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A Dog In A Hat: An American Bike Racer's Story Of Mud, Drugs, Blood, Betrayal, And Beauty In Belgium (2008)

by Joe Parkin(Favorite Author)

3.8 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

1934030260 (ISBN13: 9781934030264)

languge

English

genre

Memoir & Autobiography

publisher

Velo Press

review 1: I thought this was such an interesting book. I'm currently living in Belgium, and I knew cycling was more than just a hobby, but I had absolutely no idea how intense this was!I have a new-found appreciation for the gruelling training and races these athletes endure, and Joe Parkin has a really engaging narrative style. I picked this book up at a "book dump", but I'm seriously considering going out and buying his companion novel! Can't believe someone discarded this book without ever reading it.
review 2: I never heard of Joe Parkin when I watched pro bike racing in the 1980s, the reason being that all you could ever see was the Tour de France (Channel 4 devoted a measly half-hour to it each day), and Joe Parkin never rode the TdF. He also never won anything, re... moreally, so his name was never one that was reported. He was relatively unusual, as an American rider in Belgium. By then, Texan Greg Lemond had already won the TdF for the first time, so it wasn't like there was no American presence at all, but Joe's was a different presence to Lemond's, away from the spotlight. He threw his all into being the 'dog in a hat' of the title - something normal doing something unusual - and therefore learnt Flemish, lived with other Belgians and shared rooms with them when he toured, immersed himself into the rather rough life of a Belgian rider at the mercy of Belgian weather, and its rather masochistic hard man culture. The low-level living of a faceless domestique comes over as very real in Joe Parkin's book; the horrible hotel rooms and beaten-up cars, the day-to-day illnesses and ailments, the craziness of team mates popping all kinds of drugs that, far from enhancing their performances, just added to their entertainment value for fellow-riders before they slipped off the back of the race. Joe tried hard to win, even just once, to the extent of undertaking the practice of bribery of the other guys approaching the line - a common one, even in obscure criterium races around nowhere towns - but all to no avail. He dabbled occasionally in performance enhancement, but in fact was uneasy with the drugs culture rife in the sport, and avoided it most of the time, possibly one reason why he never won anything in a period when all of the winners were doping. The book is an honest, and hilarious, look at the life of a pro bike rider with all the frills removed. My one criticism of it is that it needs an edit in places (For example Joe 'grabbed a bunch of brakes' to stop suddenly, many times) to avoid the repetition of phrases so good they stick out when repeated. He also assumes that his reader will know a lot about pro bike racing at times, with certain terms unexplained, and only clear from context. Nevertheless, an entertaining book, and I will track down his second as soon as I can. less

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