Now I always wanted a VW Scirocco, but...

Back in the late 70s, early 80s I hankered after a car that never made it to Oz... the VW Scirocco. A swoopy coupe, it was the better looking alternative to the boxy Golf Gti. Which we also couldn't get here, so I souped up a Golf GLS instead. (Honda ripped the Scirocco styling off for the original Accord, IMHO). Anyway, via the CarConnection.com - the new Scirocco? Maybe. It's looks OK but my heart still says 'Alfa'...

Been driving

I've been driving. Well, about 800km, give or take. In a Mazda Premacy, which is a 2.o litre inflated hatch sort of thing. With wife and 3 kids on board plus luggage we managed to average about 10l/100km at just under 100kmh. Not too bad. The trip was improved by the standard of the roads, which has improved markedly over the last decade or so, although you'd never know it if you read the local newspapers which go on and on about how bad the infrastructure is. Many of them are toll roads but that's OK with me as it was worth paying for. What I do despair about is the amount of land taken up by roads. What were 2 lanes meandering through the countryside have become 4 or even 6 lanes barging through the bush, plus a 'nature strip' in between. I know it has resulted in improved driving safety but it's also resulted in greatly increased driving boredom. And a fear within me that we have ripped up too much of the country, removed too many trees and diverted too much land from the healthy business of maintaining natural balance to the less healthy business of, well, just business. When do we stop and reflect on what is a good balance?

The Who - Pictures of Lily

It's 1967 and The Who are trying to record Pictures of Lily... it's funny... it's great!

That'll Be The Day

A little something to remember drummer Keith Moon of The Who by...

Been riding

I've been riding the (push) bike a bit. You see more things than you do in a car and I tend to wonder: "was I like that/did I do that when I was 20?" Sometimes I wonder "am I turning into an old fogey?". I also wonder how long we can do this to ourselves before the environment gives up and collapses.

I have seen/felt:

1. The wind, fresh air and sun (and wondered if car-dwellers realise they are missing out?)
2. The coolness of the forest (we have some tall trees here and when you ride through them the temperature drops 2-3 very noticeable degrees and you wonder about nearly treeless suburbia and all the air con running to cool what could be cooled naturally)
3. The smell of foul exhausts - we really haven't fixed this one, have we? Drivers may be unaware, but walk or ride along a road and take a look and a whiff of what still spews out the exhaust - it can't be improving our environment, can it?
   
4. The idiots on the roads
• the P-plater in the massive V8 tank who overtook me at full throttle doing at least 90 in a kid-filled 50 zone - why?
• the same P-plater who spun and almost smoked the inside real wheel on a tight left hander - showing off to the 6 and 7 year olds playing nearby what his foot can do with an accelerator?
• the Mitsubishi sedan that had rolled (or was just poorly parked?) across 2 driveways, sideways, the unfortunate thing being the brick retaining wall in between - and the front wheels high in the air
• another V8 driver who chose again to do around 90 in a 70 zone and come within a metre of me and another rider (riding legally on the shoulder, single file). Yes, my friend, you are a weak coward, an intimidating bully and a complete loser - or just completely unaware of what you are doing and a danger - in any case - to us all

The Who - Join Together

I've been busy

It may not look like it but I have been busy. Apart from working for a living - which is not what you see here - I have been creating or updating a few blogs and image galleries... like...

My portals

• KlausenRussell.com
• gtveloce.com
• My mustknows

My Alfa pages

• The Rust-free Alfa Romeo page: guaranteed since '95
• All about Alfas, especially GTVs
• The car gallery

My bike racing pages

• Addicted2wheels, bicycle race wheels: my most popular blog
• Bike racing for almost anyone
• The bike gallery

My myths and Legends pages

• Myths, legends and weird stuff: Mythoblogia

My sustainable business pages

• The business of sustainable business
• My MBA resource blog - thespiel.com
• Out Out Damned Blog - a wilder ride
• The Offline blog for quieter web-rants

My overly long list of blogs

• Addicted2wheels, bicycle race wheels: my most popular blog
  
• The site that started it all for me in 1995, Colnago - the blogger
• The Rust-free Alfa Romeo page: guaranteed since '95
• My MBA resource blog - thespiel.com
• Myths, legends and weird stuff: Mythoblogia
  
• The Abecedarian Insult: A2Z, the blog
• Stuff I think you all mustknow
• All about Alfas, especially GTVs
• The business of sustainable business
• Bike racing for almost anyone
• The Offline blog for web-rants
• My all purpose writing blog
• The Class of 75 blog
• The gtveloce.com-munity blog
• My genealogy research blog
• Out Out Damned Blog - a wild ride

My image galleries

• DAP: the digital image gallery
• My mostly digital image blog
• DAR: the digital art gallery
• The aviation gallery
• The aviation image blog
• Trams, trains and buses... yet another gallery
• The bike gallery
• The car gallery
• The flora and fungus gallery (I kid you not)
  
• The New Fortian gallery
  
• The Original Fortian gallery
  

Community and networking pages

• My experiment with a php-scripted CMS
• My Squidoo page
• and my TagWorld page

Sponsors and other pages

• Buy my mugs and t-shirts from Cafepress
• Buy my books and images from Lulu
• The mustknows
  

Surely that's enough for now!

How can you resist?

A rust-free guarantee... wow. I can't resist.

It's not about the bike, it's the marketing

What is it about the Vuelta that makes it sink without a trace in the Australian media? Why does Le Tour de France get such a boost and the Tour of Spain disappear from view? Was the Giro reported any better? Or worse? My personal feeling is that Aussies have to be winning, but they win lots of races and don't get a run, so that's no the whole story, is it?

Doesn't help that it's September - the footy finals season. Yes, it matters to plenty of people, but we can think and read about more than one thing at a time, surely? We can thank our lucky stars for the WWW. And the click-thru revenue that could stay in Australia drifts offshore...

Alfa GTV-6 at Spa

I can't resist a nice-sounding GTV6...

My reading list

Way out but worth it

Because I can, I will share here some weirder choices from my personal bookshelf. You may not agree with 'weird', indeed weird is the wrong word. Nevertheless I use it advisedly in the sense that I will cover subjects beyond literal truth. And I use truth advisedly as mathematics is the only provable truth. Everything else is either awaiting a mathematical proof or is a belief, a theory or an assumption.

Just to explain my thinking: you may believe in what you can see, hear and/or touch, and that's cool; but it's not necessarily a literal truth. Even if a thousand people see, hear and/or touch that thing it doesn't make it true. It may be real enough to the people concerned but it's not an incontrovertible truth. It may be an illusion. It may be a shared thought. It may be a shared assumption. It's something, but it's not a literal truth. To be a literal truth requires proof. To my mind we can only be certain of mathematical proofs, as I haven't seen any other proof that convincingly lives outside the mind or perception of man.

And I could be wrong about maths. Perhaps there is no independent proof? Ahhh, but that's an undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveller returns....

So to the first installment of my 'way out but worth it' booklist, in no particular order:

• Bill Shakespeare's works in full. An essential lesson in the use of the English language, up there with Fowler's.


• The Elegant Universe (by Brian Greene. Post-Einstein string theory to get you thinking.)


• Anything by Richard Dawkins or Stephen Jay Gould. As I said, there are mathematical proofs and there are theories. Some theories are more compelling than others.


• The Torah (the Pentateuch, the Book of Moses: a lively read, basis for Judaism and the Old Testment and a fascinating read on any level)


• The Bible (Greek for 'Books'; The Old and New Testaments: basis for the Christian cults and a brilliant read)


• The Koran (Arabic for 'Recital': another excellent piece of writing and the basis for Islam. I have the Dawood translation)


• The History of Magic (by Eliphas Levi: a great, compelling read. Spot the a ha! 'Harry Potter' moments and see the footprints of Rowling's research)


• The Theory of Celestial influence (by Rodney Collin: immensely detailed, it wallows around trying to 'prove' a case scientifically but falls magnificently short. Can be heavy, clumsy and painful to read... but still worth it for the determined!).

That's just for starters. Let me know what you think.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 23rd, 2006 at 9:51 am and is filed under No idea where this one goes, Writing, Religion and Essential Truths. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Does it ever stop?

Sunday, August 06, 2006

Brown wins Stage 4 in Germany

Graeme Brown finally delivers for Rabo (Cyclingnews quote and link): However, with 500 metres remaining, the field came back together, just in time for one last suicidal attempt from Jens Voigt (CSC). With that over before it even started, Australian Graeme Brown threw his bike across the line and took his first victory of the year, beating Schumacher and Zabel to the post.

What a relief! He's had his ups and downs, but he looks pretty happy about winning a stage of the Deutschland Tour. Renshaw was in the Top 5 and Zabel has taken the lead. Can he hold on over the mountains? You'd like to hope so, but with Vino one of many contenders just 48secs back, highly unlikely.

On Landis: It's hard to know who's clean, what with masking agents and autologous transfusions, and we have to trust the integrity of the sampling and testing procedure. So is it as robust as we'd like? Cyclingnews gives a rundown on the B sample result here:Christian Prudhomme, Director general of the Tour de France, said Landis is no longer considered champion of the 2006 event, but added: "Until he is found guilty or admits guilt, he will keep the yellow jersey. This is normal. You are not sanctioned before you are found guilty.

Saturday, August 05, 2006

Aussies in Germany and Denmark

A good result for 2 Aussies in Stage 3 of the Tour of Germany, as reported by Cyclingnews:
1 Gerald Ciolek (Ger) Team Wiesenhof Akud 4.56.22 (41.16 km/h)
2 Erik Zabel (Ger) Team Milram
3 André Greipel (Ger) T-Mobile Team
4 Luke Roberts (Aus) Team CSC
5 Mark Renshaw (Aus) Credit Agricole

And O'Grady takes yellow in Denmark, again reported by Cyclingnews:
Stage 3 - August 4: Kolding - Odense, 203.7 km Förster scores for Gerolsteiner, as O'Grady takes yellow

Friday, August 04, 2006

Aussies in Denmark

Some Aussies are doing well in the Tour of Denmark... stage 2 - see Cyclingnews for the report: 2 Stuart O'Grady (Aus) Team CSC 0.21, 4 Cadel Evans (Aus) Davitamon-Lotto 0.23, 5 Baden Cooke (Aus) Unibet.com, 14 Gene Michael Bates (Aus) Team L.P.R. 0.39

Monday, July 31, 2006

Other sports and doping

Because I can, I will comment on drugs, doping and what have you. It's just my opinion but I personally realised something was truly happening - as against being told by press or dodgy friends what "was" happening - when I spent time in an eastern suburbs gym in Sydney, building up for bike racing (more of a psychological boost than a physical one). This was the mid 1980's. These big, shiny, oily pimply guys were always there lifting massive weights (and gazing into mirrors) and they could sell you "stuff". It reminded me of 'under the stairs' deal at high school, actually, but different stuff. That other stuff you got at the pub and was detrimental to sports performance, or general sanity for that matter. (Not that I did, but some people did do that other stuff, anyway!)

So you could buy any sort of body-building drug at that particular gym, in my experience. Presumably other gyms as well. I also "knew" about the occasional cyclist's drink bottle ("bidon") that (it was suggested) contained alcohol, to give some sort of kick up hills or before a sprint. Don't know how effective it was, but a few people seemed to like it and claimed to "know". Bikes of course are build to carry bidons as well as riders and musette bags, but what about other sports?

'No-Doze' was also big in the '80s for that caffeine kick, and coffee itself gained notoriety in sports where being "aware" and awake was important. Again in cycling there were "special" bananas to be eaten just before a race finish. Now these were reputedly spiked with amphetamines, but who knows the truth? No-one did a laboratory analysis on this sort of stuff at the time and it may have been riders just bragging. But very, very few people were drug tested pre or post race, even at elite State level back then, so anything could have happened. (And I have yet to see a club-level drug test, even now. Tell me if you've seen one!)

So I can imagine, and it is just imagination fueled by innuendo and availability (particularly via the Internet), that some bike racers are using performance enhancing agents to "get noticed"; firstly at club level (basically weekly racing thoughout the year) and probably at State level. They would effectively get away with it. Testing remains something done at higher levels of the sport, not below. Not often, anyway, in my experience, would they get caught. On the other hand I have never myself seen a culture of drug use in cycling at first hand, beyond caffeine and stories of what other riders did. I heard about but didn't see the evidence.

Nevertheless we quite possibly get riders started on this stuff early and then they either chicken out, or get smarter. Or dumber? If there's money involved there's temptation. Of course cycling is not as "wealthy" as some other sports.

So what happens in other sports?

Sunday, July 30, 2006

Web resources - Roadcycling UK

An interesting take on the UK road and TT scene is to be found at RoadcyclingUK. Worth checking out. Here's a snippet on starting road racing in the UK:
Road Racing from scratch By RCUK "I could do that!" Almost invariably it's around the time of the three great tours that many occasional cyclists get so carried away by the unfolding drama, passion and competitive spirit of the Giro d'Italia,Tour de France and Spanish Vuelta that they picture themselves flying along in the midst of an illustrious bunch or riding with relative ease up steep mountain climbs with cheering crowds lining the road. At least that's what appears to be the case, even though you know that the apparent ease at which the riders are "flying" along at an average speed of 45k per hour is deceptive and the whole idea, in fact, may seem totally mad and completely and utterly out of my league - even more so as the prerequisite is incredibly hard training, unbelievable talent and a super-human physique. But cycling is all about sticking at it.

Le Tour 2006

My 2006 Tour de France Wrap up, all wrapped up

• Back to normal


• Stage 20 - Le Tour 2006 - the dust settles


• Stage 19 - Le Tour 2006 - the TT decides


• Stage 18 - Le Tour 2006 - Status Quo


• Stage 17 - Le Tour 2006 - Floyd flies!


• Stage 16 - le Tour 2006 - Floyd falters


• Stage 15 - Le Tour 2006 - Alpe d'Huez


• Rest Day 2 - Le Tour 2006


• Stage 14 - Le Tour 2006 - France over Italy this time


• Stage 13 - Le Tour 2006 - Voigt's day in the sun

Le Tour 2006 - stage by stage

• Stage 12 - Le Tour 2006 - Discovery bounce back


• Stage 11 - Le Tour - Rabobank strongest


• Stage 10 - Le Tour - The mountain tactics


• Stage 9 - Le Tour - The Spaniard returns


• Le Tour - Rest Day 1


• Stage 8 - Le tour - Calzati's day


• Stage 7 - Le Tour 2006 - T-Mobile win


• Stage 6 - Le Tour 2006 - McEwen's 3rd.


• Stage 5 - Le Tour 2006 - the Spaniard takes it


• Stage 4 - Le Tour 2006 - McEwen's 2nd


• Stage 3 - Le Tour 2006 - the Cauberg


• Stage 2 - Le Tour 2006 - Chaos and the Viking


• Stage 1 - Le Tour 2006 - Blood on the road


• Prologue - Le Tour 2006


• Le Tour and the Aussie contingent


• We get so close and the rug gets pulled

The Bike Content... not the contented bike

This all started in 1995 - the website, I mean. And I started with bikes. As in push bikes. I'm still riding, although most of it is done on an indoor trainer (located outdoors, as it happens!).

My original intention was to help get the uninitiated out on their bikes, riding and racing. That intent is still with me. With that in mind, try these links for starters!

1. Bike racing 101. The beginning.
2. Bike racing 101 - part 2. Motivation and Goal setting.
3. My earlier work loosely called From E to A grade and back again
4. The Addicted2wheels blog
5. Mustknow Bikelinks

Look around the site and explore. Hope you find what you are looking for.

The Colnago file.. since 1995

Hi there! You've stumbled upon Rob Russell and Nicki Klausen, purveyors of fine web pages since 1995. Well, it's mostly my work, not Nicki's, and it's not so crash-hot but it's OK, isn't it?

Oh yeah, colnago is just my email address. I don't claim to represent Ernesto Colnago, his children, his bicycles or anything like that. I have owned a Colnago Mexico; I do own a Colnago track bike and a Colnago-engraved stem. Does that count?

Anyway, there's lots to read or look at, so please do. It's mainly focused on bikes, planes, trains and automobiles but there are politico-social philosphophical ramblings as well. It's updated almost daily, so come back again - it gets better ;-)

Cheers, Rob.