Re: Since March 30

On 4/13/2025 5:37 PM, zen cycle wrote:

On 4/13/2025 12:32 PM, cyclintom wrote:

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I don't know, maybe he can't tell the difference but then he said that unlike my experience racing, he never looked down at friction shifter lever position and the actual pros I spoke to said that they always looked at the levers before reaching down. Andrew said he never looked down but I don't think he was referring to racing. Certainly you know where the position of the lever is but in racing you don't want to be grasping around trying to figure out what gear you're in.

 gawd....
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjU2-x6Hcik
0:47 - rider in center of screen: Freddy Maertens.
1:31 - rider with black sleeves: Jan Raas. Yes, he looks down, but only after he has already made the shift and is putting his hand back on the bars
1:32 - Rider in green in the draft of Jan Raas
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CHjZQSNo2s
  4:47
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ce6Hy57Cl8Y
  1:12 - the rider on the left
17:19 - rider on left ( Greg Lemond)
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akmRLwI80_o
1:38 - rider on the left in light colored jersey
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U33kCGqzn8I
0:13 - Eddy Merckx
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_4uRR1Q1mA
1:35 - rider in center of screen
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ym7bfpp-gUw
2:05 - 3rd rider in line (might be Greg Lemonde?)
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCQ32pTF2Tg
2:50 - Alexi Grewal
11:08 - rider on the right
 in other words, you're still a fucking idiot
 

So if Flunky never looked he was never up in the thick of the racing.

 Actually, the opposite is true. as all of the above videos show, and every person in this forum who has commented attests, there's no need to look down if you have a fucking clue. You're likely confused about what any pro you claimed to have spoken with ever told you, if not outright lying about it.
 

No big deal since he was racing for the sake of racing and not to be on the front.

 You wouldn't know the difference.
 

When I was racing I sort of took it serious and although the cat 4's and 5's (I was 5) started a minute behind the Cat 1's, 2's and 3's, I would ride right up to the tail end group of 3's and then be too exhausted to do anything but ride with the tail end 3's. They did race amoung themselves but eventuslly the fast 4's would catch and pass us. My racing was all wrong and I should have stayed with the fast 4's which would have put me ahead of all but the fastest 5's and I would have advanced. But that was just at the time I damaged my lungs so in the end it didn't matter at all. But I can say that I was a 5 that was as fast than the slower 3's. For all that's worth.

 If you took it seriously, you would have eventually become a cat 4, then a 3, possibly even further. The fact that you never made it past a 5 shows that you never took it seriously and sucked at it anyway.
 So what did we learn from tommy's rant? Only that I continue to live rent free in his head and he has an abnormal obsession about me not dissimilar to the fetish the floriduh dumbass has for frank.
  

Yes to all that.
But simpler, a priori, why would a man look at a shifter when he could look at the cute girl riding next to him?
(I actually rode into a parked truck doing just that. Shed lots of blood learning to watch where one is riding.)
--
Andrew Muzi
am@yellowjersey.org
Open every day since 1 April, 1971