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Bobke II
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By Bob Roll
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 (35 Reviews)
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List Price: $16.95
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Our Price: $11.53 Eligible for FREE shipping. Details
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You Save: $5.42 (32%)
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Availability:
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Usually ships in 24 hours
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Publisher:
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VeloPress
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Date:
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September 10, 2003 |
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Binding:
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Paperback
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Pages:
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200
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This new collection from cyclist Bob Roll reflects his unique perspective on the professional racing circuit and his own brand of dry humor. Straightforward yet sly, funny but perhaps a little crazy, Roll calls it like he sees it. Here are anecdotes about the Tour de France, international mountain-bike tournaments, training struggles, heart-stopping crashes, and personal vendettas, all of which provide a fascinating inside look at the world of championship cycling.
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Customers' Reviews:
Add Your Own Review |
 Hilarious, August 17, 2010
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Just the kind of guy I want to ride with.
Very funny, often irreverent, stories that made me laugh out loud at many points during my read.
Just buy it!
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful
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Savage, brutal, ripping your entrails out, April 9, 2010
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This book rips the heart out of the chest of International Cycling and sacrifices it, still quivering, to the Gods of Thunder. With this book you can approach the brink of sulfuric hell and if you're lucky and don't inhale too deeply of its Evil, back away with your Sanity Intact. It is as if you tore into the Belly of the Beast with a rusty chain tool, removed the entrails, and waved them over your head like a mutant lasso.
I enjoyed this book, but I don't think Bobke could have written it without a huge assist from Hunter S. Thompson.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful
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 What are these 4 and 5 star reviews talking about???, December 10, 2009
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I love Bob Roll. (Or I used to before he got his nose so far up LA's backside for 3 weeks every summer) Even then, I still enjoy his raconteuring on Versus. I love cycling. I love reading about cycling. I do NOT love this book. The writing is incoherent, it really adds very very little to the sport or even his stories about the sport. I read about half of it. Skipped further on to see if the writing and COMPLETE LACK OF ANY ATTEMPT AT EDITING ever improved. It did not. Book now gathering dust somewhere on the lower realm of my nightstand. I bet there are a million stories that actually happened that would be hilarious if he took the time to clearly write down what he is talking about. Instead it is page after page of crud. What a missed opportunity. The publisher really ought to be ashamed, as well as Bob. It looks like they just rolled this junk out to snare whatever bucks they could from cyclists who will buy any cycling book. There some good stories, so it gets 2 stars. But you have to suffer through a lot of drivel to find them.
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful
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Cycling viewed from a candid professional, September 13, 2009
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Bobke tells it like it is, which for the novice may seem itense and a bit over the top, yet at the level these boys play at...it's go big or go home. Daily grinds of hard miles, coupled with language barriers, cramped hotels with no a/c, and treated like outsiders, Bobke stands his ground and gains respect and lot of bumps and bruises. There are other cycling books out, yet if you like a candid overview with a slightly twisted sense of humor...this book is for you.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful
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This book is about Bobke, not bike racing..., April 27, 2009
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Some of the negative reviewers are disappointed by this book because it doesn't really explain bike racing. They're right, but they're also missing the point. This book is about Bobke, not bike racing. As such, it's very much worth reading.
Many books about cycling seem based on the idea that the riders are lonely, obsessed heroes who are willing to die face down on a peak in the Alps for a moment of glory. Or, alternately, they're doped up cyborgs who are willing to die face down for a pile of money.
While there probably are some examples of both stereotypes, the reality is that, as Bob Roll points out, in Europe, most professional cyclists are working class guys. And so is Bob Roll. That's what makes this book so interesting to me-- and maybe why it disappoints some other reviewers.
Roll is a real oddball as a professional cyclist. (And I don't mean his off-the-wall irreverence, though that is the 800-pound gorilla in the room whenever Roll is present.) Roll's oddness as a professional is that he enjoyed a long career near the top of the road racing and mountain biking worlds, yet he was a thoroughly unexceptional rider. He wasn't really fast, he wasn't a great climber, and he certainly wasn't a great tactical mind. However, he was as tough as a $2 steak. Throughout his career he was willing-- and able-- to race with a nearly maniacal focus on helping his team win. He was relentless, to the point of making his competitors believe that he would ride through walls if need be to beat them. And maybe he would have done just that; who really knows?
In this book, Roll takes us with him as he toils deep in the peloton, as he crashes in horrendous piles of screaming riders, as he pauses to throw up on a French farmer's front lawn, as he goes on fanatical ten-hour training rides with Lance Armstrong or alone in the snow on closed highways in the Rockies. These things, and not the races themselves, are what professional cycling is like for a real-world, working-class guy with a relentless work ethic and a boundless love for cycling.
I'm not sure I'd enjoy being with Bobke on a long car ride, and I most definitely wouldn't want to be trapped in a stalled elevator with him, but I really enjoyed this book. If a regular guy can do an international sport at a high level, Roll is that guy. Read this book, and you'll probably never look at bike racing and the men who do it in quite the same way ever again.
This book isn't really about bike racing. It's about Bob Roll-- Bobke-- a true American original.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful
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