Cycotherapy News Roundup: The E-bike takeover, Primoz, UCI, Ring the Peak, David Grann and Weezer
Another roundup of tidbits on the interwebs that is only sometimes related to cycling
Hello everyone.
Sorry for missing last week’s news roundup. But we’re back.
We’ve got news about how e-bikes are taking over the world, how Primoz hopes to take over his new cycling team, and where in the world the UCI will take us with races next year.
I will be in Canada this weekend, celebrating with family its newest addition: a baby from my sister. We’re looking forward to it.
I hope you’re out there, somewhere, riding your bike like a cycopath.
If not, I hope you have plans in the near future.
Sincerely,
dillon.
headlines & links
Car dealerships could start selling e-bikes
Yep, dealerships might start carrying e-bikes and marketing them as “last mile” options. I guess the dealerships are just gonna have to figure out what to do with losing out on the maintenance side of their business models. Part of bikes’ greatness lies in the fact they are relatively maintenance-free.
Primoz comments on his new team
Primož Roglič heads over to Austria with his new Bora-Hangsgrohe teammates this week so he can start training for the 2024 Tour de France. Of the move from Jumbo-Visma said “I like new challenges and to have different things. Sometimes new things are better but you don’t know until you do it.”
UCI announces 2024 World Cup calendar
Here’s the calendar for next year’s mountain bike races around the world, if you’re curious. No stop in West Virginia’s Snowshoe this year for the downhill championship … instead: Mount-Saint-Anne in Lake Placid, NY.
Teaching bike etiquette to the newbies
Sales of e-bikes are through the roof. This newsteam in Colorado found that the buyers are most likely newer bike owners, so there are some people looking at the situation as an opportunity to teach bike trail etiquette.
WaPo has a great story on e-bikes and the way they’re transforming some cities
This piece profiles Kawthar Duncan and her journey from not-ever riding a bike to riding 20 miles a day in San Francisco as a mom. It showcases other people, too. It also has a ton of interesting data to support the idea that e-bikes are transforming city connectivity.
feature of the week
Fun read about a very doable-yet-adventurous bikepacking trip in Colorado on an established trail. The writer, Matt Miller, had some great pictures to accompany the write-up, too.
It was cool to have a review of the route they chose. He even provided links to the routes they chose. (Scroll to the bottom for that.)
But … also “sometimes you need to get your ass on the trail and learn how it will play out.”
Amen.
book excerpt of the week
In April, millions of tiny flowers spread over the blackjack hills and vast prairies in the Osage territory of Oklahoma. There are Johnny-jump-ups and spring beauties and little bluets. The Osage writer John Joseph Mathews observed that the galaxy of petals makes it look as if the “gods had left confetti.” In May, when coyotes howl beneath an unnervingly large moon, taller plants, such as spiderworts and black-eyed Susans, begin to creep over the tinier blooms, stealing their light and water. The necks of the smaller flowers break and their petals flutter away, and before long they are buried underground. This is why the Osage Indians refer to May as the time of the flower-killing moon.
On May 24, 1921, Mollie Burkhart, a resident of the Osage settlement town of Gray Horse, Oklahoma, began to fear that something had happened to one of her three sisters, Anna Brown. Thirty-four, and less than a year older than Mollie, Anna had disappeared three days earlier. She had often gone on “sprees,” as her family disparagingly called them: dancing and drinking with friends until dawn. But this time one night had passed, and then another, and Anna had not shown up on Mollie’s front stoop as she usually did, with her long black hair slightly frayed and her dark eyes shining like glass. When Anna came inside, she liked to slip off her shoes, and Mollie missed the comforting sound of her moving, unhurried, through the house. Instead, there was a silence as still as the plains.
Mollie had already lost her sister Minnie nearly three years earlier. Her death had come with shocking speed, and though doctors had attributed it to a “peculiar wasting illness,” Mollie harbored doubts: Minnie had been only twenty-seven and had always been in perfect health.
Like their parents, Mollie and her sisters had their names inscribed on the Osage Roll, which meant that they were among the registered members of the tribe. It also meant that they possessed a fortune. In the early 1870s, the Osage had been driven from their lands in Kansas onto a rocky, presumably worthless reservation in northeastern Oklahoma, only to discover, decades later, that this land was sitting above some of the largest oil deposits in the United States. To obtain that oil, prospectors had to pay the Osage for leases and royalties. In the early twentieth century, each person on the tribal roll began receiving a quarterly check. The amount was initially for only a few dollars, but over time, as more oil was tapped, the dividends grew into the hundreds, then the thousands. And virtually every year the payments increased, like the prairie creeks that joined to form the wide, muddy Cimarron, until the tribe members had collectively accumulated millions and millions of dollars. (In 1923 alone, the tribe took in more than $30 million, the equivalent today of more than $400 million.) The Osage were considered the wealthiest people per capita in the world. “Lo and behold!” the New York weekly Outlook exclaimed. “The Indian, instead of starving to death . . . enjoys a steady income that turns bankers green with envy.”
David Grann — opening paragraphs of Killers of the Flower Moon
(Fun fact: The movie adaptation of this book comes out in theaters this weekend. Features Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro.)
video of the week
Taking a little dip into the near past with Weezer’s 2019 performance at NPR’s tiny desk.
The Ring the Peak trail sounds excellent!