Richard Needham gave us The Seven Ages of Man:

spills, drills, thrills, bills, ills, pills and wills

 Stuart Lynne gives us The Seven Stages of Road Racing:

Here is Stuart Lynne’s educational  Letter from a Start-Finish-Start Line:

 The Seven Stages of Road Racing…

1. First time out – your goal is to not get dropped. You get dropped and hopefully find someone who also got dropped to finish the race with. When you get back to the car your ride already has his bike in the rack and is looking at his watch.

Start-Finish - then repeat and repeat

2. Seeing your first sprint – you don’t make the break, but do manage to stay with the pack and actually see someone sprinting at the finish. It is not known why they are sprinting as the break finished well over five minutes ago.
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Our Foreign Correspondent is just back from an  international cycling adventure.The big headline in The Greenwood Daily News today:

”Mayor Kettle found using GPS. UCI is investigating”.

Here is Nipper Kettle’s Letter:

Spring has sprung, the grass has greened, bet you are wondering where I is ..

On the road cycling between the meetings, lol.

April showers bring May flowers. The warmer weather has settled in the Boundary region as is evident by the numbers of cyclist hitting the highways and byways.

The yellow and black jerseys of the GFCC can be seen everywhere and the numbers turning up at club rides is growing every year.

Canada's Smallest City

We have many new riders and of all levels. As i look out the window this Saturday morning all I can see is blue sky and i get excited because I know it is ride day.

So fortunate to live in this area where its close to some of my favourite rides.

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We were willing to pay a high price for exclusive publishing rights for this Letter by Bill Riley, Barrister and Solicitor. The legal information was deemed so important, that the Editor-in-Chief agreed in exchange, never to publish any of his vast repertoire of lawyer jokes.

Please share this Letter with all cyclists.

Here is Bill Riley’s lengthy Letter from Lotusland  (he is a lawyer after all, not an editor. Oops, we almost broke our promise)

April, 2012

Dear Mr. Editor-in-Chief,

I write, firstly, to express my astonishment that you would grace me with the title, “Foreign Correspondent”, and, secondly, to get on with the task of earning that honorific title. Although it reminded me of my regular and formulaic insobriety a lifetime ago within the hallowed halls of the Foreign Correspondents Club (the “FCC”) during a stint in Hong Kong, I am now no longer certain, in the days of the www, exactly what constitutes a foreign correspondent. A correspondent is surely anyone who corresponds, writes a missive or notice and includes great poets, statesmen and evangelists, but also ranting bloggers, spam artists and those pesky collection agents threatening foreclosure yet again. “Foreign” could easily mean unfamiliar, strange or from outside, such as those nasty foreign bodies lodged deep in the road rash upon one’s buttocks, for example.

Bike Law

I must say, this “foreign correspondent” gig is feeling less distinguished by the moment.

Now, to the task. As I let you know in advance, a minor but persistent injury kept me out of competition in 2011(a gluteus medius in spasm, if you really care to know). I am on the mend though, and may yet contest some late season races in 2012, just when you least expect me. Until I can report more fulsomely on bicycle racing from a firsthand perspective, I thought I might instead feign expertise in the litigation of negligence and highway traffic laws as they pertain in British Columbia to cyclist/motorist interactions and, indeed, to collisions.

Rather than lecture you and your readers on the subject generally, I have chosen to report on three recent (2011) case reports from the Supreme Court of British Columbia, all of which concern cyclists being hit by motor vehicles. I can’t say that any of the three cases is precedent setting, but they are all current and illustrative of what cyclists and motorists might expect should they choose to seek recourse in the Courts for damages incurred on the road. They all address the respective duties and responsibilities of cyclists and motorists.

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From a faraway island, with a wee bit of British influence and charm, here is correspondent Peter McCaffery reporting on the inventiveness in the tradition of Graeme Obree. It looks like test run for upcoming HPV World Record attempt.

Struth.

Here is Peter McCaffery’s Letter:

APRIL 1ST. WHEELCHAIR RIDER WINS DUKE POINT TIME TRIAL

Dave's HPV Record attempt

On April 1^st. this year a remarkable event took place on the Duke Point Highway. Peter McCaffery, who was the commissaire for a time trial held on the Duke Point course can verify this. Peter had just sent off the last of the riders in a 15 km event and was about to jump in his car a get to the turn when Dave Kenny rolled up in a wheel chair (borrowed from his wife and said that he could beat everyone. It should be noted that Dave was a great time triallist years ago when he lived in the UK, having beaten competition record holder Alf Engers on a couple of occasions. Anyway, Peter pooh poohed the possibility of Dave being able to go more than a couple of hundred metres in the wheelchair, let alone do the complete distance and he bet Dave ten dollars that he wouldn’t place in the time trial.

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Ever wonder if Mayoralty can destroy your fitness?

And why winter should be limited by Municipal laws?

Nipper Kettle explains how and why in his Letter from a foreign location.

He has resisted repeat attempts by US authorities to annex his Principality.

“It would simplify our traditional cross-border trade“, the US Government says.

Read his Letter and hope for better weather.

  Nipper’s Letter:

There is not a lot to report from Greenwood/Grand Forks this time out.

But hopefully by the next report we will have a lot more miles and climbs in our legs.

Well, I have to say as a person who loves his time on the bike this has been one of these years when there has not been much time to ride.

After having been elected Mayor of Greenwood (!) it has taken up much of the free time available,

and with the cooler weather this year the trend is still wait and see.

Racing Through Greenwood

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For all those keen masters who want to gain competitive insight into a Gran Fondo ,
who is better qualified to give us the specifics than our own Stuart Lynne?
He is sending his Letter from a remote and foreign location in Lotusland.
Read on, whether you push for a top time or wish to take a mellow approach.
The season is full of Gran Fondo challenges; see where you fit in

With two years of Fondo’s under my belt (2010 and 2011 Whistler) I have come to some insights:

Gran Fondo in Italy

1. If you want to finish withing 30 minutes of the first group, then you need to start with the main front peloton and stay with it for as long as
possible. My estimate for last year (2011 Whistler) is that if you stayed with them until Britannia and then continued on at your best pace you
 had a reasonable chance of getting in under 4:00..

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Letters from our Foreign Correspondents will arrive twice monthly starting early next month.
Our new website needed a regular and solid feature for the Master cyclists and avid readers. This is it.

I searched for writer qualities based on my work with The New York Times Literary Review panel, where I recently resigned. Poisonous and vicious tongues say I was demoted to the Obituary section. That rumour is utterly fictional, totally fabricated and untrue. The truth is.., ah, never mind.

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