This Race Report BrOUGHT To You By falafel meanderdew

A spoof race report would be fun to try, but if there is one thing the mystery blogging has revealed, it is that the real thing is much preferable and of an impeccably better quality than the imitators’. It was nice too SEE this. oV was the beatles of the bicycling blogging bistro. I may be listening to old records for a long time….

Strengths are obvious but no analysis is complete without taking into account not only what has been said, but left unsaid. Like with any addict, Hernando has a huge blindspot, and his main one is a perception of how an inclusive community is tolerantly built. Now I’m not saying oV’s blog was meant to be anything more than a benevolent dictatorship, a cycling world with the greatest of philosopher kings. I’m suggesting that it is possible to create a better world (and a better microcosmic representation of “a world” with a blog) by moving beyond these limitations.

With a ring leader, everyone else becomes just a side show, and the art takes an egotistical bent. Contributors/participants on Hernando’s blog became like Ronnie Woods playing with Keith Richards, strumming fine tunes, but never fully welcomed in. Richards of course has to protect his genius, solitude, and belief systems that enable his inspiration. There may be no other way…but me being one who was once part of an experiment, I know what it feels like to be part of the show when it makes the directors light dazzling, and kept in a spare shed when the lights are off and the director is annotating script. Is it possible to do a big show, where the role players receive equal billing? Where the concept of possession and ownership shifts or is abandoned all together? Or will we continue to see a rigid, individualistic structure that breaks the creative verve into a billion tiny little pieces?

I’m saying if you’re looking for a show, check out the Stones, no doubt, but if you’re looking to be part of a show, you’re going to have to write your own music if the Stones remain the Stones. You may be introduced as an up and coming kick ass opening act, but it stops there because the Stones show is the Stones' show. By definition it is a protected original, and very, very exclusive. Even all the members appearing on stage don’t necessarily have a full part in it. So, will it be the same old Stones who will continue to play, or a new kind of band open to taking chances, risking old wounds, seeing everything without the drugs closing targeted doors of perception?

Whatever Vanderhoot plays next, I’d recommend checking out the show, going to the church of the big ring, rubbing elbows with the norcal-ese cycling agnostics, and enjoying the sweet, powerful, rewarding concentration of a good cycling product as it purrs by. I only urge that we be careful, in the bigger pictures of our lives, to examine pre-determined criteria for entry into our discernible world of acceptability, to make sure the walls that protect us are permeable enough to allow for constant infusions of good things. The thing that binds an irreducibly complex community is to find a way to fully include the ideas that most challenge the core beliefs. And still go on existing. That is strength.

Good-bye smiling Vanderhoot. I enjoyed and profited from your genius. Every time I play one of your old songs, I hear something new--lg