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A Dog in a Hat: An American Bike Racer's Story of Mud, Drugs, Blood, Betrayal, and Beauty in Belgium |  | Author: Joe Parkin
Publisher: VeloPress
Category: Book
List Price: $21.95
Buy New: $13.76
as of 11/23/2009 18:04 MST details
You Save: $8.19 (37%)
New (31) Used (12) from $11.99
Seller: bookrackrh
Rating:  85 reviews
Sales Rank: 21681
Media: Paperback
Pages: 205
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 9 x 6 x 0.6
ISBN: 1934030260
Dewey Decimal Number: 796.6
EAN: 9781934030264
ASIN: 1934030260
Publication Date: September 1, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
In 1987, Joe Parkin was an amateur bike racer in California when he ran into Bob Roll, a pro on the powerhouse Team 7-Eleven. "Lobotomy Bob" told Parkin that, to become a pro, he must go to Belgium. Riding along a canal in Belgium years later, Roll encountered Parkin, who he described as "a wraith, an avenging angel of misery, a twelve-toothed assassin". Roll barely recognized him. Belgium had forged Parkin into a pro, and changed him forever. A Dog in a Hat is Joe's remarkable story. Parkin lays it all out: the drugs, the payoffs, the betrayals, the battles for contracts, the endless promises, and the glory of racing day after day. A Dog in a Hat is the unforgettable story of the un-ordinary education of Joe Parkin and his love affair with racing, set in the hard place in the world to be a bike racer.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 85
Great read for cyclists, for others? September 22, 2009
Dr. Ashley Carruthers
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
As a keen amateur roadie I really enjoyed this warts and all tale of the Euro pro cycling scene. The drug taking scenes are hilariously sleazy and basically confirm everything one imagines went on in pro cycling in that era. The best part of the book is Parkin's description of how these hopped up fools behave once on the bike. Priceless. At times I felt he was reaching for anecdotes but really there are only a couple of hunger flats on this ride. Incredibly poignant towards the end. I wonder if it will interest people without permanent lube stains on their palms though... When Parkin casually describes superhuman feats on the bike other cyclists will get it but general readers might not.
 Parkin barkin' September 13, 2009
David Engle (North Platte, NE USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This brief history of a racing career is as gritty and close to the ground as you'll ever get when talking about the world of professional bike racing. Parkin keeps all pretension in check and takes a good, hard look at his racing career. Talk about true grit! This is one of those wonderful small classics in a very specialized genre. This is a book that sits right next to Paul Fournel's "Need for the Bike". Both represent the wonderful grittiness of having to ride for love and/or a livelihood.
Belgian sport. A hands on the handlebars look at cycling in Europe. July 5, 2009
Tom Plum (Roswell, NM United States)
This book may be too lean at around 200 pages and maybe it could have been longer but the anecdotes on travel and racing really do give you a birds eye view of the peloton. At the same time, there is no reason to belabor a point as well. Furthermore, it is informative on the country of Belgium with it's own proud sports traditions and in some ways, is similar to the Netherlands so it definitely has a travelogue aspect to it. I mean I first watched the Belgium "Red Devils" soccer team play in the 1986 World Cup and they caught my imagination but there has largely been a void in sports literature on Belgium, this helps quite a bit. To those who are interested in cycling, some names and events will be recognizable such as talking about Greg Lemond, Eddy Merckx, the Seven-Eleven team and things such as that. A thoroughly enjoyable read but because of its brevity, at first, I didn't quite give it the full top ranking but I changed it to 5 stars because it has really stayed with me and I'm glad I have it around vs. say reading a book checked out from the library.
The topic of "Kermis races" is indeed discussed in depth and I'd say the central topic of the book. Oh, yeah, he talks qute a bit about bike wrecks too, I guess that's what the public wants at least they say, for NASCAR races, seeing the wrecks. Also, at times, the thought process and sentence structures do not always seem to be complete. An example of this is when the author relates "We came back from Montreal", well, he didn't talk about going there in the first place. Furthermore, I'm not positive if he means the North American Montreal or if there might be another such named place in another French speaking part of the world as he is in but I think he meant Canada. If another topic often associated with professional cycling is discussed and that being doping is written about, it's not a big part of his story to me at least and is often in the background, part of the story like changing a flat tire.
I'd be remiss too in reviewing this, if I did not mention Parkin's foray into riding for the USA National team and that is certainly one of the highpoints of his story and an accomplishment that speaks for itself.
Really good bike book because honestly, a lot of us probably don't have that good of an understanding of the sport. I still don't but I only really got lost in one chapter of the book.
 Not sure what the point was June 27, 2009
M. Desoer (Bay Area, California)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I looked forward to this book because I enjoy following professional bike racing and I am of Belgian descent. Given the intensity of Belgian participation in the sport and the possiblity of "fish out of water" scenarios involving a young American in Europe, I had high hopes for an entertaining first-person account.
Instead, I kept wondering when something significant would happen, or what the story was building up to. We learn nothing about what motivated the author. How did he become a bicycle racer? What drives him? What really made him want to slug it out as a second or third tier cyclist on a grueling professional circuit? The chapters are a series of fairly bland snapshots of races and trainig, and the book builds to nothing. There is no clear indication as to why the author recounts certain incidents, and not others, because they lack real excitement, humor or any other importance. In fact, at the end the author seems to fade away from the sport based on his (a) lack of major talent and (b) failure to properly manage his own contracts and schedule. The "revelations" about drug use in the sport are a yawn. Gee, no kidding, professional bicyclits have used performance enhancing substances. In this day and age it is pretty much assumed, and the doping described in the book seem mild and primitive in comparison to those employed by the current "stars."
Maybe my expectations of the book were too high, but I really felt it merely recounted, with little insight, a series of fairly uninteresting events in which a lower-tier bicyclist was involved several years ago.
A cyclist's cyclist June 11, 2009
sap (MI)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
We have here a true cycling story, but one that's not just for cyclists or cycling fans. I think through the writer's style he opens the sport up enough for anyone to enjoy, but I have to admit that I probably only own the book because I am a lifelong casual/amateur cyclist myself (about the same age as Joe).
Many reviews speak of JP not being a "winner" or on a winning team, but this book exemplifies the lives of many racers down through the years. The domestique (translates as "servant") as they are known, cycle for the pure love of the sport and give their all for the team. They turn themselves inside out to ride at the front into the wind or to pace up a hill, they give up their bike for a team leader if he has a mechanical, they carry extra food and water, they live through vicarious glory and the sense of accomplishment that only comes from working hard. It's an everyman's story, but Joe chased his dream instead of wondering about what could have been. He measured himself against the best in the world in his "trade" and found out where he stood.
I think this book gives personal, conversational, "warts and all" insight into the life of a guy many of us would envy, but few would have the courage to emulate. A great read.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 85
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