In Denial: Living the Dream

(Irony.)

For what seems like thousands of years now, New York City has been a frigid perdition of white. Buffeted by a barrage of blizzards and ticket blitzes (as opposed to ticket blintzes, which are delicious) cycling life here has been as miserable as it has been alliterative. In fact, it's been so miserable that for the last few weeks I've had one of those new Mission Workshop designer hobo's bindles propped up next to my front door, and I have been waiting for that final straw that will send my bindle, my €20,000 fixie, and me permanently decamping for the secure paradise on Earth that is Beaverton, OR.

But then, a meh-racle! Suddenly, the snows did cease, and the temperatures did rise, and now the forecast now looks like this:

Sure, Monday the 21st looks kind of crappy, but as you can see things improve once again the following day:

This has transformed my bindle of despair into a man-purse of joy. In fact, like an overzealous groundhog or a hapless Cat 4 who misreads the lap cards and celebrates victory with five more to go, and even though we'll almost certainly get "Hot Karled" again by more foul weather soon, for my own mental health I've decided that it's already spring and Lob damn it I'm behaving accordingly:



Some people may need loud guitar noise produced by people with beards to get excited, but I find it's Lou Rawls who really makes me want to tear winter a new ****. Really "feeling" the multimedia presentation of that video, too:

That pussy's like, "Fuck winter."

Of course, now that it's spring and the streets are largely free of snowdrifts and members of the citizenry huddled in the slit bellies of stray pitbulls in a desperate attempt to stay warm, that means I can once again ride a bicycle with skinny tires. Therefore, I decided to treat myself to a brand-new road bike complete with all the features and buzzwords of today--that means things like crabon, and BB30, and ceramics. So I did what the pros do when they need new bikes, which is visit Craigslist. "Spare no expense and gimme the best you got!," I told my indifferent desk lamp since there was nobody else to talk to. Finally, I found what I was looking for:


It had everything:

One thing confused me though: When exactly did road bike cockpits get all gigantic? And why are the bars so high? Is this what Rivendells will look like in the year 2160 when Grant Petersen a cyborg?

This would not do. What's the point of all that delightful ceramic and crabon gewgawgery if you're going to ride it sitting bolt-upright with your arms stretched out in front of you like you're some Fred-tastic puppeteer or an old-timey sleepwalker?


Anyway, I asked my desk lamp if I should still buy it and I interpreted its complete lack of any response as an emphatic "No," and so I ultimately decided to stick with my own bike. Instead, I'd spend the money I saved on an "epic," like the Rapha ones I'd seen on the Internet--you know, the kind of ride that's so long and intense you've got to stop once in awhile and stare pensively at your "bidon," like this:

On group rides everywhere roadies speak in hushed tones about a rider so transcendently Fredly that he can will Cytomax from the bottle to his lips simply by staring at the nozzle through his precision optics. This is that Fred:

Next, I set about choosing a destination for my "epic," and I ultimately decided on Baffin Island, mostly because it has a mountain on it called Mount Odin, and really, what could be more "epic" than climbing Mount Odin?

(With a compact crank this climb should not pose much difficulty.)

Also, Iqaluit is widely known as the Portland of Nunavut, and I figured it would be a good place to stop and take pictures of myself insouciantly "enjoying" an espresso in a café in the gentrified part of town:

Unfortunately, though, two things forced me to abandon my plans. Firstly, it turns out that, even though companies like Best Made Co. and Base Camp X will sell you designer axes and $1,300 fire pits, they will not as of yet sell you an artisanal seal club. (I had no intention of actually clubbing any seals, but I figured if I was going to "make the scene" in Iqaluit I should at least look the part.)

Secondly, I consulted a popular search engine for cycling directions to Baffin Island and the thing came up bubkes:

So there goes that.

Speaking of Best Made Co., you'll no doubt be excited to learn that they are hiring! There's only one problem, though, which is that they won't pay you:

Nevertheless, despite the lack of compensation, apparently their employees never want to leave:

Our internships are un-paid but are flexible and stimulating, so much so that we often find most of our interns never want to leave.

I guess if you're a liberal arts graduate with an ample trust fund then dealing with tedious matters like depositing paychecks and filing an income tax return are really little more than inconveniences anyway. (Not to mention more work for daddy's accountants.) Incidentally, you'll note in the above photo that Taylor the Unpaid Intern is making a rope ladder:

I'm sure you can climb that with total confidence, though I wonder if it will be offered for sale or if Taylor will keep it and use it to climb down from the roof of her parents' Hamptons home this summer after sneaking an American Spirit.

Also, speaking of abandoning "epic" cycling plans, Lance Armstrong has announced that he is retiring:

Honestly, this announcement seems entirely gratuitous--it's like Larry King announcing that he's old. I thought everybody already knew Armstrong was retiring after the Tour Down Under, and the only logical explanation I can come up with that he didn't like getting upstaged by Hosni Mubarak. In any case, now that he's re-re-retired, maybe he can spend more time puttering around in the garage, like in this video sent to me by my associate at rubbery light concern Knog:



Lastly, a reader in San Francisco has sent me this photo of a bicycle u-locked to a garbage can:

I think that's how messengers announce they're retiring.

Lost Cause: Take My Lane--Please!

I am a firm believer in the psychological and spiritual benefits of unburdening oneself through the act of confession. For example, I should tell you that it was I who put the Clenbuterol in Alberto Contador's steak, though I only did it because Andy Schleck promised me a position as Team LAY-oh-pard's choreographer and spirit coach in return. Also, I'd like to take this opportunity to confess that I've been looking at way too much smugness porn.

People have long argued that consuming too much sex-themed porn can be psychologically damaging, but I could not disagree more--in fact, I've got another Internet browser window open to promiscuousheatingventilatingandairconditioningtechs.com open even as I type this, and not only am I experiencing no ill effects whatsoever, but I've also learned more about humidity control as it relates to coitus than I ever thought possible. Smugness porn, on the other hand, is incredibly bad for you, because what happens is you build up a tolerance to it. First, you start with the softcore stuff, like Bikeportland, where in honor of Valentine's Day yesterday they had a post called "Love and bicycles: A photo essay:"

(Getting married to your bicycle is Having Way Too Many Cats 2.0)

After awhile though, once you've seen one person with severe social phobias and deeply-rooted commitment issues get married to an inanimate object, you've seen them all. In fact, not only is it unexciting, but it's also depressing, because you realize that by now they probably hardly speak anymore, and instead they sit in opposite corners of the room reading the paper while the bride flirts surreptitiously with her vintage end table.

So then you move onto the harder stuff. After all, Portland's only the second-most bike-tastic city in the United America of States, and everybody knows the first-most most bike-tastic city in Canada's bedpan is Minneapolis, home of the "Stupor Bowl:"

DOWN BY THE WEEP HOLE: The story of the Stupor Bowl from Nathaniel H. Freeman on Vimeo.

This sort of smugness porn is far too scatalogical though, and even the most determined smugness porn addict probably can't find almost a half-hour to watch a bunch of people who look like they could use a shower talk about riding around in Prince's hometown while drunk.

So once this doesn't do it for you, there's only one place left: Streetsblog. I'm sorry to report that this is where I wound up last night, and it was there that I found the most hardcore smugness porn I've ever seen in my life:



Yes, like all the best smugness porn, it came from Holland (or maybe it came from the Netherlands, I'm not sure which) and in this particular video the entire country of either Holland or the Netherlands is outraged when a person in a pickup truck hits a group of cyclists and causes them minor injuries:

Obviously, this sort of smugness porn is dangerous on a number of levels. Firstly, unless you actually live in either Holland or the Netherlands (which, even though I've been there, I'm still not convinced actually exists), there is obviously almost no circumstance in which a driver would actually get in trouble for hitting you on your bike. Secondly, even if by some miracle the driver actually did get in trouble, there is no way that the general public would be outraged by the driver's actions. If anything, they'd be outraged at you for inconveniencing the driver with your unregistered and unlicensed vehicle, and they'd say you brought it on yourself by not wearing a helmet.

Clearly, the cyclist who watches this sort of smugness porn and then thinks he or she will be afforded any sort of consideration on the streets is the same as the frat boy who watches too much sex-themed porn and thinks that women prefer a first date to end with a face full of semen.

What makes this video even more painful is that, here in New York, the city actually had the temerity to pretend that they liked us for awhile. Clearly though, those days are over, and the backlash has arrived like a dominatrix's whip punishing the posteriors of the smug. Consider this news report (via Gothamist) about the dangers of the Prospect Park West bike lane in Brooklyn:

(If video embedding fails because the administrator of this blog is an idiot then simply use this link. I apologize for the inconvenience and please come again!)

In it, there is sensational footage of an ambulance being forced to use the bike lane to circumvent the "traffic jam" the bike lane has supposedly caused:

Of course, the footage is only a few seconds long, and in fact before it cuts away the cars actually begin moving, most likely because they were simply waiting at a red light. Moreover, neither the reporters nor any of the people interviewed in the story point out that it was probably a good thing the bike lane was there, since it would have been a lot harder for the ambulance to drive through all the parked cars that used to be there before it was installed. Still, Park Slope residents like Steven Spirn are horrified:

"It makes one much more emotionally tense and frightened because you don't have speedy access to Prospect Park West so you can get to the hospital."

I have a feeling that a lot of things make Steven Spirn emotionally tense and frightened. In fact, he strikes me as the sort of person who might have a breakdown while ordering a half a pound of lox, and is almost certainly what psychologists call a nebbish. Now, I have nothing but sympathy for Mr. Spirn and his ailing 94 year-old mother-in-law, who no doubt criticized her son's driving, career choice, and general attitude the whole way to the hospital, but I also wonder how much trouble they really had getting there since it's only like two blocks away:

I'm sure in the Netherlands they'd just throw bubbie in a "bake feets."

In any case, it's bad enough they're giving this guy airtime because he got stuck in some rush-hour traffic and he's trying to shut up his mother-in-law, but it's even worse when the reporter pretends that the real victims are the cyclists:

"But ambulances using the bike lane as a traffic detour could also be life-threatening. Imagine being on a bicycle with a speeding ambulance bearing down on you."

Right, because speeding ambulances never bear down on you in New York City on streets that don't have bike lanes. I'd much rather encounter one in the Prospect Park West bike lane than in the way it usually happens, which basically involves trying to make my way through a bunch of moronic drivers who don't have the sense to pull over. For some reason, drivers will run lights all day long, yet when there's an emergency vehicle behind them at an intersection and they have to do it they just sit there stunned. Anyway, as a cyclist, I think having a bike lane but having to yield to an ambulance in an emergency situation once in a great while is better than not having a bike lane at all, though apparently this guy disagrees:

"I wouldn't want to be riding my bike and have an ambulance coming straight at me," says this obvious shill just before accepting half a pound of lox in compensation from Mr. Spirn.

But the traffic! What about the deadly traffic!?! Well, I've ridden and driven along Prospect Park West many, many times, both pre-and post-bike lane, and the only difference is that, well, now there's a bike lane. Sure, there's some rush hour traffic, but there was always some rush hour traffic. Plus, as the video shows, this traffic is still exacerbated by exactly the same things, which are delivery trucks and idling cars:

The rest of the time, though, traffic seems to move fine--even with all the double-parkers and delivery trucks. Still, "A spokesman from the ambulance and fire unions tells me there's tremendous concern about the traffic congestion caused by bike lanes and whether it will impede emergency response," says the reporter as she stands in front of a completely empty street:

But none of this changes the fact that people in New York just don't like cyclists, which is why politicians who want to become mayor are now distancing themselves from cycling as much as possible and harnessing the awesome power of coddling drivers:


Yes, if you ride a bike, people really, really don't like you:

The relatively new push to spread the bike lanes further across the boroughs is only fueling the deep divide between drivers and bikers.

Yolanda Lopez of the Bronx is no fan of the the new pro-bike regulations.

“I hate it with a passion,” Lopez said.

“They put up a new sign, I make a wrong turn, I get a $90 ticket and points on my license. Nothing’s happening to these guys,” said Kate Helpern of the Lower East Side.

Kate Helpern is clearly an idiot, since not only are cyclists subject to the same fines as drivers, but the city is also in the middle of a truly "epic" cycling ticket blitz. Then again, many of the cyclists who get tickets for running lights and complain that drivers never get ticketed are similarly idiotic. You'd think most adults would have outgrown the whole "How come I get punished but he doesn't?" thing years ago, and I wonder if Ms. Helpern was slurping from a juice box during her interview.

But while that attitude may be irritating, it's not nearly as frightening as victims who side against other victims. Consider the author of this article (a few months old, but I'm just seeing it now), who thinks Martin Erzinger was unfairly targeted because he was rich:


Sure, it may seem unthinkable that anyone could believe that a driver who hit a cyclist, left him for dead, subsequently blamed his actions of "new-car smell," and then received as a sentence only 45 days of charity work and a year's probation was unfairly treated, but I guess he's just bitter since nobody looked out for him:

The clear implication is that Erzinger is getting off easy because of his wealth. I think this is probably 100% backwards.

I suspect that if Erzinger hadn't been a wealthy guy driving a brand new Mercedes Benz he would never have been arrested for the hit and run.

In 2007, I was struck by a white mini-van while crossing the street in lower Manhattan. The van sped off after throwing me across the street. My leg was shattered. It's now held together with a rod made of a special metal alloy. Walking took months of physical therapy. I can still feel the pain on some days.

Thanks to eye-witnesses we found the owners of the vehicle. Her insurance paid for the extensive surgery required, as well as the extensive medical bills. She had no real assets, so I never pursued her in civil court. The police, after the initial interview at the scene of the crime, never followed up. It was just a hit-and-run, after all.

Maybe things are different in Eagle, Colorado. Maybe the cops are super-vigilant about pursuing hit-and-run drivers. Or maybe Erzinger was arrested because he was driving a fancy new car.

Wow, he's like an ethical salmon, like the guy in "Life of Brian" who loves the Romans:



Speaking of ethics and not understanding something, Tom Boonen can't understand why Alberto Contador is being cleared by the Spanish cycling federation:


“They may have to change the whole system and accept that an athlete can have a certain product in his body without him being held accountable for it. But that is a completely different story.”

"Certain product" indeed. "How come Contador gets to have drugs but I don't?"

Cycling: Where the Elite Meet Defeat

Today is the holiday known as "Valentime's Day." Valentime's Day started way back in 1977 when St. Valentime performed the Miracle of the Immaculate Contraception, in which a night of unprotected partner-swapping debauchery at storied swingers' club Plato's Retreat resulted in no unwanted pregnancies whatsoever. Ever since then, people who are having sexual relations with each other observe Valentime's Day by exchanging tokens of affection and by ordering from prix fixe menus in restaurants as they sit awkwardly next to other couple doing the exact same thing and try desperately to ignore the disconcerting sensation that they're merely going though the motions.

Of course, if you're the spouse, life partner, or significant other of a "roadie," Valentime's Day is to you what Thanksgiving is for turkeys--a nightmarish day of profound disappointment. This is because roadies observe Valentime's Day by realizing that morning they forgot all about it and presenting their partners with hastily-wrapped and half-empty containers of pomegranate berry Cytomax. Their spurned partners then spend the evening sobbing in front of the TV and drowning the pain in pomegranate berry Cytomax-tinis while the roadies do the obligatory interval sessions that leave them too exhausted for coitus.

Speaking of roadies and their significant others, one reader informs me that charismatic professional bicycling sprinter Mark "The Man Missile" Cavendish has acquired his very own girlfriend and everything:



Not only that, but this reader has also forwarded me a link to a decidedly unsafe-for-work (unless you work in the fields of pornography or cosmetic surgery) website that features various pictures of Cavendish's girlfriend presenting her breasts in different and interesting ways:

As you can see from the above screen shot, this website taxed my LarryKingifier Censor-O-Matic 2000 SL Bosom-and-Genital-Obfuscation Machine to its very limits. Personally, I think it's a shame that the simple breast is such a loaded (so to speak) body part in our culture that it is socially unacceptable to display them without placing the visages of decrepit talk show hosts over them. I mean, we were all weaned on them after all (breasts in general, not Peta Todd's specifically--presumably Cavendish is the only one being weaned on those at the moment.) Then again, if guns are outlawed only outlaws will have guns, and if bare breasts are legalized then Peta Todd might be out of a job, for it's that very taboo that allows Peta Todd to make an entire career out of creative breast presentation. She does have an impressive repertoire too, including but not limited to:

--"Here's my breast between my knees;"

--"Here are my breasts while I search for loose change in the sofa;"

--"Here are my breasts 'accidentally' spilling out of my top;"

--"Here's another lady looking at my breasts;"

--"Here are my breasts as well as the breasts of two of my friends, making for a whopping six breasts!"

In any case, I'd hate to reduce somebody as complex and nuanced as Mark Cavendish to a stereotype, but at the same time I think it's probably fair to say that he's what is colloquially known as a "breast man."

Indeed, perhaps the only symbol more potent, loaded, and titillating in our culture than the female breast is the bicycle lane. In both cases, some people find the sign of them arousing, others find them offensive, and still others think children and old people should not be exposed to them:

I'm not exactly sure why this is, though maybe they see them as a choking hazard. (I would argue that if you choke on either a bike lane or a breast then you're probably using it wrong).

As it happens, the Daily News of all newspapers recently published an editorial about bike lanes that, to me at least, was actually rather sensible:

Even though the guy who wrote it, "No Impact Man" author Colin Beavan, is a lunatic who spent a prolonged period of time without using toilet paper.

Anyway, Beavan's argument can be summed up thusly: "Bike lane make city nice." Unfortunately though, many New Yorkers are very resistant to the notion of bicycle lanes, since somehow they've gotten the idea that cyclists are "elitist:"

JohnE
10:38 AM
Feb 13, 2011

Hyperbolic drivel! Haven't seen any cyclists using their bike lanes in the past several weeks despite the fortunes spent catering to the elitist cyclists, too cold maybe? Not too long ago I was decked by a wingnut on a bike as I stepped from a store with some packages. The elitist class riding their bikes are no more responsible than the working class trying to get to work on pothole scarred streets and highways that have now become the norm. We seem to have money for more bike lanes but may have to lay off uniformed employees that we all depend. Incomprehensible!

Yes, I too am sick of all those elitist cyclists with their artisanal custom bikes and their designer bags:

(Negligible Smugness Quotient Guy, photographed by a reader.)

Many years from now, in a far-off future in which a Frenchman has won the Tour de France and breasts are no longer taboo, humanity will marvel that there was once an age in which a mode of transportation as inexpensive and accessible as the bicycle was considered "elitist," and that working people stood opposed to accommodating it it in favor making sure the streets remain the exclusive domain of machines like this. Of course, given the willingness people have displayed throughout human history to pave the streets for their own oppressors, it's unlikely this future will ever come to pass (to say nothing of a Frenchman winning the Tour de France, which is positively laughable), but anything's possible.

In the meantime, I've been racking by brain trying to figure out just why it is that people in New York City think bicycles are "elitist," and for the life of me I simply can't get to the bottom of it:


By the way, did you know that David Byrne doesn't have a car? It's true, he doesn't. He does get driven in cars from time to time, but that's different. Also, David Byrne wrote this in his book, "Bicycle Diaries::

"But the interior of the country, with access only to USA Today and Fox News for their information, well, they are still trembling with fear that Saddam or Osama bin Laden is going to come and steal their SUVs."

I know, right? You know, sometimes I too like to put on a matching plaid shorts-and-shirts combo and muse about how stupid the people who don't live in cosmopolitan cities are. What's wrong with all those people who use trucks in order to earn a living from farming and livestock anyway? The same goes for all those foolish people who move to the suburbs for trite things like "good schools," "quiet," and "more space for their families." They really ought to get with the program, move to the city, buy lofts, and start doing something useful like scoring television shows. Maybe then the entire country will be one giant uninterrupted gentrified urban neighborhood and from coast to coast it will finally resemble the whitewashed version of Williamsburg, Brooklyn for which we all pine. (I call this hipstertopian view of the future "Manifest Douchery.") Nobody will miss the farmers, and nobody will go hungry--our "urban homesteaders" will grow more than enough food for us all in their rooftop gardens, and there will be plenty of expensive restaurants serving the farm-to-table localvore cuisine we can all afford from our giant paychecks.

If this makes me an "elitist," then let them eat organic cake.

Speaking of smugness and the "smugness quotient," the very same person who sent me the photo of Negligible Smugness Quotient Guy also sent me a photo of a cyclist on a "fixie" portaging another "fixie:"

Frankly, I don't know how using one "fixie" to portage another "fixie" affects the Smugness Quotient, though my impulse is that it's like dividing zero by zero and as such his SQ is "undefined." The case could be different though if he was riding a bicycle with a Turbospoke bicycle exhaust system, as forwarded to me by a number of readers:

The Turbospoke is basically just a card with a megaphone attached, and I'm thinking of installing one on my road bike because it would probably sound like this when I "climb:"

Obviously though it would sound like a buzzsaw if you were as fast as Mark Cavendish, or even the time-traveling t-shirt-wearing retro-Fred from the planet Tridork, whom another reader has spotted, this time promoting the "Ride for Sight" in South Africa:


He is rapidly becoming the universal symbol for "charity ride."

BSNYC Friday Gut-Busting All-You-Can-Eat Buffet!

In the past four years, New York City has added something like 250 miles of bicycle lanes. So to whom do these lanes belong? Who has "dibs?" Do they belong to the Beatiful Godzilla portaging a Marc Jacobs handbag and a Bichon Frise in her front basket? Do they belong to the Nü-Fred with a fixed-gear bicycle, a voluminous backpack, and a bewildering assortment of nylon pouches on his belt? Or do they belong to the Cat 4, rushing to get to the park so he can do the training homework his coach has just sent to him via email?

Actually, the bike lanes don't belong to any of them. That's because they belong to "TEXSGOLD," and TEXSGOLD is entitled to pre-empt you because he (or she) drives a Bentley:

Sure, it's annoying, and when my frigid ride along Manhattan's busy 6th Avenue was impeded yesterday by this vanity-plated ultra-luxury automobile the first thing I felt was indignation--especially since the driver seems to have made a point of stopping in the bike lane instead of pulling up to the empty curb. But then I stopped to think about it, and I realized that I was actually being quite arrogant. I mean, who did I think I was anyway? Sure it's a bike lane, but all I'm riding is a lousy Scattante. Meanwhile, TEXSGOLD is driving a car that costs more than my home. I can't possibly imagine the pressures of a person who works to sustain such a lavish lifestyle. In fact, when you think about it, TEXSGOLD is actually performing a public service. Many of us couldn't possibly afford such an exquisite car, but thanks to TEXSGOLD's hard work at least we have the chance to admire one up close and maybe even run right smack into its rear bumper. Maybe our heads will even burst right through the rear windshield and we'll be afforded a glimpse of that hand-stitched leather upholstery. Whether you're behind the wheel of a fine vehicle like a Bentley, or you're splayed out on the trunk with your feet still stuck to the pedals and your groin humping that seductive winged "B," your appreciation for its finery and your gratitude for its existence is the same.

So please, take our bike lanes, TEXSGOLD, and use them as your exclusive VIP loading and unloading area. In fact, take the entire city--you deserve it. I'd have actually thanked TEXSGOLD for reminding me of how the city and the world works and where I stand in it, but the car was actually empty, since TEXSGOLD was most likely lunching in the nearby McDonald's:

Sure, Manhattan is mostly just an urban theme park for the ultra-wealthy, but the McDonald's do deliver, and the delivery people ride some serious bikes.

Speaking of knowing where you stand, I was dipping my ladle in the smugness fount that is Streetsblog yesterday when I noticed a post about the following Daily News article:

As you can see, the word "pedaled" (or "pedalled" if you're from the gratuitous letter country) is misspelled, and indeed it's almost always misspelled by both the Daily News and the New York Post. I always used to just put it down to the fact that they were idiots, but at this point I'm reasonably sure they do it on purpose, like how George H.W. Bush used to call Saddam Hussein "Sodom." By writing "peddled," they subconsciously remind readers of peddlers, which in turn evokes those old pushcarts on Orchard Street, which were removed by the city because the merchants complained they were bad for business, just like the merchants are complaining now that the bike lanes are bad for business, and the upshot is nobody will mind when all these "peddlers" and their bike lanes are gone so that there's nothing between their store and TEXSGOLD except a few feet of sidewalk, which I'm sure they'll manage to get rid of too by the time the 22nd century rolls around.

Until then, I'm pleased to present you with a quiz. As always, study the item, think, and click on your answer. If you're right you'll know, and if you're wrong you'll see what media insiders call a "photo op."

Thanks very much for reading, ride safe, and make way for TEXSGOLD.

--BSNYC/RTMS

1) Mark Cavendish hopes that Riccardo Riccò, who has been hospitalized after what appears to be a botched blood doping attempt:

--"Receives a lifetime ban from the sport"

--"Has learned his lesson"

--"Starts a cycling team with Michael Ball"
--"Becomes somebody's bitch in prison"

2) Following his Clenbuterol positive, Alberto Contador has resolved to quit:

--Professional cycling

--Clenbuterol

--Meat

--Unprotected fingerbanging

3) This man used his mountain bike to defend himself against a:

--Bandit

--Leopard

--Eagle

--Hipster hellbent on gentrifying his village

4) Fill in the blanks: "When I heard that he was delivering ___ by _______, it was a short stop to me falling in love."

--Pie by bicycle

--Cheese by recumbent

--Ham by pennyfarthing

--Kittens by Segway

5) "Thunderthighs This:" According to Selle Italia, their new proprietary $630 seatpost and saddle combo can save the rider 10-15 seconds over 5km by "reducing friction between a rider’s thighs and the saddle."

--True

--False

6) Fill in the blank: "We were like, 'Hey, guy's delivering ___ on a _______ so we had to do it.'"

--Pie on a bicycle

--Cheese on a ham

--Violence on a submarine

--Weed on a Wednesday

7) This formation is called a:

--Roof loaf

--Auto hat
--Carcake
--Carpie

***Special Evolutionary Dead End-Themed Bonus Question***

This contraption is called:

--The Prone Recumbent

--The StreetFlyer

--The LandLubber Virtual SCUBAcycle

--The Human Cat Toy

(via the Tweeter)

In The Zeitgeist Tonight: Don't Be a Pie Biter

As you may know, not too long ago I wrote a book. Naturally, like any author, I hoped it would be well received. At the same time, though, I of course realized that as a first-time author I should temper my expectations. So you can imagine my surprise when that book, "The Da Vinci Code," became a worldwide bestseller and went on to sell over 80 million copies and was adapted into a movie starring Tom Hanks.

Sadly, my follow-up book, the self-titled "Bike Snob," did not sell quite as well, and Tom Hanks also declined to star in the film version, citing a prior commitment to do "Turner and Hooch II." ("Bike Snob" the movie will instead star lesser known Baldwin brother Chico--at least he says he's a Baldwin brother.) However, "Bike Snob" has been something of a success in its own right, having appeared under a dead turtle in the West Elm furniture catalog, and now, as a number of people inform me, being barely visible inside a bag sold by the Timbuk2 bagular conglomerate:

The bag is called the Zeitgeist, which means "the spirit of the times," and if there are two things that are emblematic of our age they are certainly books and croquet. As far as I knew, croquet breathed its last gasp in 1989 with the movie "Heathers:"

And as for books, the only thing keeping them around is that people need decorative pedestals for their dead turtles. In fact, even bags themselves are totally out of style, having given way once and for all to the "fanny pack," as the Wall Street Gerbil reports:

Unfortunately, the article omits the driving force behind the fanny pack resurgence, which as everybody knows is the urban "fixie" scene. Hipster cyclists love all those "waist bags" and "utility belts" and "u-lock holsters," and it is this irresistible compulsion to transform themselves into elaborately tattooed marsupials that has catapulted the "fanny pack" out of the faux dive bars of Brooklyn and the Mission District and onto the runways. The article did have one bit of useful information though, which is that not everybody calls them fanny packs because in some countries the word "fanny" is really dirty:

Some international designers have a cultural reason to back away from the word "fanny." Innocuous slang for the gluteus maximus in the U.S., the word is an obscenity in the U.K. and Australia, where it refers to female genitalia. In those countries, fanny packs are typically known as a "bum bags." The French call the style "le sac banane," a mocking reference to the banana shape of the pouch.

In other words, fanny means this--though that's not stopping at least one company from embracing the gynecologic connotations of the accessory:

Yes, it's called the "Cling," and nothing clings to your waist like a capacious Vag-X--though given the fact it employs a zipper I might have gone with the name "Vag-X Dentata" instead. Incidentally, the article also points out that the French call the fanny pack "le sac banane," which seems like it would mean "banana bag," and which in turn sounds suspiciously similar to what many English speakers call a "banana hammock:"

I wonder how many bananas you can "portage" in a Vag-X, and the 'Hof looks like he can't wait to find out.

Speaking of idiotic things to put on your waist, if you still have room next to your Vag-X and your u-lock holster and your fanny pack and your utility pouch and you don't mind the fact that you're unable to go to the bathroom without sending 60lbs of loose change, combination 15mm wrench-and-bottle-openers, and "Wednesday weed"-smoking paraphernalia crashing to the sticky restroom floor, you might want to wedge one of these things in there too:

"Turn any ride into Critical Mass," suggests the copy, and I'm sure the police will be delighted by the strains of the neutered warbling "indie" rock leitmotif that follows you everywhere as they impound your bicycle and pack you off to jail.

Of course, if you're only a waist and legs then a fanny pack may be your only choice, and that's certainly the case with the model in this eBay auction that was forwarded to me by a reader:

Featuring two disembodied hands as well as a disembodied pelvis, this photograph sets the new standard by which all future eBay photographs will be measured:

If only there were some clue as to what sort of magic the seller employed to achieve this effect, for the way in which the upper body seamlessly disappears into that sponge-painted wall is nothing short of beguiling. In fact, it was so amazing that I almost considered placing a bid, except I've now decided to hold off on any road bike purchases until the new BERU f1sytems Factor001 SuperDouche 9000 Ubercycle is available at my LBS:

Yes, this stunning engineering marvel costs £25,000 (or something like US$9 billion in my country's pretend money) and it can tell the moneyed Fred how just how badly he sucks at riding a bike in something like 17 different ways:

BERU f1systems have brought together virtually every available measurement of rider performance to create a professional training tool leaps ahead of anything the cycling world has even envisaged.

I'm not sure if this bicycle will end amateur road racing once and for all by finally providing participants with incontrovertible evidence of how pathetic they are, or if it will cause it to grow tenfold by amplifying the Quixotic nature of "training" scientifically for your local club race or group ride. It could go either way, but I suspect it will be the latter. Unfortunately, the makers of this ridiculous machine couldn't manage to incorporate the "breath gas analysis," but they did equip it with "core-temperature sensing:"

Was there a technology that you weren’t able to incorporate into the 001?

We looked long and hard at physiological metrics and the only useful one we wanted that wasn’t possible to provide was breath gas analysis. We were told people wanted to see real-time oxygen consumption figures but that was a step too far even for us. We're proud to offer riders core-temperature sensing from an encapsulated sensor which is swallowed by the rider and then transmits data to the head unit. Performance in the heat has received a lot of attention from pro teams so we think that's a great addition.

This will be a very welcome feature for the Fred who's so captivated by his meager wattage output that he doesn't realize it's time to take off his neon green windbreaker. I'm also sure this bicycle will appeal to Charles Manantan of PezCycling News (author of the ultimate dentist bike review), who a commenter recently mentioned actually wrote the following:

A bike part’s relative importance is, as ever, directly related to the proximity and effect on genitalia (as is literally everything else in life).

Given this, he should really enjoy the core temperature sensor on that BERU bike, since it's probably a repurposed rectal thermometer that nestles itself delightfully close to the prostate.

Meanwhile, while Manantan is enthralled by anything that comes into contact with his taint, the mainstream media remains fascinated by people who ride bicycles, and a reader has forwarded me a (non-embeddable, so click the link) Weather.com report about some guy who rides a snow bike to work:

One of my favorite aspects of any bicycling-themed news report is always the reporter's total incredulity that someone actually rides a bicycle. Note her inflection when she says the following at 44 seconds:

His bikes have more miles than his car!

I love how she says it as though that's the epitome of insanity, in exactly the same way she'd say something like: "He keeps an incredibly rare Fahaka puffer fish in his toilet!"

Now, sure, those are some pretty nasty conditions, and even a rider as hardy as Charles Manantan would probably leave the bike at home on a day like that, but is riding your bike in the winter really that crazy? I don't ski, but as far as I know people ski in the winter pretty much exclusively, but I never see stories about those quirky people who slide down snowy mountains in February. "His skis have more miles than his Rollerblades!"

Similarly, a number of people have alerted me to a student who's delivering pies by bicycle in Seattle, and the local news seems to find this concept similarly unfathomable:

Here he is at work:

Don't get me wrong--I admire "Piecycle" guy's entrepreneurship and can-do sub-Canadian spirit, but why is everybody in the story so amazed? Maybe it's because I live in New York, where I can't even walk outside without getting mowed down by some food delivery guy riding an electric bike at 30mph on the sidewalk, but is bringing pie from one place to another on a bicycle really that big a deal? Apparently it is--so much so that he even has "groupies:"

"When I heard that he was delivering pie by bicycle, it was a short stop to me falling in love."

This satisfied customer was similarly blown away by the unthinkable notion that someone could actually bake a pie, put it in a bicycle basket, and miraculously transport that very same pie to him for consumption:

"We were like, 'Hey, guy's delivering pie on a bicycle so we had to do it.'"

Of course, this is exactly the sort of thing that boggles the mind of the marijuana enthusiast, so I guess their amazement makes sense. "Dude, how awesome would it be if some guy showed up on a bike with a big fucking pie right now?" So I'm sure when it actually happens it seems like magic.

Needless to say, pie porteur bikes are almost certainly to be all the rage at this year's NAHBS, which means that whittled stick cockpits like this one spotted in Portland by a reader will soon be totally out of style:

Though I suppose the rider could use them to roast marshmallows and become a cycling roasted marshmallow vendor. "We were like, 'Hey, guy's roasting marshmallows on his own handlebars and delivering them, so we had to do it.'" Just wait until those S'mores "drop"--the pie will go the way of the designer cupcake.