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Home > A Dog in a Hat: An American Bike Racer's Story of Mud, Drugs, Blood, Betrayal, and Beauty in Belgium
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A Dog in a Hat: An American Bike Racer's Story of Mud, Drugs, Blood, Betrayal, and Beauty in Belgium
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By Joe Parkin
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 (90 Reviews)
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List Price: $21.95
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Our Price: $14.93 Eligible for FREE shipping. Details
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You Save: $7.02 (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 1, 2008 |
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Binding:
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Paperback
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Pages:
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205
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A Dog in a Hat: An American Bike Racer's Story of Mud, Drugs, Blood, Betrayal, and Beauty in Belgium. A Dog in a Hat is the remarkable story of Joe Parkin. In 1987, Parkin left the comforts of home to become a bike racer in Belgium, the hardest place in the world to be a bike racer. As one of the first American pros in Europe, Parkin was what the Belgians call 'a dog with a hat on' - something familiar, yet decidedly out of place.. Item Specifications; Book Topic:Racing;
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Customers' Reviews:
Add Your Own Review |
 Get inside pro cycling, July 23, 2010
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if you are even the most casual cycling/racing fan, you'll probably love this book. Some of his stories had me laughing... and some left me wondering how much doping really goes on at the highest levels of the sport. Cycling is kind of a freak-show sport, and racers tend to be interesting but freaky, and this book has a type of retrospective view of someone that's been in the front and back of the peloton, and probably wondered what he was doing there. As an aside, I gave this book to a friend that actually raced with the author when the author was racing in Minnesota... my friend had nothing but postive things to say about the author.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful
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 Readable, but empty, May 2, 2010
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I expected a lot more from this book. Particularly when the book was about four years of a guy's life racing around Europe. Joe just basically tells us what he did in Europe. There's no real message or wisdom passed on to the reader. I was expecting Joe to enlighten me. That never happened.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful
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Laid back account of professional cycling in the 80's, March 9, 2010
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I enjoyed this book. I'm a mountain biker, but road biking is also an interest of mine. The book starts out with a little background, and then gets into the real life of a professional cyclist. It's written in a matter of fact way that leaves you making very few of your own assumptions about what Joe is trying to portray. It provides a lot of insight into what happens (or used to happen) behind the scenes in professional cycling during that era. It's also pretty humorous at times. I would recommend it to those of you who are interested in cycling. I would also recommend "It's Not About The Bike," by Lance Armstrong. If you've read it and enjoyed it, then you'll like this book as well.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful
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Don't Read This--Just Click "Buy it Now"!, February 13, 2010
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If you are even remotely interested in bike racing or what it takes to become a cycling pro, buy this book. If you are a fan of a book that you hate to put down--but if you don't you'll finish it in one sitting, buy this book. If you are like me and put off reading the last chapter because that would mean the end of a fabulous read, buy this book. The best outcome of Parkin's first effort--this book is so good he has finished another one! I can hardly wait to read it to see what follows.
Billy-Bob
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful
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Delicious memoirs from a "B list" cyclist, January 6, 2010
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Let me state upfront that I grew up in Flanders, Belgium (lived there until I came to the US at age 23 in 1983) and that I am a huge fan of pro-cycling (Eddy Merckx is a national icon in Belgium, of course). I stumbled onto this book, never having heard of Joe Parkin before in my life. What a delicious treat this book is.
In "A Dog In a Hat: An American Bike Racer's Story of Drugs, Blood, Betrayal and Beauty in Belgium" (219 pages), Joe Parkin brings the unlikely tale of a decent-but-not-great bike rider who takes the plunge at a young age to move to Belgium to try and make it in the pro-cycling world in the late 80s. At that time, Greg Lemond was one of the few other Americans in the pro-cycling world, but Parkin was nowhere ever near Lemond's level. Parkin moves in with a Flemish host family and immerses himself in the Flemish environment and becomes one of them, even learning the language well enough to have meaningful conversation in the local language (not sure of Lemond ever did that, but I could be wrong). Parkin is in American terms a minor league baseball player who occasionally gets called up to the majors, but it doesn't matter and it's not a slight to Parkin whatsoever: he lived the pro-cycling dream for 6 years of being there, how many American cyclists can say that in those days (1986 through 1991)?
Parkin's tales of the "kermis" (carnival, i.e. baseball level triple AAA) races make for riveting, and laugh-out-loud, reading. Perkin was a member of the 1988 US World Championship race which happened to be held in Belgium, a highlight of his career and where he did well enough to be noticed and get a better contract for the next year. Parkin's love and affection for Flanders, its people and culture, and the cycling world there shines throughout this book. What a fantastic book this is, and HIGHLY RECOMMENED for any true pro-cycling fan from those crazy days of the late 80/early 90s. Goe' gedaan, jong!
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
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