Further Adventures in Rough Stuff

The bloody knee, hair style, and pipe fit well my image of an eccentric Brit.

Before there was mountain biking, or bike packing, or gravel bikes, or the Japan Odyssey, or the Transcontinental Race ... there was the Rough-Stuff Fellowship.

I recently stumbled across a Bicycling.com review of an amusing coffee table book about the British adventure cycling group, the "Rough-Stuff Fellowship", founded in 1965. 

One book was produced a few years back based upon the club's archive of nearly 20,000 photographs. The publication inspired members and former members to submit further photos, swelling the archive to 75,000, and necessitating a second book, Further Adventures in Rough Stuff, which I have just acquired. I highly recommend it as a gift for the cyclist who has everything.

I quickly realized that Positivo Espresso must up our game if we are to have true cycling "adventures". We barely carried our bikes at all on the snow-covered back approach to Mitsumine Shrine last month, and not OVER any real obstacles, just where the snow was too deep to keep pushing the bike along the roadway. And sure, this weekend we rode in the rain and dark, complying fully with Rule No. 9. But we have got a long way to go for bragging rights. Sure, we break things, but I have never ridden a tire with quite this style of patch:

And we need to increase the share of our rides that involve (1) rock climbing with a bike, (2) snow, (3) deep mud, or (4) water crossings.  (Only small versions of photos of photos below. Buy or borrow the book for the full sized full collection.)

We also need to master the "3 baguette" style.