The Wheels On The Bike Go Round And Round in Bicycling Magazine

This is a review of Bicycling magazine and as it says on the cover “mountain biking, road riding, you.” I like to bicycle. I wouldn’t call it a hobby because I don’t bike enough nor is my bike an expensive one. I do own a helmet, bike shorts and bike gloves looking much like the person on the cover except a different gender. He also has a helmet that fits better than mine and a bike worth about 10 times what mine is but that’s fine. I enjoy the sport enough to have picked up the May, 2001 issue of it to read and see what it had to say.

•This 112-page magazine costs $3.99 an issue. Their website is www.bicycling.com.

•I am really starting to notice what magazines pay people if they publish an article you send in: Bill Strickland, Bicycling's executive director, wants to hear about how cycling gets into your life but won’t pay you any money or give you a free subscription for doing so. However, if you write to the Forum section and your letter gets published and picked as the best letter of the issue, you’ll get a Park Tool Roll-Up Workshop worth $140. (Letters to the editor in essence).

•I found something he said interesting: It is his feeling that you know when you are a cyclist when your “life somehow wouldn’t be the same without cycling…” I guess I am not one, then, because my life would be fine if I never got on a bike again. Now if I never went to the gym again, my life would be different, so his point is well taken. I am a weight trainer but not a “real” cyclist. I can live with that.

•Each month Garrett Lai, Bicycling’s senior editor,demystifies and humanizes technology and each month Andrew Juskaitis, Bicycling’s test editor,rides with a different kind of cyclist and writes about it. I wasn’t impressed with either short article and found the printing, white against blue in the former and white against black on the latter difficult to look at.

•There is a 4-page section on Love: "why we ride and bikes and life", which has short articles in it telling us why people love to ride. They are just one or two paragraphs and a one liner I got a kick out of: “You not bike rider, you nobody.” said by Eddie B. The grammatical mistake is apparently on purpose. There is a great picture in this section of Jeannie Longo with others at the 2000 HP Women’s Challenge.

•There is a reader of the month poll and you pick your favorite. Each month 3 people are asked questions such as What gets you out there? And Wackiest event while riding? The winner gets a Bicycling jersey and you can vote at the website. There is no indication how I can be the reader of the month, perhaps the website will tell me.

•There is a 2-page article on “Our favorite helmets.” 1 ½ pages of the 2 pages is a picture of a helmet. I found this article helpful especially given what I said above. 3 helmets made it with the reader’s choice being the Specialized Enduro Pro for $90.

•A 3-page article on skills had great information especially for someone like me who is not a cyclist! You will learn the best way to ride through small streams and ways to stop with a flat. What I didn’t like about this section is the layout. I found it too busy, too chaotic. It made me feel like I didn’t know what to read first. I tend to like more organized magazines with less clutter. If there are many articles on one page, it is all right if they are lined up and neat. These articles are all over the place.

•I really enjoyed the 3-pages on “Your Bike-Care Calendar” and “Brilliant Reader Tips.” The calendar really is good if you are a regular rider. For example in August you should check your chainrings for alignment one time and there is a place to check it off but check you tire pressure 4 times.

•A 6-page article does Lance Armstrong well including some wonderful pictures. It is actually an interview which I like much better than an article about someone. I have read many, many articles where the person has not even been spoken with. Friends may comment on the person or it could just be a general article. This is an easy to read piece written, it seems, just as it was spoken.

㩊 pages of "Buying" takes up much of the magazine. You’ll find everything from bikes to books to your lust list. It is very good and I didn’t see it at all as an advertisement for the various companies. The articles looked at the product honestly in a no non-sense way. For example we find that the LeMond Tourmalet bike which sells for $1,130 is great if you want an unpretentious, upgrade-worthy bike for the long haul, but forget it if you are planning on racing because it will need some upgrades immediately.

•Nowhere in the magazine could I find anything about a subscription rate. I went to the website and there is a promotion that if you subscribe now you will get 2 free issues and 2 free gifts. After you get the issues and gifts you can cancel the subscription and owe nothing. It is a great deal if you can remember to cancel it in time. The subscription rate would come out to about $1.35 an issue taking the 2 free issues into account. The website looked great – you can just go to that and save the money!

In summary, if you are a sometimes rider, I can see paying $1.35 an issue for this magazine which has a lot of good information and a couple of interesting articles written with as few technical words as possible. Of course if you are an avid biker then the technical words wouldn’t bother you so in either case this is not a bad magazine.

There is not a lot of advertising which is unusual and nice to see. I found the layout somewhat confusing making me a bit uneasy while reading it if you can understand that a magazine can make one feel that way. I would not pay $3.99 for Bicycling no matter how avid a rider I were. I will recommend this magazine and give it a rating of 4.