I started construction on BikeReader.com in the summer of '00 to warehouse a large variety of
material that all had one thing in common: I'd seen it in a magazine and liked it. That mission
statement soon expanded to include cherry-picking from the web, the 20 Questions cycle, and ‘Over
the Transom' reader contributions. I even began soliciting haiku, which sent a shudder through the
respective haiku and bicycling communities.
My archiving knew no bounds. I spent a week typing in an entire out-of-print book I'd never read
before (‘The Man Who Loved Bicycles'😉 simply because I thought a few readers out there might enjoy
it and would appreciate a copy online. I collected public domain poetry, topical Calvin & Hobbes
strips, Dirt Rag Magazine covers, a collaborative work in progress about a couchbike, forum threads,
excerpts from books... anything that caught my eye.
Naturally, BikeReader provided a venue for my own writing, including my first published cycling-
related story, made-up letters to the editor which fooled a publisher, and a genre-bending-experiment-cum-
homage to Douglas Adams. Considering all the work I was putting into BR, it seemed only fair. If you
groove on my oeuvre [ouch], visit ‘BikeReader: solo' on the index page.
I pestered a wide variety of people to get their permission to reprint, from a former speechwriter
of President Carter and current incumbent of the New Yorker, to folks who I wasn't sure really
existed except as pseudonymous bylines in now-defunct but unerased webzines. In the end over a
hundred authors and artists responded, and BikeReader grew to hold 400,000+ words and a not
insubstantial cache of cartoons and photographs.
The site was meant as a refuge for anyone who desires quality editorial without the advertorial. As
I wrote in the FAQ, ‘Given the tiny market for cycling literature, and the micro-population which
savours a well-turned sentence, or at least an eccentric one, we never expected much of an audience
share.' That I've been rewarded with not entirely dire stats over the years is probably due to the
Googling habits of certain well-represented segments of the browsing public (‘Nude Cycling' comes
up quite often). On any given day 500 to 1000 unique visitors show up for a browse. It costs me
about £10/mo to keep the show on the road; as there's no money from advertising I hope to eventually
make it up in volume [baroom-boom].
Some of you will have already visited the site. I hope you liked it; if you didn't, I have a special
mailbox devoted to critiques. Due to technical difficulties which my ISP assures me will soon be
resolved, all such mail is currently trapped in a recursive loop and sadly unreadable.
For those who haven't stepped into my virtual parlour, consider this an invitation. BR is now
largely static, but it will continue to be available baring unforeseen circumstances such as an
electromagnetic pul--