There are hundreds if not thousands of cycling blogs of one sort or another "out there," but, at least for my tastes, few that one really looks forward to reading; the critical difference often (not always) being a certain literary quality; and this quality depends far less on education and learning than a certain wealth or "bigness," of imagination. The really interesting cycling blogs are written by those who have a sufficiently large view of life and the world outside of mere cycling. That is why, IMO, one of the great epic cycling travel books, Miles from Nowhere, was disappointing; the author simply hadn't the imaginative background -- hers was moderately upper middle class American bourgeois -- to write about her epic experiences in an interesting way.
OTOH, Velouria somehow brings a wealth of interior, if not exterior, human experience to her cycling descriptions. Ditto Grant. He is interesting because he is (I assume, judging by his writings) an interesting person. At the cultural antipodes to Velouria is Dave Moulton, still blogging (Deo gratias!) well into his 80s. Moulton is working-class Brit of the poor (read his recent blog about the early 1950s flu epidemic!!) pre- and immediately post-WWII generation, without any literary pretensions at all; yet, again, IMO, he has a breadth of human outlook that make his (quite honestly, somewhat illiterate) blogs very interesting; and I take into account my own particular and very idiosyncratic interest in 1950s-1970s working class Brit cycling culture. As a general principle, a certain breadth of imagination, that I cannot define, makes some bloggers interesting, while others, well qualified in so many ways, are not. Extending this to travel writing, of which I've read a great deal: Paul Theroux and Evelyn Waugh are or were nasty misanthropes --tho' perhaps Waugh *per *accidens* while Theroux -- sadly -- essentially, but their travel writings are interesting to read because they bring to their observations a context extending far beyond the details of the mere particular experiences they describe. Theroux comes across as a nasty SOB, but here too, his cultural or, let's just say, his *mental* amplitude makes even his misanthropic observations interesting, if not acceptable. Back to Lovely Bicycle: I expect that Velouria and I share very little in basic presuppositions of the true and real and the good, but she seems to have a human amplitude that makes me, at least, exult that her blog is at least momentarily back for perusal. * (Someone chastised Waugh for claiming to be a Christian while being so nasty. He replied to the effect that, "Oh, if I weren't a Christian, I'd be far, far worse.") On Wed, Apr 1, 2020 at 1:22 PM Joe Bernard <joerem...@gmail.com> wrote: > I saw this on the iBob and thought you non-Bobbers (there's a few) would > be interested. Hey, remember when I got in that big fight over there > because I defended her not announcing the end of her cycling blog? That was > great fun. Here's a new one which may or may not continue to be about > bikes, it starts with knitting a jersey. Welcome back, Velouria! 🙂♥️ > > > https://www.pancogcycle.com/blog/cycling-jersey-that-got-me-pregnant > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "RBW Owners Bunch" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/rbw-owners-bunch/1bb845cc-f89c-413b-9e1b-a4fb9a5867dc%40googlegroups.com > . > -- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Patrick Moore Alburquerque, Nuevo Mexico, Etats Unis d'Amerique, Orbis Terrarum -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/rbw-owners-bunch/CALuTfguZg61V-7n_Ffxduw5rZ3GgL%3DSVkms4ueW%2BnH4f%2Bh2bwg%40mail.gmail.com.
