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Friday, March 1, 2019

How to (Legally) Watch Pro Cycling in 2019

Right about now, my friend Whit is probably skipping around his living room with a Belgian quadrupel, singing, “It’s the most…wonderful time…of the year!” It’s classics season, folks: Cobbles and crosswinds time, and some of the best race-watching in pro cycling.

Not quite a year ago, I wrote about how, after years of fits and starts, American fans of pro cycling finally had decent, legit options to watch the sport. The wrinkle was there wasn’t one option, there were three, and getting access to all the important races still required a bit of financial finesse and timing.

Now, just in time for the start of the pro road season*, I’m pleased to report that things have simplified significantly, and it’s now possible to get a full 12 months of live, legal coverage of essentially every major men’s (and some women’s) road, cyclocross, and track race for $200—or less than $17 a month.

Last year, the three main options were NBC Sports Gold, Fubo, and newcomer FloBikes. But you needed a weird combination of Fubo and Flo to cover it all, and that meant timing the start and cancellation of monthly subscriptions around certain important points on the race calendar and, ideally, finding someone to split your Fubo membership with.

That’s not an issue anymore.

Fubo’s still around, but FloBikes’ slate of races has expanded considerably and now essentially covers all of Fubo’s schedule. And because it’s so much cheaper—FloSports offers access to over 20 sports on a sport-by-sport basis rather than bundled like Fubo—that, unless you’re using Fubo as your primary OTT service for regular TV-watching, you won’t need it, nor will you need to time monthly subscription starts and stops. Instead, you’ll just need annual subscriptions to NBC Sports Gold ($50) and FloBikes ($150) to cover the full calendar.

Who Covers What

NBC Sports Gold’s calendar covers mostly ASO-promoted events: the three-week Tour de France and Vuelta Espana, plus other major ASO races, like Paris-Roubaix and Liege-Bastogne-Liege, and a few stage races like the Tour of California. You also get track and cyclocross World Cup coverage and the UCI World Championships. There’s some women’s coverage, like the la Course one-day event, and Fleche Wallonne.

FloBikes covers pretty much everything else: the three-week Giro d’Italia, the women’s Giro Rosa and Tour of Norway, and pretty much every major one-day or stage race on the WorldTour and European Continental calendars that’s not on Gold, plus the other major cyclocross series (Superprestige, DVV, Soudal, and Brico).

Women’s coverage still lags behind the men, unfortunately, but Flo in particular has made a point of trying to air both when broadcasts are available. The only thing not on either NBC or Flo’s slate? Pro mountain biking, which thankfully is taken care of with Red Bull TV’s free broadcasts of the men’s and women’s World Cup (both gravity and cross-country disciplines).

I’ve been using Flo since last June, and I have yet to find a race I really wanted to watch that wasn’t available there or on NBC Sports Gold. I’ve had a few isolated instances where coverage didn’t work properly (Gold had a major crash during Paris-Roubaix in 2017 that left subscribers in the dark), but both have largely been reliable, glitch-free services. Flo coverage is available online, via iOS app, and through dedicated apps for Roku and Apple TV devices, and offers live viewing and replays, if you happen to miss all or part of an event.

How Much They Cost

NBC Sports Gold is sold only as an annual subscription ($50), and runs from July 1 to June 30 of the following year. Right now, a subscription is $20, but bear in mind that runs only through June 30, when it will re-up at the full $50 annual rate, good through June 30 of 2020.

Flo is sold annually ($150) or monthly ($30), and renews monthly or yearly on the date you start. There’s no contract; you can cancel either at any time. If you want to try it out monthly to start, you can change to an annual plan by e-mailing customer support.

Getting on My Soapbox

If you like watching pro cycling, please pay for the coverage you watch, because finally we have legal options that don’t suck. If the commentary grates on you and you want to run audio from Sporza or RAI or Eurosport in the background, go for it.

But if people continue to use VPNs just to get around paying for coverage and Flo decides it’s not financially viable to continue the service, then it’s just going to force us all back to the dark ages. If you value this coverage enough to watch, then value it enough to pay for it.


*“Who’s this moron who says the pro road season is just starting?” you protest derisively. “The WorldTour started in January with the Tour Down Under and we’ve had a dozen other big races too!” Geddafugouttahere with your UAE Tour, people. Real road racing starts with Omloop Het Nieuwsblad; everything before that is pre-season. That’s my hill and I’m willing to die on it.



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How to Maintain a Mechanical Watch

So you decided to go old school and buy a mechanical watch—not just one with hands and a dial but one that’s powered by a coiled spring and gear train instead of a battery. Congratulations, you’ve got one of the few man-made objects that’s been built the same way for the past 200 years and will keep running for the next 200—but only if you take care of it. I’ve compiled a few pointers for keeping that watch running well and looking good, so you can pass it down one day after it accompanies you on all of your adventures.

One of the most satisfying things about owning a mechanical watch is that it requires your interaction in order for it to function. Unlike a quartz watch, a mechanical timepiece doesn’t get its energy from a battery. Instead, the power that drives the hands around the dial comes from the unwinding of a tightly coiled flat spring that is meshed with a train of gears. This “mainspring” requires regular winding, which, if you bought an automatic, will be wound up as long as it’s on your wrist (and you move every now and then). If it’s a hand-wound watch, or an automatic-winding watch that has been sitting on your dresser for a few days, you simply need to spin the crown a couple dozen times a day, which is an oddly gratifying chore.

While winding a watch is a simple process, there are a couple things to be aware of. First of all, don’t wind it on your wrist: the angle can be awkward and put lateral stress on the winding stem. Second, if it's a hand-wound watch, don’t overwind it. When it feels like you can’t turn the crown anymore, don’t. At that point, it’s good to go.

Setting the watch is equally as simple: pull out the crown and spin the hands to the desired time. If it has a date mechanism, there’s a slight caveat: avoid adjusting the date between 8 p.m. and 3 a.m., since that’s when the mechanism that automatically advances the date is engaged, and forcing it can break delicate components.

Though mechanical watches may seem fragile, they’re actually remarkably rugged, a fact that has been proven out on countless battlefields, mountain peaks, and coral reefs for the past hundred years or so. However, watches do have a few enemies, namely shock, magnets, and moisture. Wrenching on your truck or splitting wood are best avoided while wearing a mechanical watch. You should also avoid setting your watch on devices containing strong magnets, such as the TV, your laptop, or stereo speakers, as this can magnetize the movement and set your watch running too fast. If this happens, take it to a local watchmaker or jeweler, who can quickly demagnetize it.

Your watch is likely rated for some measure of water resistance, which is plenty for almost anything you could get into. But before you go dive the Andrea Doria, make sure that your watch’s crown is pushed in all the way. Most dive watches have crowns that screw down tight to the case for an extra measure of safety. A 30- or 50-meter-rated watch is fine for swimming, sailing or snorkeling, but if you plan to go scuba diving, 100 meters is considered the minimum safety margin for water resistance. And if you spend a lot of time in the water, it’s a good idea to have the seals replaced annually and the water resistance checked.

If you wear your watch frequently, it’s bound to get a little dirty and, like any other piece of gear, should be cleaned. Make sure the crown is pushed or screwed in, then have at it with an old toothbrush and some water. Try to avoid using soap, as it can compromise the watch’s gaskets.

Leather straps look great and last many years, but they can get pretty gnarly from sweat or moisture, so if you’re wearing your watch in the water or sweat a lot, consider a steel band or a rubber or nylon strap. Changing straps is an easy task: simply get yourself a small forked tool and pop off the spring bar, then swap in the new strap. Changing straps is a great way to change the look of your watch without spending much and can become fairly addictive.

Some regular maintenance for your watch is a good idea. Given that a typical mechanical timepiece ticks almost 700,000 times every day, those gears and springs need attention eventually. So every five years or so, it’s a good idea to have a watchmaker clean and lubricate the movement. Ask them to swap out the gaskets while they’re at it.

A mechanical watch is still one of the most reliable devices you can own. There are countless watches from the middle of the last century still in common use today, keeping time as faithfully as the day they were bought. I can’t think of another everyday product that can claim that record of sustainability and longevity. So wind it up and wear the hell out of it, but take care of it. It will reward you by collecting the time of your life.



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Serenity found, NH

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“Two Medicine Lake. Glacier National Park” [1941] by Ansel Adams

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Early morning saunter over the Southern Pyrenees

Early morning saunter over the Southern Pyrenees submitted by /u/ben_ksmith
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