Bikie: A Love Affair with the Racing Bicycle

by Charlie Woods (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2001

  $3.25

  Most of us learn to ride a bike as a child. For some, the marvel and joy of those first few seconds can spark a lifelong passion. This book describes one such love affair. Bikie is the story of Charlie Woods' lifelong fascination with racing bikes. Woods traces his love of cycling from childhood to to adulthood, recalling the challenges and new horizons which served as a rite of passage into manhood. Bikie explores a sport which has been a source of pleasure and comfort to Woods throughout his life. However, this is much more than one man's homage to cycling. The book analyses cycling as a national sport and a pastime intrinsic to British culture and heritage. Britain has a lively tradition of cycling. Today races such as the Tour de France draw huge British audiences, with coverage assured on prime-time TV. Through anecdote and analysis the bike is revealed in Bikie as a constant factor in a rather haphazard life - a source of solace and support with which to ride out every age and season, as well as a national tradition surrounded by history and folklore.

• Used

  Paperback
  2002

  $3.25

  Bikie lays bare the true heart of cycling. Every grass-roots enthusiast, keen racing man and elite professional has one thing in common: he loves his bike and riding it. The author pinpoints the source of his love, tracing its development in the individual, how it draws people into a community and then a tradition - creating a whole worldwide culture to celebrate that deep affection for what is a technological marvel and transcendent experience. Great champions, too, are inseparable from their bikes. They merge into them, becoming a composite image, figures of myth. As well as exerting an emotional hold, cycling, in its famous races, also mounts a living proof of exemplary virtues: courage, perseverance and self-sacrifice - gives us, in fact, a glimpse of the higher reaches of the human spirit. There is a sense of this mythical realm in every pedal turn, for once astride a handbuilt lightweight we are put in touch with the greatest riders of all time. Bikie is the story of one man's passionate involvement, but in its forthright sincerity it goes to the roots of what we all share.