When we were kids, my good friend Noah Rosen and I spent most afternoons and weekends racing our bikes up and down the neighborhood streets. At nightfall the races would end, and we’d retire to the basement with a bowl of popcorn to make forts, watch movies and play his father’s vintage pinball machine. Noah still remembers the evenings fondly, “ When we were playing pinball the room would be glowing in the darkness of the basement. But, maybe it was just our childhood enthusiasm.”

We’re still good friends and ride together whenever I’m back in Toronto. Noah now runs Velocolour and paints frames beautifully. Earlier this year we decided it might be fun to collaborate on project together, as we’d done at art school when we were kids. The idea was to paint a Pinarello with a unique design, which told a story. The frame would then be auctioned with the proceeds going to Right to Play, an organization that brings sport to children in disadvantaged areas. Within the project and design there are elements of our youth, which tie it all together.

After bouncing umpteen ideas off each other we agreed the frame should be painted with vintage pinball machine graphics. Noah succinctly said, “The connection made sense as a starting point. Childhood memories of us playing together, being kids, formed the design of the paint scheme, which would hopefully raise money for other kids to do the same thing.”

Often, while riding in the middle of a peloton or in the midst of city traffic I have the feeling I’m the ball within the machine, bouncing off bumpers, shooting through holes, and accelerating when it is clear. When I find the flow of the peloton, or the city traffic, the feeling is sublime.

Pinarello kindly donated a 55 cm Prince carbon frame for us to use as the canvas.

The auction will take place at the end of June. Details will be posted soon.

Here are some of the photos of the project development. I’ll post more photos of the frame in the coming days.

In thirteen years, the season of the professional cyclist has progressively become the cycle of my life. Years and months are broken down into a race program in which we plan goals, training, rest and time with our families and friends. Our year begins in November at the first team meetings and ends in late October as we cross the final finish line. As is custom with most team, Team Sky was together in January for the second training camp of our season. After a hard week of riding with my teammates, where we accumulated 35 hours of riding, my commitment is as it was over a decade ago. But, my perspective has changed as maturity has given me appreciation, experience and understanding, which have replaced a neopro’s angst.

Each morning at the training camp the team gathers around the mechanics and massage therapists who prepare our bikes, bottles and food for the day’s ride. As we zip up booties, strap up helmets and fill our pockets we chat about the route and the prescribed efforts. Inevitably we leave the hotel a few minutes after our planned departure as someone struggles to adjust his position or requires another layer of clothing. Without panic we wait and then roll away together in our small peloton.

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Le Métier 2nd Edition is essentially unchanged from the 1st edition that sold out in three months, with just a few notable exceptions. The 2nd Edition is paperback and comes in slightly more compact dimensions, making this edition substantially less costly than the 1st ed. David Millar and Christian Vandevelde both pen forewords. There is a new finishing stroke with an afterword about his 2010 Tour de France experience with Team Sky. The book contains four chapters — Autumn, Winter, Spring, Summer — which map the slow crescendo of a pro’s season.

Le Métier can be purchased at Competitive Cyclist.

A few weeks ago when the latest copy of Rouleur (issue 20) arrived in the mail. The cover  got me thinking about workshops. The cover shot was clearly staged but it sparked thoughts of real workshops, and specifically my father’s frameshop. There is something great about a work space where bikes are built from scratch. Creativity and the construction of something unique give a space an attractive element whether it is the back of a professional team’s truck or a dusty garage.

I’ve always been intrigued and enchanted by the builders as they brazed, filed and cut in my father’s frameshop in Toronto. Now, my lifelong friend, Noah Rosen, brazes and paints frames in the old workshop with the precision of a craftsman and the eye of an artist. He is passionate about his work and it is stirring to see his devotion to the job and his meticulous attention to detail.

Whenever I am back in Toronto, I relish my days in the shop and wish I had more time to learn from the artisans and artists who work there, as chat they over tea and discuss the things we love.

For the same reason, I also like watching the team mechanics at work on our bikes. They methodically check tires for cuts, true wheels, tape handlebars and pay attention to all the details that make the difference between good and great. Committed to doing their jobs properly, they rarely join us for dinner as they opt to stay out in the truck, late into the night, working on our bikes or preparing equipment for the coming days of racing.

Although he’s now retired my father was asked to build another couple of Mariposa frames for artist Paul Butler. The job was one that was worth firing up the torches for as he was asked to build a replica of Greg Curnoe’s Mariposa. Curnoe’s painting of the bike is now in the National Gallery in Ottawa, Ontario. And, Curnoe who died on his bike when he was hit by a car was a close friend of my father’s.

Below are a few recent photos taken by Dan Bereskin of the workshop, and my Dad building the Curnoe replica. The others photos are of different workshops my father has had over the years and a few of the mechanics, painters and builders at work.

His legs turning over fluidly, my teammate appeared effortless compared to his rivals. They hung over their handlebars; ragged and limp like old cloth dolls. Their bodies lacked the potency to contest for the victory.  Riding alongside him, I was panting, as he breathed rhythmically. As we crested the climb, the time gap to the breakaway was announced. It was several minutes ahead of us. Our directeur sportif soon ordered my flying teammate to ride on the front in pursuit. As we moved forward to begin riding in the wind, I asked him how he felt. “Really good.” Could he win? “I think so.” Throughout his career he had ridden as a domestique. And now, with the legs to win, he was asked to once again ride in pursuit.

The directeur, working with the knowledge he had, made his decision. Based on the riders’ knowledge, it was the wrong decision. I dropped to the back of the peloton, spoke with the directeur, explained the situation, and he changed the plans. My teammate ended up winning a stage and finishing second overall. From the team car, the directeur sees little of the race and relies on instinct, experience and the scant information he receives over the radios.

While recently sidelined by injury, I had the opportunity to sit in the team car through most of the Montreal Grand Prix. The experience was eye opening as the race within the caravan is entirely different. During a race we, the riders, have a limited and singular view of the caravan. We return to the caravan for bottles and food, pass through it when we are dropped, use the cars’ slipstreams to chase back on to the peloton and drop back to the cars with mechanical problems. High expectations are placed on the directeurs as they must react to our movements. Cyclists assume they have the right-of-way in the caravan and usually we do. It is said that with experience we become acrobats on our bikes. In turn, the directeurs become magicians behind the wheel, as they seem to narrowly avoid tragedy dozens of times during a single race. Their skills are impressive. In a hilly race their senses are constantly engaged as the peloton splinters into groups and suffering riders weave through the cars in an attempt to return to the front.

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On September 10 and 12th two ProTour races will be held in Quebec City and Montreal. (www.protourquebecmontreal.com) The circuits, which wind through the city centres are hilly and hard. In 1974 the World Championships were held in Montreal on roughly the same 12 km circuit which we will race on in a few weeks. The major difficulty on the course is the climb up Mont Royal– a tough ascent which shadows the city centre. We will climb it 16 times.

In 1974 Eddy Merckx dominated and won the race. The World title was the final race he needed to achieve the triple crown of cycling: victories in the Giro d’Italia, Tour de France and World Championships. In 1976 the same course was used for the Olympic Road Race and then through the late 80’s and early 90’s Montreal held a yearly pro men’s World Cup. Through the 90’s, and until last year, the city hosted the Women’s World Cup on the Mont Royal circuit.

As I was looking through the piles of photos my father has from a lifetime in cycling I found a few he and a friend, Gil Smith, took at the Worlds in Montreal. Some of the pictures are from the track events and some are from the road race.

In the moment everything seems lost. I skidded along the ground, sliding on the tarmac as if I were seated on a sled but with only a thin layer of Lycra between skin and rock. The initial impact was brusque and jarring — similar to what a driver feels when rear-ended by another car. Then came the impacts every professional rider expects: Riders crashed into me from behind, colliding with my torso as if a thug was kicking it with fury. The riders whom I had crashed into, who were on the tarmac before me, would have felt the same impact.

For months, we had all trained meticulously, sacrificed, dieted and focused to be ready. A slick road, a nervous rider, a careless maneuver can end a dozen riders’ goals. Seeing riders fall in front of me, I feared it could be over. The fear is momentary.

On the ground, I feel the burn of torn skin. But before I look at the damage my body has sustained, I am looking for my bike. I get up, realize it is broken, look for the mechanic who is running towards me with my spare bike, adjust my torn jersey and prepare to climb back on. A dozen riders around me do the same.

The team cars have stopped in the middle of the road, unable to pass due to the crash, as the directors and mechanics look through the bodies and bikes to find their riders. A few lay on the ground holding their arms or shoulders while bleeding profusely. Their faces grimace with pain. From past experience I know that I will see most of them back in the peloton in half an hour. Riders will continue with broken, pummeled, bleeding bodies. Their will is too formidable to give. The sacrifice to prepare for the race has been too concentrated to resign to the pain of injury.

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In 1972 my father opened a bike shop with his good friend Mike Brown in the center of Toronto named Bicyclesport. At the time, the bike shop was unique in a city of supermarket bikes as it catered to the serious cyclist. They built custom Mariposa frames in the frame shop, they repaired frames, there was a crew of top mechanics and the sales room was clean, crisp and colourful.

I grew up in the shop. From a newborn to a teenager I spent a significant portion of my life amongst the bikes.  The mechanics taught me how to fix my bike, I worked on my frames with my Dad as soon as I was old enough to hold a torch, and the new bikes, which lined the showroom walls were candy to my young eyes. The shop was a warm and welcoming environment in which to grow up. Being from the UK, my Dad always had the kettle on and the cookie tin full.

Almost four decades later, the shop is now closed and my Dad is retired. But, he still maintains a workshop, which has also become somewhat of a museum. He restores bikes from his significant collection and friends constantly drop by to have a cup of tea, chat about cycling, tinker with the bikes, or page through the old cycling volumes.

The teapot is still insulated by a cozy knitted by a mechanic’s mother. She gave it to the shop for the opening as her fifteen-year-old son Ted, who started out as ‘the shop boy’, had been given the job of making tea. Being from England she understood the importance of a good cup of tea and a good cozy to keep the pot warm. It is a simple woolen hat striped with the world championship bands. It has become a bit of symbol for the shop and has somehow weathered the years of use. Cycling brings unique people from all over the world together and many of those gathered in the shop around the teapot.

Attached are some photos of my father’s large collection of bikes, books and parts. The photos only capture a small part of the vast collection. The shop still feels like a home to me and, I think, to hundreds of people who share a common passion for the bike and have sat around the shop and talked over tea and a biscuit.

For more images of the bikes and shop see: www.bikespecialties.com, mariposabicycles.com and www.bicyclespecialties.blogspot.com

I am shocked at the allegations from Floyd Landis. They are completely untrue.  A few years ago,  I cycled the Vuelta a Espana race and trained two days prior to the Vuelta with him — one 6 hour ride and one two hour ride. I did not share or use any banned substances such as EPO when I was riding with him and am dismayed at his allegations. Landis is either lying or has mistaken me with another rider.

I have nothing to hide. I compete as a clean athlete.

I am proud to be an advocate for change in this sport and am proud to be an athlete who competes without the use of any banned substance. I have been a member of international cycling teams that have been staunch supporters of anti-doping and have required additional stringent testing of their athletes.

If there are any reviews of this situation, I am happy to participate in any and all of them.

For reference, a 2007 blog entry regarding a previous doping scandal. http://velonews.competitor.com/2007/07/rider-diaries/michael-barrys-diary-the-very-bad-news_12887