Opening the door of the closet where an amateur athlete keeps his clothes is like peering into his soul. It is also a domestic session of psychoanalysis. A repertoire of jerseys, culottessocks or gloves are difficult to explain. Because there are the clothes that are used regularly; those that are specific to each season; those that are kept “just in case”, even if that “just in case” never comes; the bibs from who knows how many races, which sleep there, on a shelf, as a reminder that all that suffering, all that enjoyment, was true. In that small space, the athlete participates in a universe in which the value of a jersey spent is, on the emotional scale, tending towards infinity.
Balloonist (Libros de Ruta) is the book in which the Cantabrian writer Marcos Pereda shares what he considers to be the 101 commandments of a good cycle tourist. A guide drawn up from experience, which covers cycling ethics. Globero is a term used in the cycling world to name those people who exaggerate their achievements —more distance, more speed, steeper gradient— and can be extended to those who, with details such as clothing or gestures, denote a recent arrival in the cycling world. It’s not that bad either: everyone has been a globero at some point in their lives.
Pereda offers an entertaining book in which he takes sides with a way of understanding cycling. Through its uses and customs, its likes and dislikes and its contradictions, he builds a cycle-tourist constitution to govern this universe that extends far beyond the cupboard that holds the jerseys. A cosmos in which you can be like De Vlaeminck or Bugno, where the past always seems better, where you descend with an enviable style and where you would have managed the careers of your idols much better than they did. A universe in which, of course, the balloonists are always the others.
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