building blocks

…we approach style in its broader meaning: style in the sense of what is distinguished and distinguishing. Here we leave solid ground. Who can confidently say what ignites a certain combination of words, causing them to explode in the mind? Who knows why certain notes in music are capable of stirring the listener deeply, though the same notes slightly rearranged are impotent? These are high mysteries….Style takes its final shape more from attitudes of mind than from principles of composition, for, as an elderly practitioner once remarked, ‘Writing is an act of faith, not a trick of grammar.’ This moral observation would have no place in a rule book were it not that style is the writer, and therefore what you are, rather than what you know.

– An Approach to Style (via billstrickland)

16 hours ago 4 notes

Well, the only way I see this happening is in an extended ride north. When I say that I mean a long, terrible, trying trip…
_{- The Idea of North, by Glenn Gould, 1967}

Script work, feature write-up and riding for the first Rapha Continental UK film, shot in Assynt, Scotland. Now on Rapha.cc.

1 day ago 2 notes

[The Broomway]

1 day ago View high resolution

(Source: youmightfindyourself)

1 week ago 64 notes View high resolution

[Short article I wrote about handmade bicycles and NAHBS, Monocle, June 2012]

2 weeks ago 1 note View high resolution

“If you ask an alpinist why he climbs a mountain he’ll reply: ‘Because it’s there.’

“… As far as I know, no one has ever pointed out what nonsense that is. The alpinist’s will isn’t prompted by the mountain, it’s there even without a mountain. The alpinist’s will is not so petty that it needs something as random as the shape of the earth’s crust in order to exist. Even if the earth were as flat as a billiard ball, there would still be alpinists: the true alpinists. The true alpinist would actually be ashamed to have his will moulded by things of an order as low mountains. So only one question could rightly be asked of the true alpinist: why do you never climb mountains?”

Tim Krabbe (from The Rider)

2 weeks ago 1 note