About Legs

Colorado Springs, Colorado, USA

20 Replies to “Hard as Nails”

  1. Outstanding!!!! The message here boys & girls is “shut the fuck up & ride”. Yes..people ride like that, bikes can take the abuse, & you can smile with reckless abandon throughout.

  2. Thats right .Hard as nails ! How did our sport transition from sheer grit to a bunch of skinny whining softies ? That was truly the day when action spoke loud and clear and weeded the pussies out . Beat it laddy , go home to your sister ……….

  3. “Even though I got this bike on a great pro-deal, there is no way I’m submerging this bottom bracket”-2010 A.D.
    “AGHHH!!- the further I chuck this bike across this stream, the least amount of time I’m submerged carrying it. Damn!! whole thing sank…” -1970 A.D.

  4. Wow. Outstanding footage.

    And if you watch for just a couple of minutes, you’ll know why stuff like this simply doesn’t fly — indeed, hasn’t flow for a long time — here in the USA.
    We like to eschew personal responsibility, and then for good measure, when we fall down and go boom, we sue The Other Guy. And the reason it works is because there is so much buy-in for the whole damned system. It’s easier to take it to court than to assume personal responsibility and/or develop stronger relationships with your neighbors by helping each other out more locally.

    This film says a TON about community and context.

    These guys are wearing leather hairnets, which serve only to calm Mum’s nerves about Her Boy as he rolls his bike over steep grades and fords streams and sometimes — yup — sometimes falls down, goes boom, and mostly gets back up again. A different time, to be sure, but also a very different place.

  5. I just took another look at this vid.
    Half these guys weren’t wearing hairnets or even hats.
    I counted five bikes that had visible derailleurs.
    Does that mean everyone else rode SS?
    Staggering.
    The beautiful part is that they’re probably mostly just a buncha regular guys, not the scientifically-trained, well-paid professionals we see today.
    Definitely one of the most beautiful cycling vidoes I’ve seen. Thank you again for sharing it.

  6. People don’t want to ride that way anymore because they don’t want to damage their carbon wheels, carbon frame, carbon… whatever. I’ve been on plenty of rides where someone doesn’t want to take some road because it’s too rough on their wheels…. fuck man really?

  7. The load time for me was so long I could not finish watching it. I love the jumping into water and throwing your bike in. Instant cool down. We’ve gone from that to carbon bikes with SRAM and little fucking bottles of GU. Soft as fuck… btw… nails are not that hard.

  8. Today’s “riders” are Ivan Drago. Those gents were Rocky Balboa.

    And I like me some eggs for breakfast, but pussy that I am, I cook ’em.

    Yo.

  9. Beth, you made some damned fine points. And you’re right. Still, I just can’t make sense of how cross went from a glorious melee in the woods to a couple laps around the park. Carbon? Gears? Irrelevent. My fixed Crosscheck takes me anywhwere and everywhere. My fixed 1976 Raleigh Supercourse does it alittle faster. My fixed 2004 Redline Monocog mostly waits for me to find time to hurt myself again. Where was I? Oh yeah…

    1950, that video was. Like I said to my fixed gear buddies-Had I known in ought sixtysomething that such a sport exsted, I’d a begged my parents ragged to get me into it.

  10. mike, I googled the fuck out of “rule #5”. And I been workin’ the vodka, straightnochaser, for awhile. Care to enlighten me?

  11. not much riding in that vid. i see running, walking, falling, throwing, tripping, rolling, wading, swimming, carrying ok ok a bit of riding here and there.
    but still hardest vid i’ve seen in a while