I have always wanted to write down this sentence.
One of the reason I feel my entire road cycling blogging project (particularly the English stuff) was a failure, that me and the majority of my followers have different meaning of what is considered past and history.
I, working with history and its fictional representation daily, being most confortable with the time period between the 15th and 18th centuries (especially the 18th century), naturally trying to go back to the earliest era, the heyday of road cycling races, as possible, therefore I pay attention mostly to the first part of the 20th century.
It was never a secret,
I wrote frequently about why I find, for example, professional cycling in the 1920s fascinating.
Most of the posts I shared also on the social media are from this time period. But I never wanted to restrict the content of my project only to this time period, so occasionally I share post from the second part of the 20th century. For example about Eddy Merckx or Bernard Hinault.
Eddy Merckx , of course, is a giant in road cycling histor. It’s easy to create content about him. But the time period when he was active is already a boring one to me. PelotonTales was always about the cultural-historical context beyond the actual racing events, and I’m not interested to talk about the world of the 70s and 80s. It just doesn’t seem to me as part of the past. Particularly because I was born in 1980. Actually, it’s very easy to find the exact date in past when my interest ends. The famous snowy Liege-Bastogne-Liege, won by Bernard Hinault on the 20th April 1980. On the very same day I was born.
Interestingly, a few years ago I slowly started to see the 1980s and 90s a bit differently. It was a strange interaction between my own personal memories and an outsider point of view on these decades. This inner intellectual progress rooted most likely in the fact that I binge-watched cca 200 episodes of Have I got news for you from the Angus Deayton era (1990-2002) within a few weeks. It provided a different point of view that interacted with my own memories from this time period. I started seeing my first one and a half decade of my life as part of history.
But it still doesn’t effect my view on road cycling history.
The last 2 or 3 decades of the 20th century is not my cup of tea.
And yet, it looks like the majority of my followers have different view about what is history. I can easily imagine the progress how it happens: I share an image (and a link leading to one of my posts on my website) about Eddy Merckx, it reaches someone who says, “oh, I like Eddy Merckx, I like road cycling history”, starts follow mey and because I share content way out of their interest they just scroll over when I share something about the 1920s, and they’re active again, when an Eddy Merckx picture appears again.
Because for many people when it comes to the phrase “road cycling history”, apparently, it means something related to Eddy Merckx.
And it’s just such an impossible situation.
Because on the other hand I understand this all. At the beginning of the post I mentioned the phrase “being confortable with”. I get it, that unlike me, many people feel confotable with looking back only a shorter time in the past. The 1970s are enough old, they are far enough back in time. And everything beyond it just seems to be obscure and therefore unconfortable.
But yet again:
why I was able to reach only these people? And why I could reach those one who are interested in earlier periods of road cycling races?