What’s your favourite cycling quote?
“Pain is a big fat creature riding on your back. The farther you ride, the heavier he feels. The faster you spin, the tighter he squeezes your chest. The steeper the climb, the deeper he digs his jagged, sharp, claws into your muscles.” Scott Martin
“When the spirits are low, when the day appears dark, when work becomes monotonous,\nwhen hope hardly seems worth having, just mount a bicycle and go out for a spin down the road, without thought on anything but the ride you are taking.” – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, January 18, 1896
“If you want to, you’ll find a way; if you don’t, you’ll find an excuse.”
“I won! I won! I don’t have to go to school anymore.” — Eddy Merckx, after winning his first bike race
“All bikes are equal. Some have better engines”.
“Think of bicycles as rideable art that can just about save the world.” – Grant Peterson
“Tequila tonight….tomorrow we ride!
“There is something uncanny in the noiseless rush of the cyclist, as he comes into view, passes by, and disappears.”–Popular Science, 1891
“Ride lots.” Eddy Merckx
“When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair or the future of the human race.” – H.G. Wells
“There is more to life than increasing it’s speed.” — Ghandi (a life-long cyclist)
“Cycling may not add days to your life but it WILL add life to your days!”
“It never gets easier, you just go faster” Greg Lemond
“I picked my head up during an interval and saw an enormous ostrich zigzagging in the road. I swung wide to get by – and just as I did he started chasing me. These guys can motor. I had to sprint to drop him.” — Tyler Hamilton
“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
“France could be invaded by Mars, but if it happened during the Tour df, nobody would notice”
“There’s someone in my socks”
“Absolutely unbelievable!” Frequently heard from Paul Sherwin
“Every time I ride, I become more machine and my bike becomes more human. I am the fuel my bike burns to run” – Author unknown
“Ride up grades – don’t buy upgrades.”
“I relax by taking my bicycle apart and putting it back together again.” Michelle Pfeiffer
“The bicycle is just as good company as most husbands and, when it gets old and shabby, a woman can dispose of it and get a new one without shocking the entire community.” — Ann Strong, Minneapolis Tribune, 1895
“Nothing compares to the simple pleasure of a bike ride.” – John F. Kennedy
“Eat before you are hungry.Drink before you are thirsty.Rest before you are tired.Cover up before you are cold.Peel off before you are hot.Don’t drink or smoke on tour.Never ride just to prove yourself.”Paul de Vivie, aka Velocio
And then there is the unique David Duffield ……
“The mountains look black and white. The white is snow because the snow is still up in the sky.”
“This is not for the lads back there who have any problems with their ticker-tockers!”
“If I wasn’t grey already, I’d go even greyer.”
“He’s ridden himself into the cobbles.”
“He crashed out through injury.”
“It could be all over bar the shouting, or until the fat lady sings.”
“And the streaker gets his organs caught and thrown out of the finishing straight! He nearly won by a short head!”
“2, 4, 10, 20: there must be 100 photographers here on the line!”
“Air-conditioning wasn’t invented when they built that hotel in 1821 – no, I’m exaggerating!” (describing a hot night passed in a beautiful old hotel).
“There’s nothing but huge sparse bits of green up there.”
“My French colleagues are going absolutely over the moon because this is the moonscape!”
“err….arghhhh….eh?”
and finally my personal favourite..
“He looks like the rough end of a rag and bone man’s trumpet” on seeing a exhausted rider
