Due to the repetitive and samey nature of Singletrack magazine lately I didn’t even bother to let my subscription lapse, but have actually put in the effort* of cancelling it.
There are only so many articles on Dave A practically inventing bivvying that I can stomach, and frankly I was reading less and less of each issue as it arrived, and only noticing that it was still waiting to be read when the next issue turned up.
I have also had a long standing annoyance at the discrepancy between the words and deeds of the Director of Flowery Wank**.
The first example which wound me up was an exhortation to the rest of us to cycle commute more and go green. This, presumably, was to compensate for the massive carbon footprint he generates going on fact-finding trips to the Arctic***, or taking a parcel to Sweden (we don’t have post or couriers to Scandinavia, apparently), or driving around Europe to pursue a leisure activity. Hey, don’t try and make me feel guilty because running your car on chip fat doesn’t get you the green equivalent of papal dispensation. That just pisses me off.
It next came to a head with the anti-racer article in issue 50. In particular contradictory criticism of racers as dull, yet exhibiting “frat boy boorish behaviour”. This latter was rich coming from someone involved in an incident where a firework was launched towards the family campsite at a large race at 2am in the morning. I have since been corrected – as I, alongside 2,000 other people, was in my tent trying to sleep so didn’t witness the actual incident – that the launching of the firework was the act of two other people. At least one of these others has been man enough to admit it was “stupid and childish” behaviour. Other people, cough, are more belligerent. In which case I don’t expect them to get uppity when I point out the discrepancy between their words and their deeds.
Fortunately, having been held around the throat by an irate parent, Dave appeared to give up going to races after this, which meant the end of his bullying hecklerphone. Now I too have occasionally used a hecklerhone at races, but seeing as other people have tried to take the credit for my witticisms I like to think I have used it with more panache.
Anyway, back to Issue 50. I originally thought that Dave had been writing for effect, in which case it had worked, as they got another article out of it from a pissed off racer in Issue 51. The best reaction to my own words comes when I am writing for effect rather than out of actual belief. For instance I once made a throwaway but deliberately incendiary forum remark about “wide bars being skill compensators”, which was especially effective at revealing those who pigeon hole me as an XC jey-boy and haven’t seen me racing and riding on wide riser bars since at least 1997. The fact that I was merely repeating the caption from an even older Jo Burt cartoon was lost on them.
“What are we here for but to make sport for our neighbours and laugh at them in our turn”, as Jane Austen perceptively wrote.
But back to Singletrack. Both of the times up I pointed out the discrepancy between words and deeds people said I should make the effort to speak or otherwise engage with Dave to get context first.
The problem with that is that Daves words and actions are public, being as they are published in the aforementioned popular MTB magazine and witnessed by many at events across the land. If everyone who noticed this disparity between public behaviour and public writing – not that I suspect many people do – had to “email him and get the facts before discussing it” his inbox would be, well, probably the same size it is now. But you get my point. I hope. He should live and die**** by the public persona he creates.
Well I’ll be fucked if I’ll pay for the privilege of receiving a magazine that at least used to inspire a response, even if it was irritation, but latterly has become a shelf-filler. Enough is enough. Singletrack lost a subscriber.
The problem is this. In Issue 69 they only go and interview someone with the most interesting ideas on bike and component design around at the moment. If I’d had the patience to wait until my subscription lapsed I’d have been able to get an insight into his OCD.
In this case it is I who has been hoist by my petard.
* OK, so writing an email is hardly exhausting
** his title, not mine
*** Really. You couldn’t make it up. Admittedly this trip wasn’t in a Singletrack capacity. But, come on! I suspect he comes from that cloth of Green that merrily expends CO2 on our behalf to scare us about how bad it is if we don’t change our behaviour. How selfless. Now my own carbon footprint isn’t small – I’m a Westerner for a start – but I hope not to preach about it. Please let me know if I do.
**** Not literally. It’s a figure of speech. I just thought that in this day and age that might need making clear.
