Two for ones all day on Friday!

Pleased to announce: The top three ambiguous tandem videos of all time, as determined by unanimous decision of the Pinch Flat News editorial board.

Reinventing the Wheels, No. 6,925

Seen in the afternoon papers...





Which begs the question: Works for what?

• To keep cardboard out of the recycling stream
• To sell more refrigerators and dishwashers
  
• To keep kids busy on harmless art projects
• To give British journalists something to write about on a slow day
• To sustain the delusion that the bicycle needs to be redesigned with dumber and dumber materials and designs
• To distract us while we await the invention of a drive-train made out of celery
  
• To provide moronic bike bloggers with an opportunity for bulleted list of punchlines

Bike to the Future

During the NVGP, I had many opportunities to speak with Kristin Armstrong -- the odds-on favorite for gold in the Olympics time trial, and with a fair shot at medaling in the road race too. She was pretty tapped after the Grand Prix for two reasons: First, she stomped the field in just about every stage of the race; and second, she did it without a team. It was a remarkable display of pure athletic excellence. At least in the domestic pro peloton, there are no other riders that can touch her. (She occasionally surrenders on a flat criterium sprint or a road race with no major climbs. I suspect this has less to do with sprinting prowess and more to do with self-preservation. It is definitely not an olive branch of consolation; she's a cannibal on the bike. I've taken to calling her "The Eddie Merckx with two X's.") Anyway, I asked Armstrong if she was worried about air quality in Beijing, and she laughed and said she'd been doing a lot of motorpacing behind an old car with no muffler or catalytic converter. "Seriously, though," she said. "Everyone's in the same boat, so I'm trying not to worry about it too much." If air quality is a handicap or a concern, it's going to impact everyone the same. It's not something she feels like she needs to worry about.

Today, I noticed yet another "concept" bike for the Chinese, offered up as a helpful idea to assist the Chinese with their little, y'know, air pollution problem.




And all I really have to add to the conversation is this: Why do these concept bikes all look so totally plastic and gay and Star Wars? And not actually something that will ever get built? And if it did get built, no one would actually ride? Without becoming the target of much righteous and deserved derision?

It's a noble cause. But does "the bike of the future" have to look so freaking gay?

Really, the point is this: It's all just window dressing by industrial designers with too much time and software on their hands. It reminds me a little bit of the one and only science fair I entered as a kid. My idea was to create a city of the future. I made little balsa wood houses, and glued fake grass on a sheet of plywood. And then I turned my mom's big plastic punch bowl upside down over my little city. Voila! The city of the future would be covered by a plastic dome! Cool, huh? I was shocked and chagrined to not even get a third-place ribbon. Just a crappy yellow ribbon for "participating," while Jim Petit won the blue ribbon for his stupid wind-power generator that actually lit up a 10 watt lightbulb.

Also this note to the GE team that created "the bike of the future": Look up "Cannondale Lefty recall" at the Consumer Product Safety Commission to get the full view on just how awesome assymetric bike forks really are.

Didi's red tights are Castellis! Who knew?!

We mentioned a few months ago that Didi Senft -- the German dude who dresses up like the Devil for every major European tour -- had built a gigantic bicycle shaped like an electric guitar. Here's moving pictures of Didi rolling. (Sweet Adidas Minretts, too, Didi!)

I can't think Didi will have much trouble with his application to be recognized as the "world's largest mobile guitar." I just can't think of that many other mobile guitars, without taking the whole "phallic metaphor" approach.

Two wrongs don't make a right

But what about three wrongs?



This here is a "tandem electric bike" for three riders. It's actually a kinda clever design, if they'd put pedals on the thing rather than an umbilical cord to the coal-burning CO2-belching electric generation plant down-grid. (It also looks like you could break the thing over your knee.)

See this is my issue with electric and gas-assisted bikes. They aren't really minimum impact, they're more like deferred impact. I look like I'm better than you, but it's only cosmetic. Sort of like driving a Prius when an old Ford Fiesta gets better mileage.

Yeah, e-bikes are morally superior to automobiles and riding lawn mowers and maybe even Segways, but they definitely don't reward the soul like a bicycle does.

And they're not too hot in the chick-magnet department neither, you gotta think. You just don't see that many women flashing their tits at the dudes on that Segway tour along the Stone Arch Bridge.

You're golden

ETA, a British insurer who offers bicycle coverage, is giving away a 24 carat gold bike. (They're also selling one, apparently, which comes with its own security guard. Why? Because they don't insure bikes that are worth more than $8,000.)



But never mind all that. Here's what I'm really wondering: what are the ride characteristics of 24ct gold? I should think they're a bit bouncier than Titanium, and you wouldn't really break your frame catastrophically, so much as feel the bottom bracket dragging on the ground.

Naturally, it's a flip-flop fixie. Wouldn't you love to see this thing in pure gold Dura-Ace with a 24-carat SRAM chain?

Swiss Bicycle Brigade gets the heave ho

We could go into the long and noble tradition of guns and missile launchers mounted on bicycles, but following yesterday's post, we're still treading on mighty thin ice.

A bike that celebrates those, uh, lady parts

Um. Wow. So much I could say. Most of it guaranteed to land me on the couch for a week or so.

Personally, I'm a big fan of bikes and women, and I'm fond of Finns as well, so this is kind of a trifecta.

(Confidential to Colbert: Dude, you'll want to close your office door. How much you want to bet that's a Klein frame under there?)

Cracking down on folding bikes

Over the years, I've been kinda mean to folding bikes and riders of folding bikes. And now, according to the Beeb, the backlash is in full swing in Londontown, as folder-commuters are taking up more space on the tube, flashing their goods in spandex shorts, and even --wrath of Vulcan!-- building their bikes enroute, rather than having the courtesy to wait until their station stop.




Of course, there's an easy solution: Build bigger train cars with bike-specific accomodations. But it's better, apparently, to let pointless class resentments brew.

On the other hand, I've got an even better solution. Provide more bike parking at train stations. Thataway, commuters can leave a clunker singlespeed parked at their destination, rather than hauling those silly clown-bikes around.

International Wheelies: News from Abroad

Our Russian friends have discovered nude cycling during the short hyperborean Summer.

Meanwhile our German friends have invented office-chair racing. Rev up that Aeron, Herr Fahrtlich!

Not so much a taco'd wheel as a burrito'd wheel

Here's something from the whacko files that you may actually see in production in coming years: the folding bicycle wheel.

Or, you know, airlines could stop fleecing cyclists and actually allow regular bike boxes on planes. But that would be too easy.

It's not entirely clear what sort of tire/tube setup this dude is using, but safe to say it ain't sewups.

Tallbikers, meet your match... and then some

Getting ansty for the Giro? Here's a nifty story today about Didi "El Diablo" Senft, the fellow who's best known as the red devil that runs along torturing riders in the pro peloton.


But as this article makes clear, Didi's more than just a German with a sense of humor (which is exceptional enough, sure.) He's sort of a one-man industry, dedicated not only to devilishness, but also to building crazy clown bikes -- like this one, officially the world's biggest bicycle as determined by those English purveyors of Irish stout, Guinness.


Yesterday, Didi unveiled a new creation, a 12-meter long bicycle shaped like an electric guitar.

All I can say is this: What did that John 3:16 guy ever do for the world besides buy up its reserves of rainbow wigs?

It Just Ain't Natural: the queerest tandem, revisited

Here's a quick reminder -- just in case you forgot -- about the queerest tandem ever to emerge from the fevered head of a British cycle builder.

It looks as though Thorn Cycles is building these things for real.

Which calls for us to pronounce our new battlecry: Just because you can build it, does not mean you should build it.

Also these very important technical questions: So who is the stoker? And will she eventually throw up?

Alert! OMFG! Best biking video ever!

This is so awesome, I don't even know where to start. I can only hope a little bit of this man's genius rubs off on my humble blog. Seriously. How could I have missed BikerFox until he became an international sensation, with his own movie trailer?

Plus, now I know where all those overstock Primal jerseys end up.

Find more videos like this on www.truveo.com.

Velomobile: Erasing the line between queer and cool

Is it the future of urban transportation?

"Kids chase me, cars slow down and ask where does this thing come from. I say 'outer space!' It's aerodynamic and can maintain speed faster than any bike. It's a chick magnet and you can carry a pizza in it, too!"

OK, from now on, I'm officially not making fun of these bikes. Previous references to "the bearded clam" and the "burqa of bikes" will be struck from the record.

Pedaling in a cage: The Buick LeSabre 4-Stroke

These Canadian gentlemen appear to have converted a full-sized Buick LeSabre into a pedal car.

This is not advised, since a pedal-car Buick LeSabre requires almost exactly the same amount of roadspace as a motorized Buick LeSabre -- as the local police were glad to point out.

But one encouraging fact is that such a vehicle appears to attract bicycle police like bees to honey.

DIY Recumbent Hippie Bike! Anyone? Hello?

Mother Earth News, that old hippie fishwrap about macrame and solar heating and hemp suspenders, has been tripping on bikes lately. Today, I noticed this 1999 story about an $18 recumbent bike that appears to be back in rotation.

I don't know. $18 seems like not quite enough. I don't think I'd ride a recumbent -- especially a homemade one -- for any less than $50. And if it involved actually riding it where someone would see me, you'd have to pay me more like $100.

What's that you say? $18 is what I'd have to pay to ride my own homemade couchbike? Uh... pass the bong and let me think about it.

O, the world was such an idealistic, child-like place before 9/11.

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How to buy a Triathlon bike, if you insist

Seen in the morning blogs:

Geeze, everyone from Hugh Prather to King Arthur can tell you: It's the journey, not the destination. It's the looking, not the finding. It's the pricing, not the buying. With my vast knowledge and experience of triathlons, triathletes, and tri-bikes, the search is really quite simple. Three easy steps:

Find a bike that costs a quarter of your annual income. It should be named after a province in Mexico, and the price-tag should definitely say "triathlon" on it somewhere.

Buy it from an authorized Tri-bike(TM) dealer with a name like Break Wind Tri-Sports.

Attach water bottle cages under your saddle for that Extra Supra Gay(TM) look.

Intl' Wheelies #30: More unicycle-with-a-spare-tire hijinks

Last time we checked in with our friends in Japan, they'd progressed beyond vintage Nike waffle trainers, and Italian track bikes and they were actually doing some riding. They'd taken up "drifting."

Now it looks like the bleeding edge of obssessive weirdness has moved ahead. What are the kids doing on that funny far Eastern island? They're having manny slalom competitions.

Can't wait to encounter one of these puppies out on the Mendota training loop

Seen in the morning papers....

The vehicle will cost around $3 million. With a Dura-Ace upgrade, it'll be $3.5 million.

For that much cabbage, the vehicle should probably come with a significant portion of Nevada desert in which to drive the thing.