Cap'n Slow's Glossary of Terms and Other Words

Every sport has its vernacular. Vernacular is just a big word that means "Vern is spectacular". And why he's involved in every sport, I do not know. All I know is that in the VernAcular is often the aligned with "idiom". I had to look up what 'idiom' means. It means to rain cats and dogs.

Because cycling is a sport, it has its own idiom vernacular extravament. Many of the terms and phrases we take for granted as cyclists are completely foreign to those outside the inner circle. Take for instance "pedaling squares". To the unsubstantiated, this may seem impossible as there are no squares on a bicycle. How can a person pedal a square? And that is the reason I have decided to write down some of the terms we use in the cycling order (or cyclorder): because of square pedaling idioms.

So here are a few terms to get you started:


doping: the act of ingesting any substance. The UCI and WADA have determined that all substances are performance enhancing and thus anyone who rides professionally must adhere to a strict diet of air and the dew found on tree leaves. The tree leaves are on the banned substance list.
blood doping: intentionally (or unintentionally) replacing your current blood with blood from: 1) yourself, 2) another human being, or 3) any animal stronger than you. Gorilla blood is found to be superior to all others but causes unsightly leg hair, a dead give away of malfeasance to the doping control officials
road rash: the resulting abrasions and temporary disfigurement from crashing your bike on the pavement. Many cyclists wear their road rash as a badge of honor. The ones that are proud of their road rash should spend less time displaying their bandages and more time learning how to turn.
pure climber: a cyclist about 5'4" tall weighing no more than 120 pounds. Able to climb mountains faster on a bicycle than in a car. You will always find pure climbers gathered together at the top of a mountain looking uncertain as to how they will get back down as gravity has no effect on them.
sprinter: a big guy (by cycling standards) who rides with aggression and passion in the last 20 seconds of a 6 hour race. When a sprinter wins, he performs the traditional victory ceremony called "The Cipo" which involves mating multiple times with every podium girl. When a sprinter doesn't win, he complains incessantly to anyone who will listen. This is called "The McEwen".
tubular: Not to be confused with the surf term of the '80s, a tubular is a tire that costs $100, has to be glued on to the rim, tends to fall off when used, cannot be repaired when punctured, and is used exclusively by professional riders on race day and jack-off posers on the Platte River Trail.
cadence: a term to express how many beers per hour you can consume while watching a cyclocross race.
cyclocross: a form of racing that involves riding what looks like a road bike with knobby tires around a muddy, sandy course outlined by police crime-scene tape. Cyclocross was once the property of road cyclists looking to stay fit in the winter. Now, cyclocross races are the property of fat guys who begin training 1 week before the first race, drink too much after each race, and complain that all the other riders don't know how to ride.
cat-4: a racing category looked down upon by every higher category. cat-4 riders have the reputation of being poor bike handlers, out of shape, stupid, ugly, and lacking hygiene. never mind that cat-4 riders provide about 50% of the riders and thus the income for any given event. So shut your yap.
Power-Tap: not to be confused with what I gave your girlfriend last Saturday night, the PowerTap I'm talking about is a device that costs about $1200 dollars. It measures your power output and displays "you suck" on the little monitor.

So that wraps things up for today. Go forth and Cipo!