DBZ: Hi! I love you! I'm still here!

Oh, Nishiki Cresta! I want to scrape off your labels with the edge of an old iPod, and I want to find a less lazy fork! But you glitter so lovely, and your basket is silent -- but only when loaded with a six pack of Miller, a liter of tonic water, and a pair of rubber gloves from Kaplan Bros.

Pinchie's Coming to San Francisco, help!

So, the last time I was in the 415, I did it right and rented a bike. But that was like a decade ago, and now I'm ashamed to say I have no idea where I should go to find a nice steel commuter -- maybe even a fat-tire ride -- that'll get me from Union Square to Marin and back. In style, with a few bucks left over in my pocket for a tall mug of Anchor Steam.

Any ideas, loyal readers? Please! In the comments...

Here's A Fine, Douchebaggy Start to Your Week

Seen in the morning "papers."




I don't take these "examiners" too seriously for the simple reason that most of them are ignorant dipshits. But y'know a broken clock is right twice a day. I for one have been saying that the only thing that looks worse on a cyclist than white spandex shorts is self-righteousness. But whatever. Cyclists are superior to pedestrians and automobile drivers, and the sooner everyone realizes it, the safer we cyclists will be. And all-powerful. And benevolent in our absolute control over every living thing. Car drivers will still be allowed to ride folding bikes. Pedestrians may continue to pedest, so long as they use a unicycle or a Razor scooter.

Still, no one likes a moralizing prig, regardless of whether or not he's a prig on wheels. And, as so often is the case with moralizing prigs, this guy steps over the line:

Then I became a victim of the wrath of “entitled biker.” You know the guy. He flies along, disregarding anything and anyone in his path. And God forbid you dare to cross his path. He will mutter angrily as he passes you. Those guys are the reason I wish more bicyclists were run over by trucks.

Nice.

A Whole Lot of Justification for Bending One Rule

In Oregon, they're talking about adapting the "Idaho Stop" rule which basically turns stops signs into yield signs for cyclists. Not a terrible idea, I guess, but seems quite a lot of paperwork for legislators, advocates, and other busybodies. What they're really saying in the subtext here is "OUR POLICE OFFICERS ARE BORED AND THERE ISN'T ENOUGH REAL CRIME GOING ON IN OUR GENTEEL CITY, SO THEY'RE BUSTING BIKE RIDERS FOR BREAKING AUTOMOBILE RULES, AND WE WANT THEM TO STOP THAT."W



Bicycles, Rolling Stops, and the Idaho Stop from Spencer Boomhower on Vimeo.

This is a clever video, and you can appreciate the earnestness of it all, but basing the entire proposal on the "scientific" merit of momentum preservation is ridiculous. If stop signs are what stand between you and a debilitating bonk in your daily commute, you might consider taking the bus or buying a Segway.

After the Derby at One on One Bikes

After the bikes have all been destroyed, and Reed is busy rebuilding wheels on top of the empty keg, this is what we Minneapolis boys are up to...






Actually, pretty astonishing footage of the hard-drinking life out in the alley, circa 1960. Gotta say the Gay 90s has gotten significantly more flamboyant in the intervening decades.

Kids These Days

When they're not sitting around eating hamburgers and trying to contract salmonella and e.Coli, the Center for Disease Control folks survey kids to find out what risky behavior they've been engaging in lately. One of the riskiest behaviors that continues to bedevil the flower of youth? 85% of our young people ride bikes without wearing a helmet. I'm not going to be one of those dough-head scolds about helmets.

Instead, I think it's sad that only 13.3% have "sniffed glue, breathed the contents of aerosol cans or inhaled paints or sprays to get high."

But perhaps the most scandalous risk behavior is this: "Only 10.3% wore sunscreen with an SPF of 15 or higher."

Times have certainly changed. Back in my day, we always put the helmet on and lathered up with 45 SPF before heading over to Decay's house to huff Lysol.

Shave Your Legs For God!

Yesterday, we gave the Devil his due, so today it's the Man in White -- the Big Guy Upstairs. The Chief Operating Officer. The Silent But Deadly One. Gawd.



Well, not so much God as his Book. Seems this hail and hearty preacher from California is riding his bike coast-to-coast (yes, rev up your wallets for the new season of charitable cross-country spins -- this year they'll be like a plague of locusts, mark my words) to raise awareness and funds for the International Bible Society. The IBS was founded in 1809 and makes a special mission out of providing bibles in as many languages as possible. (Sure, they have a Klingon bible. But do they have a TOMMY GUN bible? Very few people speak TOMMY GUN, and they are all godless, so far as I can tell).

Thing is, I'm thinking Rev. Randy Gardner will likely be staying in hotels and motels along the way, and if he just takes the time to check his desk drawer or his night stand, there among the complimentary stationary and pens, he might notice that the Gideons -- a younger and more aggressive organization with roughly the same mission -- has already been there doing that thing.


I'm no blasphemer, but I had come to rather the opposite conclusion of Rev. Gardner: that there were actually a few too many Bibles already in circulation, and that when you've got too much of anything in circulation, its value goes down. Rather like the U.S. dollar.

But make no mistake. The Bible truly is a ripping good read.

The Devil's Way Too Into the Details

It always brings a smile to my face and a spring to my step to see good old Didi still doing the cha-cha in his red fagbag and horns, but I'm a bit worried. He seems to be moving in the direction of Krautrock -- painful, minimalist, silly -- with his not-round, not-pneumatic tires.

Follow your bliss, I guess. I 'spect to see Baba O'Reilly out at the River Bottoms with one of those triangular wheels rigged up on his pink rigid singlespeed this year. Never enough pain for some folks.

Ripping

Round about the time I was still melting GI Joes with a magnifying glass, BMX went through its first wave of national popularity, and even though there wasn't a BMX track within 500 miles, we all wanted a BMX bike. I was still on my Sears singlespeed, Bicentennial paintjob thankee very much, and my pal Jason had an older brother who suddenly got whiskers and pubes and was therefore beyond-BMX cool and looking to decomish his silver Schwinn Scrambler Comp with Ashtabula extra-long cranks, a Mag on the rear and a red anno Weinman on the front. I offered him 150 cash and he snorted at me. Half of what he wanted. So I begged another 150 off Dad, who kept a stash of cash in his sock drawer, and the Scrambler was mine all mine. It was a great bike. Every bit as good as a P.K. Ripper.

But looking back, I realize I was on the wrong side of history. Those P.K. Rippers are still being made by SE Bikes. And the Schwinn is owned by some Canadian dynacrap steel company, and the scrambler is something you order off the menu at Al's.

Are cyclists litterbugs?

"I'm guilty of every sin but littering."--Soul Coughing

I have to admit that over the years I've become a bit jaded about littering. Maybe it's all the trucker piss-bombs I've had to bunnyhop on shoulders and ditches of the dirty Midwest for the better part of three decades. Years of scanning the shoulders for treasure like ditch-porn or conetop beer cans also maybe predisposes a fellow to a lighter shade of self-righteousness. After a while, the garbage just becomes a part of the scenery. That's kinda sad, I admit, but after a while you realize that it's maybe penny wise and pound foolish to worry about 12-oz bottles of redneck urine, when the Military Industrial Complex is busy spewing gajillions of toxic, atmospherically fatal cough-cough into the ecosphere, and a billion Chinese and Indians, eager to become the new Middle Class, can't wait to buy their first two-stroke Tata deathcrib.



On a long road-ride this past weekend with my pal Markney, we spent a lot of time riding along the mighty, muddy, trash-bedecked Mississippi. (This is by far the ugliest time of the year here in the True North -- when every stratum of snow-encased shit is now compressed into a single dirty wet layer with not even a fig leaf of cover. As far as you can see into the woods, there someone has been with a ziplock bag, a bottle of Mountain Dew, or a soiled pair of boxer shorts.) The backwaters and billibongs really were choked with plastic soda bottles and garbage bags, but the river was high and fast, and carrying it all away, I suppose, to the great plastic convergence flotilla in the Far Beyond, big as Texas.




Now tolerating garbage and contributing to it are two different things, and even though my personal patron saint Ed Abbey was known to toss his empties without so much as a peep from his well-lubricated and generally fire-and-brimstone scorched conscience, you know he lived in a different time, before there were 5 cent deposits in California, Utah, Delaware, Maine and a whopping 10 cents in Michigan!

There are two times when cyclists are notorious litterers. During races, when it's a first rate pain in the ass to extract a power gel or a fart bar or beef stick from your pockets and then get the gooey bastard off your finger like a massive booger or cockleburr -- always sticks to the rescue finger, then back and forth forever -- much less get it safely deposited back in pocket. I admit now that I too do it in certain high-volume races taking place on a massive two or three lane course at which there are entire teams of trash pickers bringing up the rear with their little spears and sacks -- and also by the way, karmically speaking, I'm a guy who frequently picks this shit up if it happens to be underfoot or at hand and I'm in a non-racing heart rate zone. Roadies are terrible about throwing water bottles, something I've complained about in the past -- not so much due to the actual sin of littering, but the sin of basically handing a shit sandwich to observers, passersby, pedestrians standing on their idyllic front lawns carved out of corn fields -- to watch the funny clown brigade go by pedalling there clever little machines, only to have a rain of BPA fall on them, leaking cytomax and eventually killing their livestock by sharding up in their intestines.

The other time is Homie Fall Fest, though of littering at this event I am pretty much blameless, and my mess bag still stinks like spilled flat malt liquor to prove it, and I just found a tall boy of PBR still enshrined in the cage of my singlespeed.

Anyway, all of this comes up because some clever folks over at Bike Hacks have created a handlebar bag made out of a plastic trash bag and rubber cement, which looks pretty nifty, but if my experience tells me anything, you don't want to fill this thing with urine-soaked and turd-infested kitty litter. I don't think it'll hold, so you may as well just pour that directly onto your shoeless feet on the cold floor of the basement, as I do.






Seems a shame to throw away a perfectly good tape measure though.

Conspicuous Idiocy in Motion

About the only time I see a serious bicycle sound-system scenario is during Homie fall fest. Grayboy and SnakkyP and the rest of the estimable Surly gang have been known to rig up their Fat Dummies with all manner of woofers, tweeters, and wine mulling paraphernalia for the general betterment of all mankind. Although I think music has kinda sucked for about 20 years now, and can generally do without it. Let's say the pleasures of the bicycle, and good company, and strong liquor are sufficient for the day.

Anyway, over here we see examples of all sorts of improvised sound systems for bicycles like this dude.
I have to admit I've never fully understood the compulsion to be DJ for the Soundtrack of Life for everyone within earshot. I suppose the same thing is true of the dudes who drive around in their GTO's with trunk-based sound systems that shake the loose fillings out of all the strolling dowagers inching their way with tennis-balled walkers around Lake Calhoun. I mean seriously, what is the point? And bike systems almost universally tend to sound bad and look even worse.

I admit, though, that I've grown a little attached to my own sound system for those long, fat, slow solo rides in the spring. But my system is a little less -- uh -- cumbersome.

The Ingenuity of the Middle Classes: A Comparative Study

In a desperate bid to stay relevant, interesting, or at least busy -- idle hands, the devil's workshop! -- the Formula 1 folks have created this high-tech, "data rich" $30,000 bike. Why did they do that? Because a traditional in-hub watt meter performs all the same functions at the totally unimpressive, pre-recession price of about $1,000.


In a separate announcement, the Treasury's Tim Geithner has announced a special Public-Private Investment Initiative to purchase the F001 for all present and former AIG executives.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the planet in China, there were clear indications of why the West is totally fucked.


I'll bet he has a little wooden patch kit and a wooden pump in his pocket, too!