Just Ride!

Continuing the recent beardy trend, I picked up a book by Grant Petersen called 'Just Ride' at the weekend

As you can see it's plugged as a 'radically practical guide to riding your bike'. What this means is that it's aimed at those people who ride on the road but aren't racers, or 'Unracers' as Grant calls them. He has a very pragmatic and somewhat controversial approach to riding bikes - flat pedals, no need for special bike clothing, sensible bike setup that's designed to be comfortable for the average rider instead of fast for a well-honed athlete, a frank discussion about helmet laws.

I'm not too sure what the end market of the book is. Racer types will obviously pooh-pooh the whole thing, new riders will probably be freaked out by the fine detail of the articles and the average tourer or beardy will find themselves nodding in acceptance over the points that they agree with but unwilling to experiment with those points they don't - riding without bike shorts? Ouch!

But what really comes through is a love of cycling for the sake of cycling in and of itself, so if you like bikes and are willing to consider an alternative and well-discussed viewpoint then it's worth a read. Unless you're saving up for a new set of Zupps and training hard with your local cycling club in order to podium in B-grade crits, in which case you're probably better re-reading 'It's not about the bike'...