Some say the word hero is an overused, overly grand word, like genius. Picasso, for example, was a genius, and Einstein was a genius. Scott Walker is a genius and The Beatles – also a genius. On the other hand, your friend Steve who somehow always scored that twelver when you were 16 was not a genius, the Amazing Kreskin who could fool you into thinking he bent spoons with his mind was also not a genius. I’ll list a few famous heroes: Joan of Arc, William Wallace, Mother Teresa, Ernest Shackleton, Nelson Mandela, Gino Bartali, Martin Luther King Jr, Eddy Merckx, Harvey Milk, and Odysseus. But, are the Tenspeed Heroes truly heroes? Yes, and Odysseus is the Hero that the Tenspeed Heroes most resemble. If you are at all familiar with Homer’s Odyssey you know that he was the hero of the Trojan War (the big, hollow horse thing was his idea), after which, he spent ten years in his attempt to get home. He blinded the Cyclops, his men were turned into pigs by Cerce, and Cerce fell in love with Odysseus. All of these events and more parallel the adventures of the Tenspeed Hero in eerily similar ways. If, like much of the world, you truly want to understand the Tenspeed Hero, you have to read the Odyssey. We prefer the Robert Fitzgerald translation. Another important fact to recommend this book is that it is an epic poem. As cyclists, we love the epic: epic rides, epic breakfasts and epic poems.
Coming Soon: Winter Riding