You can please some of the people some of the time....

I weakened yesterday and made a purchase of the publication formally known as the 'comic' or Cycling Weekly as it calls it's self nowadays. Now I'm not going to comment on the fine way their top international journalists arrange a seemingly jumbled selection of 26 letters into cohesive sentences (eh?) But I thought I should mention the letters page. You see, truth be told, the only reason I bought the 'Weekly' is to read the the letters page. My thinking on this went something like this 'I haven't come across any mad people in a few months, I kind of miss them, but where oh where can I find out what's happening in the world of the crazy? Ah, I know....' And you know what, BINGO! in fact BINGO WITH BELLS ON. The first letter I read expressed discussed at the way British Cycling are running the sport in the UK. It ran along the highly original lines of 'Stop messing about with the track and start winning something on the road, BC have no idea what they are doing and until a British rider wins the Tour de France twice in a single year... blah, blah, blah...' I guess the people that write this are either a) employed by CW to have a laugh or b) the miserable old fools who never acknowledge you when you pass them on the road. Either way it brightened my day to such an extent that I actually forgot about the pain in my legs.

I expect there are cyclists in the America who complain about Lancey boy not winning the Tour whilst he was retired, just as there are Belgians that complain that Merckx never landed on the moon and was therefore crap. It seems that there are people who will never, ever, ever, ever be happy with the success that their chosen sport brings. These people fall not into the 'is the glass half full or half empty' camp, but more into the glass is the wrong shape and filled with the wrong liquid camp.
Back in the day (as I believe today's young people say) I was employed to take groups of cyclists out to Europe to watch bike races. And it was then that I discovered something true about human nature, in that 'There are some bloody miserable twats out there, who should be slapped around the head'. The way the trips worked was simple. It was along the lines of: 'Here's the itinerary, you will see the race at these points, ok? Happy? Right, pay up and lets go watch the race'. I would then field complaints that included the classic 'The water in my shower is too hot!' followed by 'Well why should I have to turn the temperature down?'. I soon realised that the best thing to do with a fool is to laugh at them. So a big thank you then to Cycling Weekly in reminding me that whilst I sometimes feel I take things in cycling too seriously I'm still not even on the scale of some people.

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