've mentioned this once or twice over the past few weeks, but lately I've been feeling a bit flat. A cold came along and knocked me on my ass, just in time for the Brunswick Club Track Champs, the Sid Patterson Grand Prix, the Melbourne Cup On Wheels and the Bendigo International Madison. I battled through the first, am intent on suffering through the second and third this weekend, but don't think I have what it takes to charge on through the last.

Which kinda sucks, because I really love racing in Bendigo. Nath and I have been to their club racing on Thursday nights a bunch of times. The quality of the racing is very good, the track is fast and the crowd (I know! A crowd!) is welcoming and appreciative. Furthermore, I kinda have an emotional connection to the Madison weekend, as it was my first ever track open, around about this time last year. I had a win, as well as a couple of places, and remember thinking to myself that I could go alright at this racing malarkey. I've been up to my neck in it ever since.

And really, that's part of the problem. As in any sporting endeavour, cycling is all about convincing our bodies to do things they really don't want to do. And for the most part, our bodies go along with us. They take shape the way we want them to, react how we expect them to, keep going when they probably shouldn't. But eventually, at some point, they need a break. And if we don't give them one, we get sick.

So, while I still may head up to Bendigo on the Sunday, to watch some of my newest friends go around and around in circles without me, I won't be racing. In fact, aside from club racing and the occasional criterium, I don't think I'll be doing much racing at all until the State Men's Omnium Championships in April. And after that I'll be taking a break from track altogether. If anyone has long rides, coffee dates, stupid adventures or just good ol' fashioned shenanigans planned for the end of April, and perhaps the whole month of May, let me know.

No More, No Less.

This weekend. In case you forgot.

And We Find Ourselves In This Same Old Mess.

Like Matt from No Whip, I can't believe I haven't seen this before now:

Where It's At.

I've commented on this extensively through other internet media, so might as well also do so here: I'm sick. I woke up on Sunday morning to find my lymph glands attempting to escape out of my neck (this would have normally put a dampener on any romantic St. Valentine's day plans, but Casey had already woken up, figured there weren't any extravagant gestures on the cards, and gone out to Camberwell Market). I've been pretty much just sleeping ever since - a visit to the doctor gave me til Thursday off, and I intend not to be at work til then.

I also haven't been on the bike since Saturday morning, so I probably shouldn't have gone to the track tonight. But it was the first round of club champs, and there was a kilo to do. Four laps. I could manage four laps. It wouldn't be great, but at least I'd get some points on the board. And surely four laps wouldn't do too much damage.

But it did. After three days in bed, four laps was a very, very long way. At one and a half to go I wanted to get off my bike, walk home and crawl up into the doona, emerging only to watch the ice hockey at the Winter Olympics and occasionally urinate. After I was done I could barely stand. These four laps hurt more than any other four laps I've ever done before in my entire life.

I mean, I still knocked two seconds off my PB.

Singing This Song.

Ok, ok, I finally did it. You may now add me on twitter:

http://twitter.com/xbrendanbaileyx

I'm still figuring out how to use it, but man, when I have it sorted, it's going to be awesome.

We Stand On Guard For Thee.

The fun thing about riding alleycats is there are so many variables - or, to put it in simpler terms, there are so many things that can go wrong. This was certainly the case during last night's Love Is A Battlefield Valentine's Day alleycat. Lane and Safa were tipped to pair up and smash the field, but Lane's dodgy knee convinced him to give it a miss, so Safa was left with Dimos. The two of them are apparently still looking for Flinders Bridge, which is usually known as Princess Bridge. Benzy and Coffee Ben looked the goods, and even recovered quickly when Coffee kieren bumped not one but two moving cars, but tripped up on the same hurdle. Chaz and Ryan flatted out. And Sime nearly had his arse kicked by some angry homeowner when he was caught stealing a sunflower.

And me? Well, I was supposed to be having a rest day, and had to come up with a way of resisting my own temptations - ie, to smash it. Given it was a Valentine's day theme I was paired with Casey, which helped, and riding her pink Malvern Star Park Avenue helped a little more. The Park Avenue was apparently the source of much discussion - kids with tricked out, colour co-ordinated fixies couldn't quite believe that I was going to race on it (obviously they were too fresh to remember old mate riding a girl's step through in Sime's Scavenger Hunt Alleycat in 2007... and winning, only to find out he had an answer wrong). They also seemed quite surprised when I flicked them, hooked them and tried to put them into the gutter every time they went past. Like the Boy Named Sue, you gotta be tough if you're going to ride a pink bike.

It was the pink bike, however, that was our downfall. I was able to cope ok with it being stuck in the one gear, and that gear feeling a bit like an 88. But I wasn't too good at remembering its other limitations. Popping it up off a gutter on Sydney Road probably wasn't the best idea, and by the time we hit Pigdon Street I had a flat. I hadn't really prepared for this contingency. In my bag i had my usual emergency kit - pump, levers and a spare tube - but the tube was a Schwable Racelight 700. The wheels were 27 inch. They're not the same. And, to further the issue, when I pulled the old tube out, the rim tape came too, eventually disintegrating in my hands. We wrapped the rim in electrical tape (I am always well prepared for the coming apocalypse), shoved the tube in and limped back to the museum.

Ten minutes later Jay and Coopz rolled in, taking out first. Jason and THE JAMS came in second, and I can't remember who came third.

It was a benefit alleycat, and apparently the organizers - Zoe and Maija - were able to raise $400 for the most excellent Spokes In The Wheel project. Nice work, folks.