| Velodrome
There is nothing I like more than when someone who has been involved in
cycling longer than I have been alive turns to me in front of a crowd
of people and asks if his English pronunciation of a technical French
term is correct.
It's one thing when someone who doesn't know me very well and hasn't
known me for very long does something like that. It's quite another
when someone who remembers when I thought my lone 800 rmb bike was
expensive asks me a highly technical question regarding how things are
done with regards to bikes, bike shops, bikes as a sport, or racing in
other countries.
I won't go into great detail regarding why one of my friends has come
up with the idea that what Haikou really needs is a velodrome. For
starters, even knowing all the people involved, and knowing all the
background involved, it's just way too complicated. Lets just say that
it isn't quite as harebrained as it sounds at first gasp.
The harebrained part of it was asking me how much I think it should
cost to build a simple velodrome. Just a guesstimate. Based on my
knowledge of how much something like that might cost in the US.
Notwithstanding the fact that I've never even _seen_ a velodrome let
alone ridden in one and have no connections with the construction
business in any country, my friend thought it was perfectly reasonable
to ask me this question.
I'll cut him a bit of slack since this particular person was introduced
to me by way of the Tour de Hainan. And, so far as I know, he wasn't
actually present on any of the occasions where I had to ask one of the
comissaires the correct word in English cycling jargon since, if I knew
it at all, I only knew it in Chinese.
But, hey, I've got the internet... and the internet has the
rec.bicycles hierarchy of newsgroups which is an amazing resource for
finding out obscure bits of information that may or may not be
tangentially related to cycling.
Anyone have a ballpark figure idea of how much it costs to build a
simple velodrome?
I'm pretty sure the best guesstimate my friend currently has is one
that has a few too many zeroes and comes from his making the mistake of
asking someone on the Olympic Committee. That sort of person is not
only likely to have a wildly different conception of 'simple' they are
also likely to figure in the cost of buying land in one of the most
expensive cities in the world.
-M
|