Cycling 50 Craziest Stories eBook Les Woodland
Download As PDF : Cycling 50 Craziest Stories eBook Les Woodland 
Professional cycling has been around for over 100 years, more than enough time for nearly anything imaginable to have happened. Whether it's the Tour de France racer who thought the worst thing that could happen to him was being forced to wear the Yellow Jersey, or the communist team director who insisted, on a whim, that a rider have a toe amputated, or the fit of jealousy that started the Giro d'Italia, the sport has an endless supply of examples of human folly. Les Woodland has the perfect knack for telling these improbable, silly, crazy, and absurd stories.
About the Author Les Woodland is a tall and balding man who never once troubled the judges in his lengthy and persistently unsuccessful career as a racing cyclist. Having failed to make even a mild profit at cycling, let alone a living, he took to writing about it instead. That was in London in 1970. His mother dismissed the idea as no job for a grown man. Mrs. Woodland is no longer with us and her son now lives in southwest France, 20 km from the route of the first Tour de France. But somewhere unseen, she is shaking her head in despair.
Cycling 50 Craziest Stories eBook Les Woodland
This is an uneven assortment of stories. The book is not especially well-written and doesn't not follow any kind of discernible organization, hopping around from the last 1800s to 1990s in random manner. Most of the stories are not particularly crazy either.I would say that the book is worth about $1.99 in Kindle format. I guess it's OK, but easily skippable.
Product details
|
Tags : Buy Cycling's 50 Craziest Stories: Read 13 Kindle Store Reviews - Amazon.com,ebook,Les Woodland,Cycling's 50 Craziest Stories,McGann Publishing,SPORTS & RECREATION Cycling,SPORTS & RECREATION History
People also read other books :
- She Fell For A Boss 3 Volume 3 KC Mills Books
- Doris Bountiful Bride Young Love Historical Romance Book 7 eBook Terri Grace
- The Ordination of Magda Bernard J McBride 9781453880357 Books
- Strictly Pimping 3 Volume 3 Derek Pratcher Books
Cycling 50 Craziest Stories eBook Les Woodland Reviews
This is a collection of quirky, anecdotal short stories about competitive road cycling, written by someone who has toiled as a racer as well as a writer. Les Woodland's writing style has a Nelson Algren/Studs Terkel feel, and you find yourself slowing down to savor every word. These are generally little tales about obscure people in and around the sport of cycling, and Les has a talent for making them entertaining and memorable in his two to four page stories. Many, if not most, of the stories are absurdly funny.
My favorite nugget is "How Not To Organize a Tour," which centers around Les' "brilliant" idea to have one stage of the Tour de France actually take place in England. (I believe this is the only story where Les plays a role.) While working at Cycling magazine, they mocked his idea, but now they embraced it. In self-deprecating fashion, Les says "One day people will thank me and talk of my vision and drive." But after preparing for the stage across the Channel with "Biblical zeal," the stage was a dismal failure. Bikes were impounded by customs. Crowds were thin. It was a logistical disastor. The racing stage was lethargic and uninspired. It was a failure..."Unknown to me and everyone else in Plymouth, things had started to go wrong. On the other side of the Channel, the advertising caravan had decided to stay in France. The people who fling out cheap junk from the back of trucks dressed up as dead flies or vacuum cleaners were not going to pay for a long crossing to a country where nobody knew the products they were selling...It was miserable as it was, driving a huge dead plastic fly around France to advertise insect spray; to go to some awful wet country where everyone knew the food was dreadful and where the fly spray wasn't on sale anyway was out of the question."
This is a must read for anyone who has ridden a road bike a long distance in bad weather, any classic Tour de France fans, or just anyone who appreciates finely-crafted funny little stories. I read this delightful book over and over, and when not being read, it sits in a bookcase next to a Thurber collection. For good reason.
a jumbled group of cycling stories that didn't reallygrab my interest, as a reader or cyclist
To enjoy this book you would have had to be a part of the era from which the stories came from
I like his writing, but was expecting more recent stories. Nevertheless, the book was fun to read and gives you a perspective of what was competitive cycling in the early years.
Fun book to read. Lots of little known facts and history of the tough men that made this wonderful sport what it is today. If you like cycling I highly recommend this book and you will enjoy the climbs more.
Not all the stories are all that crazy or shocking, but they are all interesting and amusing. Woodland is one of those writers that it's hard to get enough of because of his knack for crafting sentences the perfect way.
If these stories were not true, you would say "ridiculous, who expects anyone to read this stuff ?" Bike lovers, if you need a few chuckles on a tough day, buy it.
As an ex-road cyclist for a pro-am team I really enjoyed the madness and believe it or not some of these crazy goings on are not one-offs! Thanks for the laughs, and for bringing some old memories back. If you love cycling despite the modern era witch hunts (cry babies!), you'll thoroughly enjoy this book. The author has a great story telling ability, and I'll be reading more of his 'Crazy Stories' books.
This is an uneven assortment of stories. The book is not especially well-written and doesn't not follow any kind of discernible organization, hopping around from the last 1800s to 1990s in random manner. Most of the stories are not particularly crazy either.
I would say that the book is worth about $1.99 in format. I guess it's OK, but easily skippable.
0 Response to "[YGL]≡ Read Gratis Cycling 50 Craziest Stories eBook Les Woodland"
Post a Comment