A Dog in a Hat

I don't read much (except for magazines and the rantings of other bloggers), but once in a while I manage to pick up a book and a make a dedicated effort to finish it. Lucky for me, the last book I picked up was an easy, entertaining read. Of course, it was bike related, which also made things easier (easier as in motivation, and not as in easy because I'm illiterate). The book I'm talking about is "A dog in a hat", by Joe Parkin. I'm sure that by now most of you have heard of this book, and I'm sure that when you heard about the book, you asked yourself "Joe WHO?!?!?" Joe Parkin left the states to become a professional roadie in Belgium in the late 80's/early 90's.

Now, I'm not gonna try my hand at writing a proper book review (although I suppose that this constitutes a book review since I'm talking about a book I just read), but I will say that this was a really good read. You get an upront, honest and blunt insight into the world of bike racing. It's not glamourous at all....there are drugs, payoffs, low race winnings, being yelled at by team directors. It's filled with plenty of hilarious anecdotes...there's the time that he felt like he was FLYING through a time trial, rode the best he EVER has, and still finished last on his team. Turns out that when he was going 55km/hr, the others on his team were doing 95km/hr....they got  some "help" from from their directeur on sections of the course that weren't under the watchful eyes of officials.

Like I said before, this is a great book, and for more insight into the world of Joe Parkin, click the link on his name in the first paragraph, or click HERE.