Bicycling Quotes

sy

[FONT=arial, helvetica, sans serif]My grandfather told me: Always wear underpants beneath your kanzu before you mount your bicycle. Foolishly I mocked him, and now my heart is a dry ear pod. I was cycling home from the market when a terrible whirlwind blew up my kanzu, ballooning it over my face and lifting me far above the ground. I kept control but when the bike landed I sat down hard upon my testicles, squashing them against the saddle to the flatness of patties. A sharp pain ran through my entire body. Then I felt an inner peace and went into a deep sleep.
-Mzee Oposen [/FONT]

[FONT=arial, helvetica, sans serif]The sound of a car door opening in front of you is similar to the sound of a gun being cocked.
-Amy Webster [/FONT]

[FONT=arial, helvetica, sans serif]I was trying to introduce myself as America's woman champion, but I said the french word "Champignon," so I introduced myself as a mushroom.
-Nancy Neiman Baranet [/FONT]

[FONT=arial, helvetica, sans serif]Bones Heal
Chicks Dig Scars
Pain is Temporary
Glory is Forever
-Patrick Aanstoots
Sussex, NJ [/FONT]

[FONT=arial, helvetica, sans serif]I love riding with women. There's no snot blowing, spitting, or dirty jokes. Well I guess there is, but it's more fun when you're the one doing it!!
-overheard at a BOMBB Squad (all-women) ride [/FONT]

Many more here. Please post some of your favourites. Flan O'Brien famous atomic theory also features. Enjoy

Captain Havoc

That's brilliant, I don't think I know any quotes which aren't there.

I see some things haven't changed since 1896 :rolleyes: Did they have CRC back then?

[FONT=arial, helvetica, sans serif]Hey diddle, diddle
The bicycle riddle
The strangest part of the deal.
Just keep your accounts
And add the amounts
The 'sundries' cost more than the wheel.
-- Anonymous 1896 poem
[/FONT]

ednwireland

“(Training) doesn't get easier; you just get faster”

greg lemond

"I still feel that variable gears are only for people over forty-five. Isn't it better to triumph by the strength of your muscles than by the artifice of a derailer? We are getting soft... As for me, give me a fixed gear!"
Henri Desgrange

Hermy

My fav is still the one from Theo de Rooy when asked his thoughts having just completed another Paris Roubaix...

"...it's a pile of sh!t this race. It's a whole pile of sh!t. You haven't even got time to p!ss. You ride and p!ss in your pants. It's a whole pile of sh!t."
He was then asked if he would do it again to which he replied, "Of course! It's the most beautiful race in the world."

showry

Keep 'em coming. I write our club notes every week and always add a quote. Some of my favourites are:

“There may be a better land where bicycle saddles are made of rainbow, stuffed with cloud; in this world the simplest thing is to get used to something hard.” - Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men on the Bummel

“Give a man a fish and feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and feed him for a lifetime. Teach a man to cycle and he will realise fishing is stupid and boring.” –Desmond Tutu

“When I win races, I have to put everybody, including myself of course, through a meat grinder. Everybody has to suffer, suffer, suffer until they’ve all had enough.”
Jens Voigt

“I say 'Shut up legs! Do what I tell you to do.'”
Jens Voigt again, on being asked how he deals with the pain in his legs.

Dura Ace

“When I saw riders with fat asses climbing like aeroplanes, that’s when I knew,” - Columbian climber Luis Herrera, regarding the spread of doping in the peloton.

“If you had to say something to Ricco, what would you say to him right now?”
“I would punch him in the face. As a matter of fact, I already punched him during yesterday's stage. In retrospect, I am rather happy that I did that. He is just a p***k. I have always considered him a p***k. I don't regret that he's been caught, he deserves it. I would just totally whack the guy, even if I were his teammate. I don't know where the rest of the team is, didn't they all go home? This is just incredible.” - Bram Tankink after Ricardo Ricco was caught in the TdF.

Let me tell you though, there's a huge difference between Flanders and Paris-Roubaix. They're not even close to the same. In one, the cobbles are used every day by the cars, and kept up, and stuff like that. The other one, it's completely different. The best I could do would be to describe it like this - they plowed a dirt road, flew over it with a helicopter, and then just dropped a bunch of rocks out of the helicopter! That's Paris-Roubaix. It's that bad - it's ridiculous. - Chris Horner

“I am sitting here with my chin on the counter, my mouth open like a great big whale scooping up plankton. I am gobsmacked!” - David Duffield

"I won! I won! I don't have to go to school anymore." - Eddy Merckx, after winning his first bike race

Together with Merckx we won all the classics there are, I won Paris-Tours, he won all the others. - Noël Vantyghem

"Where are we? Who am I?" - Bernard Thévenet, during a bad moment at the 1972 Tour

Hermy

Dura Ace wrote: »

“I am sitting here with my chin on the counter, my mouth open like a great big whale scooping up plankton. I am gobsmacked!” - David Duffield

Any idea what Duffield was commenting on?

emtroche

showry wrote: »

“I say 'Shut up legs! Do what I tell you to do.'”
Jens Voigt again, on being asked how he deals with the pain in his legs.

Priceless!

Doctor Bob

sy wrote: »

Many more here. Please post some of your favourites. Flan O'Brien famous atomic theory also features. Enjoy

I read them all- great set! (Though it does suffer from that awful internet disease- poxy citations. I'm not asking for full Chicago Manual style, but a bit of accurate attribution goes a long way.:))

Re Flann- isn't there more in The Dalkey Archive about bikes too? Similar to the stuff from The Third Policeman, I think. I must investigate.

Anyway, the main point of this post is to add one of my own favourites. It's included in that list in very abbreviated form, but I think it bears quoting in full. (Context- the book is set at the end of the nineteenth century in rural France.)

I had never made a long journey by bicycle - this was the first. But Jasmin had given me secret lessons some time ago, and in spite of my bad knee I had learned how to ride. If an athletic youth can take pleasure in the possession of such a machine, how much more did it mean to one who after half an hour's walking would begin to drag a leg behind him in sweating misery! And now, to swoop down from a hill-top into the hollows as if on wings; to see a blurred landscape far ahead divide and make an aisle for you and burst into leaf as you passed; to slip through a village taking everything in at a glance... Only in dreams had I been wafted on such delightful flights.

Alain-Fournier, Le Grand Meaulnes, 1966 (1913), Penguin, p.139.

Also- that Desmond Tutu one is class.

IM0

Lance Armstrong - [starts to give excuse for a poor race debut(?)]
cuts himself short and says..."ahh ye know wha? - excuses are like arseholes really....we all have them and they all stink!"

petethedrummer

"What's more, teaming up with Ferrari was like putting a saucepan up your backside: it was immediately obvious what you were doing."
Willy Voet (I mistakingly attributed this to Richard Virenque in my previous sig)

"It's true he's not one of them and he hasn't come out of the same mould. It's true that he refused to 'load the canon' these past years, it's true that Christophe Bassons doesn't belong to the family of cheats and the corrupted."
Jean-Luc Gatellier

"Dang! You got shocks, pegs - lucky! You ever take it off any sweet jumps?"
Napoleon Dynamite

dave.obrien

Cycling isn’t a game, its a sport. Tough, hard and unpitying, and it requires great sacrifices. One plays football, or tennis, or hockey. One doesn’t play at cycling.
Jean de Gribaldy (Sean Kelly’s Manager)

ednwireland

i couldnt get to the post office again

Petethedrummer

good job my turbo trainer bike is taking as long to build

blorg

Hermy wrote: »

Any idea what Duffield was commenting on?

His dinner?

jimm

Not a pure cycling quote, so just I posted it in the Broomwagon.

seamus

"If the wind is not against you, it is not blowing."
James E Starrs

iregk

From The Snapper when the 3 piece cycling club were training and Colm Meanie notices the last guy has an overly high saddle:

"jasus, thats gonna saw the boll!x off him!"

Hermy

blorg wrote: »

His dinner?

Of course. Silly me!:p

DirkVoodoo

Ok, quotes about cycling and not the sport, sorry:

The bicycle, the bicycle surely, should always be the vehicle of novelists and poets. ~Christopher Morley (I know of one!)

When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race. ~H.G. Wells

You never have the wind with you - either it is against you or you're having a good day. ~Daniel Behrman, The Man Who Loved Bicycles

The bicycle is the perfect transducer to match man's metabolic energy to the impedance of locomotion. Equipped with this tool, man outstrips the efficiency of not only all machines but all other animals as well. ~Ivan Illich, Energy and Equity, 1974

Home:Ballyhoura

ednwireland wrote: »

“(Training) doesn't get easier; you just get faster”

greg lemond

Thats been my signature since day one, I think it is just perfect!

sy

DirkVoodoo wrote: »

Equipped with this tool, man outstrips the efficiency of not only all machines but all other animals as well. ~Ivan Illich, Energy and Equity, 1974

Christ Dirk my eyesight is def failing as I misread your quote as corrected above:rolleyes: or maybe its my dirty old mind!

DirkVoodoo

sy wrote: »

Christ Dirk my eyesight is def failing as I misread your quote as corrected above:rolleyes: or maybe its my dirty old mind!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Sbe73D9WnM

sy

Great, haven't seen that one. Bet those guys in the cinema were disappointed. I do have a chainsaw.

petethedrummer

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