I do not have a dog in this hunt, I really don't care one way or the other,
and I didn't read the book, but I will note the following:
- The story of George is interesting (click through the photo to read about
him). The guy rides a bike, and I suspect that Grant would enjoy meeting
him.
- Grant managed to offend me at some point in most issues of the
Reader. Over the years, RBW lost a good amount of my discretionary
spending as a result of various things I read in the Reader. I was baffled
and confused by positions he took, and comments he made, which seemed
snarky to me -- earnestly snarky, determinedly snarky, unecessarily snarky,
rather than good-humored, witty observations. I was a guy with a dozen
bikes in the garage, in a wide variety of flavors, all of them expensive,
all of them with lots of miles on them, some of them very racy, some of
them lugged and Rivvish, virtually all of them subject to ongoing
replacement (in other words, each of those hooks was potentially a business
opportunity for RBW), and I had the means to be able to buy the products
Grant was offering... and he repeatedly told me that I was clueless about
my almost lifelong avocation. I gather George had a reaction to Just Ride
which was along the same lines.
I recovered from my reactions to the Reader a long time ago. Water over
the dam. Shrug. I own and have owned Rivs. Yes, I appreciate Grant's
positive aspects, and contributions, while shaking my head at some of his
idiosyncracies as well as at what I think are poor business decisions --
hey, none of my business except that someone needs to finally tell him that
he tends to build top tubes that are too long (and too numerous, but I
digress). I'm not surprised that someone else might respond to aspects of
Grant's writing as I did. An analogy to Grant's style of
communication that occurs to me is a soccer coach who tells kids that they
should play soccer instead of football because football is stupid, and
people who play football are fools who have been tricked. Wouldn't it be
more productive -- and overall much more positive -- to invite the kids to
play soccer because it's a great game and they're going to have a blast?
Some of them might even wind up playing both football and soccer! How cool
would that be? (No, I'm not a football fan. It's an analogy. Substitute
"baseball" or "swimming" or "cycling" or "video games" in place of
"football", if you don't like the football analogy.)
I'm grateful that, unlike George, when I am reading for pleasure, I
have learned to toss something aside if I don't enjoy it. You'll never
find a review on Amazon from me that reports, "I hated this book from the
first page, and steadily hated it more and more until finishing page 742."
(Or worse, a one-star review that says something like, "I have tried this
in the past, I have always hated it, and yes, I still hate it and it still
sucks, and it gets one star!) On the other hand, occasonally I will go
back and check on something that I haven't liked in the past. BSNY is an
example of the latter, and references to him spurred me to wander over that
direction. Today's column confirms for me that, unless I take up pot
smoking on a Rastafarian scale, his writing will likely continue to hold
zero interest for me, although I did note his admission that his sense of
humor stopped evolving in the 8th grade, which helps to explain a lot of
things.
And now, back to your regularly scheduled programming. :-)
pb
On Monday, December 10, 2012 8:29:09 AM UTC-8, numbnuts wrote:
>
> http://georgethecyclist.blogspot.com/2012/12/grant-petersons-racing-acumen.html
>
> Regards,
> Chris
> Redding, Ca.
>
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