Don't have a cow, man.

Firstly, further to yesterday's (second) post, a commenter said this:

fresquinho said...

"At times, [he] is brilliant, as in his famous bike lane video. Other times, he's kinda douchey"
-- bikesnobnyc, on Casey Neistat.

My thought about this post. What's with the cow dissing?

June 18, 2013 at 8:10 AM 

Did someone really just try to call me out for "dissing" a cow?

I think they did.

Well, not only do I have no regrets about "dissing" that cow, but I also have no problem doing it again. Hey, cow, what do you have to say to this?


Nothing, that's what.

Because you're a cow.

Secondly, further to yesterday's (first) post, let's geek out a little bit.

Here's the original "PressFit 30" to BSA adapter I had in my Fredcycle:

It's a SRAM or a Truvativ or something.  It was working fine, but even so I had replaced it with this because it said "Well that's smart!"

It may be smart but the crank kept wiggle-waggling in there even after troubleshooting with them over the phone.  So after posting yesterday, even though I had more important things to do, I re-replaced it with one of these:

I also moved the compact crank from my plastic bike to this bike.  I installed the compact crank on my plastic bike shortly before the Rapha Gentlemen's Race, and not only was I glad I did, but I am now a compact convert forever.  I used not to like compact cranks, but then two things happened: 1) It used to take me 20 miles of flat riding before I got to the hills and now I live in the hills; and B) I got older and smarter and slower.  They say your body renews itself every seven years.  I don't think that's actually true, but if it is, the person who used to ride around on a 39/23 disappeared about two bodies ago.

Anyway, once everything was done I took the Fredcycle out for a short ride:

The wiggle-waggle is gone and the bike seems to be happy again, but time will tell.  I have decided that I do not like the PressFit 30 at all, though if this particular configuration continues to be satisfactory I will simply suffer the occasional out-knocking and in-pressing of extraneous plastic hunks and continue to enjoy my Fredcycle as long as I possibly can.  Mostly, I just want to be able to retire my old plastic bike once and for all, because the person willing to ride around on a bike that can't fall gently without having to be inspected by a dealer disappeared about a body ago.

Speaking of Casey Neistat (I sort of was earlier in an oblique way), he made a new video and it's a good one:



Though if his own bike is so uncomfortable I'm not sure why he doesn't just change it.

Also, I'm not sure if it's fair to dismiss the New York City subway system by saying, "Generally I don't like being underground."

Really though, I'm just being douchey (remember, I'm the kind of douche who "disses" cows--stupid, fat, dumb, delicious cows) and I liked the video--though not nearly as much as this Daily News story:

But only because the Daily News intern is totally wearing her helment backwards:

This picture tells you pretty much everything you need to know about America, where we can't even get the illusion of safety right.

I'm surprised we actually manage to point our guns away from ourselves as often as we do.  In fact, we're probably better at shooting each other in America than we are at waving at each other:

I mostly mention this article because I'm quoted in it and I'm obsessed with myself, though I should add that even though I'm "pro waving" in the most general sort of way, I don't understand this feeling people have that they're entitled to receiving one.  I mean, sure, if I'm putzing along in the countryside and it's a nice day and my bottom bracket isn't pissing me off and I see someone on a bike coming the other way and I'm in a good mood and they're not a triathlete I'll probably wave to them.  And sure, on the rare occasions I actually pass someone I always wave, because Freds are idiots and if you don't do that they think you're trying to race them and you wind up with a wheelsucker for 15 miles.

But what about those head-clearing rides?  You know, the ones when straining up that climb is the only thing keeping you from committing mass murder?

Come on, you know how it goes.  It's a shitty morning.  You got laid off yesterday.  Your husband, wife, or life partner is angry at you.  There's no toilet paper in the house.  Your child just kicked you in the nuts or the vulva, depending on how you're equipped.  The cat's scratching the arm of the sofa, because cats suck.  The dog's just being a fucking idiot, because dogs suck more.  So you go for a ride. It's the only thing you have left in the world.  It's just you, your bike, the scenery, and your thoughts.

Then some Fred going the other way has the temerity to be annoyed because you didn't wave to him?

He's lucky you didn't kill him!

But yeah, I generally wave, unless I don't feel like it, in which case I generally don't.

As for the cows, you can be sure I always give them the finger.

This Just In: Exciting News For Your Scranus or Vulvanus!

As you know, Brooks England, generous sponsors of this blog, have been working on a revolutionary (for them) new saddle called the Cambium which doesn't require them to kill cows:



Translation: "I actually don't give a shit whether they kill me for a saddle or not because I'm a cow and have nothing to live for anyway, and dying for your convenience is basically my purpose on this earth, but if it makes you feel better then great."

Anyway, Brooks have just informed me that you can now buy the first batch of these guilt-free saddles via their website:

Moreover, this first batch of 1,000 saddles will have "a number etched into its nose rivet," which sounds like the sort of body modification you'd get to complement your Prince Albert, and if it's even half as comfy as the Brookseses I have on my bikes now then it's still, uh, very comfy.

Anyway, thought you'd like to know.

And now back to today's regularly scheduled whatever.

--Wildcat Rock Machine

Fred People Problems

I have Fred people problems.

Here's my newest Fred bike:

I greatly enjoy to ride this Fred bike, and naturally it became my default Fred bike from the moment I accepted delivery.

This Fred bike is equipped with one of those "PressFit 30" bottom bracket shells, which is what all the cool people who ride custom bikes are using now.  It was also equipped with a certain type of bottom bracket adapter so I can use a pinchy bolt-type Shimano crank, which are the only cranks I want to use in the world.  (I do have bikes with other kinds of cranks, but that's exactly why I only want to use the pinchy bolt-type Shimano crank.  The other cranks, for one reason or another, suck.)  Everything was working just fine together.

However, I recently overhauled the bike, and it was time to pull the bottom bracket since the bottom bracket shell was full of all kinds of disgusting scum and frumunda which is something that happens to bikes.  Naturally, the bottom bracket adapter was not supposed to be reused because it was plastic and this is the bike industry, so I replaced it with one made from metal that seemed like it would be a lot more better.  And I rode.  And rode.

The new bottom bracket adapter thingy was not more better.  The crank kind of wiggled in there no matter what I did.  So I called the company that makes the bottom bracket adapter thingy because they're the kind of company you can just call and be like, "Hey, duders, like, my bottom bracket's got like all this play in it and I'm totally bummed because it's not epic."  That's what I did, and company was all like, "Oh, yeah, duder, we know what that is," and they sent me these new bearing cover thingies to put in the bottom bracket adapter thingy, and I put them in, but the crank was still all wiggly in there anyway.

By this time I was staring down the barrel of the Rapha Gentlemen's Race.  I did not want to spend 130 miles being irritated by the sensation of having slightly wiggly cranks on an otherwise dialed bicycle, nor did I want to spend the days leading up to the ride installing the same type of adapter I had previously had in there and getting that all dialed in.  I wanted to, you know, ride a bike and not think about anything else.

So ultimately I just said "Fuck it" and decided to use my old Fred bike.

Naturally, I still haven't gotten around to sorting out my PressFit 30 bottom bracket issues, because I'm lazy and have a million bikes.  Instead, I've still been riding my old Fred bike, which is made of plastic because back when I got it I was still nominally a bike racer and even stupider than I am now.  And last Friday I headed out on my plastic Fred bike for a short afternoon ride:

It was a very pleasant ride, with the wind at my scranus, my crank stable and secure in my threaded bottom bracket shell, and the crunch of the 17-year cicadas under my tires:

Yes, the road was literally crawling with these orange-eyed fuckers.

Anyway, on I rode:

And then on the way back to my mansion I stopped at this outdoor grill shack-type establishment to pick up a sandwich, and I did that thing where you jauntily prop the bike up on one pedal on a curb.  As I was waiting for my sandwich and salivating, the bike decided it wanted to fall over, and it fell right into a pole.  I didn't think anything of it because it's a bike and they fall over and get scratched and who the hell cares, but as I got back on it I noticed this on the top tube:

On a normal bike this would be just a scratch, but this bike has one of those scary plastic top tubes that you can squeeze between two fingers, and I can't tell if the thing that looks like a crack is just the clear coat or the crabon itself.  So I Tweeted it to the company whose decals are on the bike, and I got the following reply:

@bikesnobnyc Hard to say from the picture. I would recommend taking it to the dealer and have them do a proper inspection. Have a great day!
— Specialized (@iamspecialized) June 14, 2013

"Have a great day!" my scranus.

So these are Fred people problems: endless futzing with your goofy bottom bracket system and wondering if your plastic frame is toast because it gently brushed against something.

I do not like PressFit 30, and I do not like plastic bikes.

See, once you start getting old you want bikes that can fall over a lot and that you can remove and replace parts on repeatedly.

If only there were some way to combine a frame made from metal with a traditional threaded bottom bracket shell...

Oh well, maybe someday someone will make a road bike like that.

In the meantime, my course of action is clear: 1) Replace the adapter on my metal bike with the previous type of adapter that was working fine; 2) Put a sticker on the ambiguous crack on the plastic bike; 3) Sell the plastic bike frame on eBay and put "Never Crashed!" in the description.

And fortunately, I do have a mountaining bike with metal tubes and a threaded bottom bracket, and that's what I spent all day Father's day riding:

It was fun.

In other news, I've learned via Twitter that you can go to Berlin and rent this to get around while you're there:

Can people not live without their ridiculous vintage affectations for more than a week?  This is like those hotels where they put a turntable in the room for people who need to listen to crackly records from the 1970s every second of their lives, even while they're on vacation.  Clearly there's a market for this though, which is why someone needs to launch a comprehensive "identity share" program:

("The Bootsy" is just one of the thousands of identities from which you can choose.)

It's a great way sample an identity you could never pull off at home.

Lastly, here's someone who sucks at riding a bike and at life in general:

I'm very sorry I hit you with my bike - w4w - 24 (Murray Hill)

Hi, I'm the stupid white girl that hit you with my bike today. 
I wish I could say that I'm the type of person who always does the right thing, but clearly I am not. 
However, I am someone who can admit when they've made a mistake. 
I'm incredibly sorry that I didn't stick around to make sure that you were really OK and allow you to file an accident report with the cops if you wanted to. You seemed like you were OK, but I've been feeling sick with guilt all day with the anxiety that I might be wrong. 
About an hour after our accident I went to 2 police stations to see if I could file an accident report after the fact. At the first station I went to they told me that I had to go to the precinct closest to where the accident happened to see if anything had been reported, and when I went to that station they told me that no one had filed a report about being hit by a bike. I really hope this means that you're totally fine. 
Regardless of whether or not you were hurt I really want to apologize to you, there's no excuse for the way I handled the situation, I was dazed and freaked out, and I acted irrationally and recklessly in my rush to make it to work on time. 
You are an African American woman with short hair who looked to be in your 30s or 40s. If this is you or you know who this person is, please contact me immediately. I hope there is some way I can make it up to the woman I hit. Please list the street and cross streets where the accident happened or some other details about the accident to prove that you're not just someone trying to scam me. 
I know that this posting doesn't make me less of a terrible person. 
I'm sorry. 

Oh, please.  The only valid excuse for a bicycle hit-and-run is if you need to dock your Citi Bike before the additional charges kick in.

BSNYC Friday Un-Quiz!

Here in the United States, when it comes to simple everyday life, we have a fortification mentality.  Need to get around?  Do the "safe" thing and drive the biggest gas-guzzling fortress you can.  Want to protect your family from crime?  Do the "responsible" thing and get a gun.  Want to engage in some esoteric physical activity like riding a bicycle?  Better not get within 20 feet of the thing without wearing your foam safety hat.

In some respects New York City is different from the rest of America, but not where the fortification mentality is concerned, and the latest bit of anti-bike hysteria is focused on a man who (gasp) gave a kid a ride on the handlebars of a Citi Bike!

View more videos at: http://nbcnewyork.com.

Never mind that nowhere else on the planet would this be considered a big deal.  Never mind a fully-laden Citi Bike goes about six miles per hour.  Never mind this is about as dangerous as putting your kid in a shopping cart and wheeling him around Key Food while you buy groceries.  Never mind your kid's just as likely to get hit by an SUV if she's in a stroller on the sidewalk.

No, doing something completely unremarkable like this in America calls for public shaming:

"The man riding a Citi Bike near Christopher Street obviously thought it was OK to take off with a young girl on the handlebars."

So wait, did he just nab a random kid off the street and take off with her on the handlebars?  If so then maybe they've got a story.  Otherwise, you know what?  It is OK.  Or at least it should be.  Sure, technically it's not legal, but so what?  (Oddly though, what is 100% legal is putting a child of any age in a taxi or car service without a child seat, which is about a million times more dangerous than this.)  You know what else isn't technically legal?  Driving your SUV onto the sidewalk and running down a kid in a stroller.  But you can't get in trouble for that, because there's no "moral blameworthiness."   You are, however, guilty of "moral blameworthiness" in this city and in this country the second you straddle a bike.  And you can forget about using it to transport a kid.

And what about the smug douchebag who took the picture?

(Frank Hendler)

I can't blame him for not passing up an amusing Citi Bike-related photo-op.  I can't even blame him for Tweeting it.  However, once your picture of a young girl goes viral and you start mouthing off about it on the local news you're officially an asshole.  Here's what he had to say about the act of raising a kid a few feet above the pavement and transporting her along Christopher Street by means of a slow-moving bicycle:

"That probably takes the cake for the worst decision of the week."

No, I think the worst decision of the week was taking a picture of a little girl and then standing there with a shit-eating grin on your face while the local news used it to fan the flames of anti-bike hysteria.

He's even bragging about it on Twitter:

Look mom I'm on TV! Who the fuck is Will Ehrich though? Lol http://t.co/QPL8q4Wgdd
— Frank Hendler (@BLASTOFFNYC) June 14, 2013

I'm sure your mommy's very proud of you.

By the way, that SUV driver who ran over the kid in the stroller?  That happend a week ago too, and I'd say that was a pretty shitty decision on the part of the driver--but not as bad as this, the worst decision of the week according to Frank Hendler, the Village Asshole.

I'm also going to guess Frank doesn't have any kids, since those are usually the people who are first to tell parents what they're doing wrong.  He does, however, have a hairy weiner dog:

Walking a designer dog in the rain without a little doggie raincoat?!?  That probably takes the cake for the worst decision of the week.

In any event, I'm going to let you go without a quiz this Friday, and I give you permission to knock off work immediately and go for a bike ride.  Enjoy your weekend, ride safe, and if you let your child ride in the shopping cart, for Lob'ss sake make sure they wear a helment!!!


--Wildcat Rock Machine

NYC Cycling: The Future's So Dark I Gotta Wear A Headlamp

Further to yesterday's post, I'm still not feeling very hopeful regarding the future of cycling in New York City, though to be fair I do tend to be pretty cranky when I'm menstruating.  Also, there has been at least one positive development since then:

Used to be when you got hit by a car you worried about stuff like your own mortality, or maybe about trying to memorize the license plate so the police can pretend to write it down and then not do anything about it.  Now, thanks to bike share, you really only have one concern, which how much time you have left on your Citi Bike:

FDNY said the victim was transported to Beth Israel, but had little info about his injuries. Apparently whatever trauma he suffered was nothing compared to his mortal fear of late fees, as our tipster overheard the injured man say, as he was being loaded into the ambulance: "But I have to dock it in the next 10 minutes!" (Late fees are $2.50 per half hour for members and $4 per half hour for 24-hour and 7-day riders.)

As a Citi Bike founding member, now at least I know what my last words will be:

Fortunately for the victim though, Citi Bike was ON IT:

@gothamist We have closed out the rider's trip and send them best wishes for a speedy recovery.
— NYC Bike Share (@CitibikeNYC) June 12, 2013

Maybe it's because I'm menstruating, but the thing about "closing out the rider's trip" seems awfully macabre:

Another glimmer of hope is that the Hasidim (or at least the ones who can figure out how to use Twitter) are now clamoring for bike share in their neighborhood:

I am #Hasidic and I am for #Bikes!CC: @citibikenyc #HasidimForBikes Please Retweet if you agree with the above statement.
— Hasidim For Bikes (@HasidimForBikes) June 13, 2013

I'd have retweeted it except I'm not #Hasidic, so technically I can't agree with the above statement.

But yeah, I hope they do get their bikes, and maybe the Omnipotent and All-Powerful Bike Lobby that Dorothy Rabinowitz is always talking about can establish a cycling eruv in which the Hasidim can ride bikes even on Saturday.  Either way, it's good to see a pro cycling voice (that's "pro" for "for," not "pro" for "professional," since as far as I know there are no Hasidic pro cyclists) emerge from the Hasidic community, even if it did take them awhile to get it together, and at this rate I expect them to start clamoring for a velodrome in their neighborhood sometime around 2060.

Actually, ironically, the Hasidim may be our only hope, since their trendy Brooklyn neighbors are already over bikes and are too busy camping on rooftops now:

Since 2011, Brooklyn-based artist Thomas Stevenson has organized urban camping excursions—where the destination is not state parks or wooded forests but rather industrial, unglamorous, utterly rustic-in-their-own-way New York City rooftops. During Stevenson's four-night adventure this Thursday through Sunday, 15 guests will fold themselves into seven bare-bones tents, all wood-framed and covered in yellow canvas.

Finally, an opportunity to put all that stupid overpriced shit you bought from Best Made to use:

And, more importantly, to boast to your friends about your obscure form of recreation:

As Stevenson describes to the Observer: "You'll wake up the next morning. Your friends have just finished their normal rounds at bars, a few reruns of late night TV. They'll ask, 'Hey, what did you do last night?'…

"I slept in a pigeon coop like a fucking idiot," you will reply.

So next time you're awakened by the sound of footsteps on your roof, you can sleep easy knowing it's not a burglar.  It's just a bunch of trendy douchebags playing summer camp.

I'm looking forward to next summer, when the trendy recreational outing will be sleeping in a refrigerator box underneath the BQE.

Speaking of cycling and Brooklyn, it sounds like the latest installment of the Red Hook Crit was a real shitshow.  Not only was there that crash everybody's seen a million times already:



But now a 15 year-old kid has basically had to launch a $200,000 Kickstarter for his face after crashing in the qualifier:

This website was set up by the Major Taylor Development Team in show of support for our talented teammate Joshua “Pro” Hartman and his family during this incredible crisis. As many of you know, Joshua participated in a bike race on Saturday, June 8 and experienced a devastating crash during the qualifying rounds. He sustained multiple injuries to his face - he fractured his cheekbones, nose, and jaw. Thankfully he had on a helmet which protected his head. However when his face hit the protective railing his mouth was split open. Joshua lost a tremendous amount of blood and now remains in the ICU at Kings County Hospital. 

This is disturbing, especially given his age, and especially in the context of this blog post I noticed on Twitter:

Where the hell was the medical team at this unsanctioned shit show? The staff comprised of two people, sitting on the ground, flashlights in their teeth, haphazardly applying band aids to downed riders, no visible indication that they were health professionals of any kind. Their shelter a pitiful pop up tent. More than disappointing, it was hazardous. And another injustice to the riders that paid for this race.

It's a complicated issue.  On one hand it's a bike race, and the riders bear a certain responsibility for not taking stupid risks or riding beyond their abilities.  On the other, it sounds like it was a real crash-fest, and while the promoters have certainly done a great job of packaging and marketing this thing and tying it into the "urban cycling zeitgeist" you also have to wonder if more could have been done to minimize the likelihood of 15 year-old kids smashing their faces open.

Then again, numbskulls sprinting for 30th place manage to mess themselves up pretty good in the local USA Cycling-sanctioned park races, so who's to say?

Mostly I just hope the poor kid's OK.

Lastly, apparently it's Bike Month in Robs Fords' Toronto, and a Twittererer has shared with me this inspiring video:


Needs more Robs Fords smoking crack.

"Tuesday has no feel. Monday has a feel, Friday has a feel, Sunday has a feel...." "I feel Tuesday and Wednesday."

Spoiler Alert!!!

Here's how cycling in New York City is going to play out over the next decade or so.

First, the bike share program is going to be scrapped under the next mayor's administration.  Ostensibly, the reason will be that the system functions poorly:

(Citi Bike user performing the "smell test" on her potential choice.)

Secondly, that same administration will largely neglect the bike lane network, perhaps even going so far as to remove certain key lanes like the one on Prospect Park West.

Thirdly, and most significantly, drivers will continue to face little or no consequences for maiming and killing cyclists and pedestrians.  This will never change.

Meanwhile, real estate in the New York City cycling stronghold of Brooklyn will continue to grow prohibitively expensive, and the sorts of young people who ride bicycles for transportation will soon cease moving there.  Gentrification will finally stall out somewhere in East New York.  Those who have already bought in will remain and breed, provided their earning power manages to keep pace with the rapidly increasing cost of living, but they will inevitably become Subaru-ized.  After all, once people have children, it's unreasonable to expect even the most idealistic families to opt for a bakfiets over a Forester when the law offers them no protection whatsoever unless they're in a car.  As for those who can't afford to remain in gentrified Brooklyn or other similarly fashionable areas of New York City, they'll eventually move to the more affordable suburbs, which have become devalued during the last decade or so of extreme gentrification and reverse white flight, and they too will become Subaru-ized.  On weekends they'll drive into Brooklyn with the kids and go to Brooklyn Fleece or Smorgasdouche and show the kids where mommy and daddy used to live before their building got sold and the developer built that big glass tower on top of it.

As for the rest of non-gentrified New York City, the streets will remain full of speeding Escalades, Altimas, and minivans.  Politicians won't attempt to curb drivers' reckless behavior for fear of alienating the "middle class."  Every few days someone will be run down on the sidewalk or pinned against their front porch, there will be a blip in the local news, no criminality will be suspected, and that will be that.  People will continue to accept runaway SUVs as an unfortunate fact of life, along with cockroaches and iPhone theft.

Throw in a few more real estate bubbles bursting and natural disasters and maybe in another 10 or 20 years the city will start flirting with bikes again, but odds are that for the time being we're looking at "peak bike."

Don't worry though, amateur bike racing will be totally unaffected by any of this, and New Yorkers will continue to purchase tens of thousands of dollars worth of equipment to ride around and around the park at 6:00am.

As for me, I'm striking out for Antarctica.  Won't you contribute to my Kickstarter?

(Via a reader, in a roundabout way.)

I'm always moved by the uniquely human quality that drives us to undertake utterly pointless and completely miserable adventures, such as journeying all the way down to the planet Earth's frozen scranus and cycling right into its frigid and forbidding butthole:

I realize a lot of places like to think they're Earth's butthole (I'm looking at you, Cleveland), but you can't argue with anatomy.  If you pick up the Earth and flip it over, you're looking at the South Pole.

By the way, yesterday I took took an utterly pointless and completely miserable adventure when I rode a bicycle all the way from New York City's north pole to its trendy and forbidding butthole in Brooklyn.  Fortunately though, the city provided me with plenty of bike lanes to aid me in my journey:

After riding into the third girder I eventually "took the lane" like a good vehicular cyclist.  Fortunately I was riding my spermcycle, which always commands respect from motorists:

Its fairing also offers plenty of privacy:

"Another freaky aspect of the fairing is that it obscures everything else that's going on underneath there."

Eeew.

Speaking of crotches, here are my pants:

(All my pants are now on the floor so obviously I'm not wearing any.)

Remember how a few years ago everyone started making cycling jeans all of a sudden?  Well, because I have a bike blog, somehow I wound up with a pair of Levi's cycling jeans and a pair of Rapha cycling jeans.  Since obtaining them, I was kind of curious which crotchal area would fail first as a result of all my velomobile sub-fairing self-fondlings, and I can officially announce that the first casualty was the Levi's:

(This could be your wang.)

The hole actually appeared months ago but I only retired the pants when the hole became large enough that I might inadvertently teabag my own top tube.  As for the Raphas, they're holding up much better, but there are signs of potential failure just aft of the scranular region:

Anyway, the Rapha pants cost thrice as much as the Levi's, but it appears that they may also last thrice as long, so the obvious conclusion to be drawn from all of this is that you should just forget about the whole bikey pants thing and just wear whatever's in your closet because your saddle (or your grundle sweat) is just going to eat right through them anyway.

Throw up in your mouth all you want, but this is exactly the crap you need to know.  Plenty of "urban cycling" bloggers are happy to plug this stuff, but none of them actually put their perineums where their mouths are and follow through with a long-term test.

Lastly, a man who may or may not be rock and roll superproducer Rick Rubin doesn't like salmon:


That's the scariest thing I've seen in a long time.

So Farthing, So Good.

Did you ever get that feeling that there's something behind you?

So instead of turning your head you slowly raise your Fred Feeler?

And then peer into its optical display?

Only to discover your arch-nemesis is lurking behind you and about to pounce?

Alas, the Fred-tenna was not funded, depriving us all of a crucial weapon in the war against bib-shorted tyranny:

By the way, it was bothering me where I'd seen that mirror before, but I finally figured it out:

It's also worth noting that nonplussed bib shorts guy looks a little like a shaved Chewbacca.

Anyway, the most powerful weapon of all is time travel, and via the Twitter I've learned that Outside magazine have time-traveled all the way back to 2006 to bring you this hard-hitting analysis of fixed-gear bicycles:

Yes, incredibly, they actually published this in June of 2013:

I go further: Freewheel-equipped bikes, to me, feel broken and limp compared to fixed-gear. By stripping a bike down to its basic design—ditching the freewheel, gears, and sometimes even the brake—you gain ultimate control.

Your body and your riding technique stand in for the missing parts. Your legs are your gas and your brakes. You spin hard for speed, and resist the motion of the rotating cranks when you need to slow down. When you get tired, you can’t coast or shift to an easier gear.

Freewheel-equipped bikes feel broken and limp?  Is he riding one of these?



I'm totally going to spray paint my folding bike gold and ride around on it without locking the hinges.

As for the thing about his body standing in for the missing parts, if your legs are the gas and the brakes, then what is your scranus?  Is it the fender?  Maybe it's the emergency brake, since if your chain snaps you can always hang back and use it to apply friction to the rear wheel.  Actually, if you think about it, there's no reason your ass cheeks also couldn't stand in for a decent rim brake.

Indeed, just when you thought manufacturing fixie clichés was a dead artform, this guy comes up not only with the whole body-replacing-parts thing, but also with this:

Fixies excel as training tools, too. As an endurance athlete and a serious runner, I like to say that riding a fixed-gear is like "running on a bike." Without a freewheel, you are always working. I sweat more and try harder, pushing a big gear on hills with no other way to get up, then spinning fast or resisting the pedal force as gravity again takes hold on the descent.

No.  Riding a fixed-gear is absolutely nothing like "running on a bike."  This is running on a bike:


Your body also stands in for those missing parts, but nothing can stand in for the complete absence of dignity.

He's right about one thing though, which is that fixed-gear is not a trend:

In the end, fixie haters are gonna hate. Be it the brake debate or the hipster embrace, dissing the "fixed culture" is a popular thing to do. But fixed-gear is not a trend to me. I've been enthralled for years, ever since that bike tried to buck me off in 2006. I got back on the horse, and I haven't let go since.

No, it was a trend.  Now it's just something else people break out on nice days so they can roll up and down the greenway, like Rollerblades and longboards.

And Outside's anti-fixie "counterpoint" is even lamer:

And as much as I’ve tried to avoid hating on hipsters, fixies don’t just ride themselves. There’s a certain category of person who consciously chooses to eschew brakes, gears, and sensibility in their bikes, and all too often, that person is also into PBR, Converse, and excessive irony. Some say it’s a “suicidal response to urban conditioning,” an act of rebellion against conformity. But when a subversive act becomes a trend, against what, exactly, is it rebelling?

Fixies?  PBR?  Converse?!?  Has this person been to a city containing more than 500,000 people in the last ten years?  You can buy every single thing he listed in that paragraph in Walmart now, including the excessive irony.

(You can also throw in a semiautomatic rifle, but that's a different issue.  By the way, semiautomatic rifles are way cooler than fully automatic ones.  It's like running on a gun.  Your body doesn't stand in for the missing parts, though.  Instead, it's the other way around, and the gun makes up for your physical inadequacies.)

Meanwhile, another Twitterer tells me that in the UK the pennyfarthing is making a comeback:

An awkward, precarious, wobbly comeback:

Apparently there's even someone who will make you a custom one from a washing machine:

Penny farthings are making a comeback, and not just for reasons of caffeinated nostalgia. In 2012, Graham Eccles started an in-town postal service in Bude, Cornwall, using a modern penny farthing variant, and an IT specialist from Hull made his own penny farthing out of washing machine parts.

What is it with people from the British Isles and making bikes out of washing machines, anyway?

And here's the website for the washing machine pennyfarthing guy:

Note the disclaimer:

Disclaimer

Penny Farthings are not for the faint hearted and can be dangerous which is why the safety cycle replaced the design. We can not accept any responsibility for any injury or damage caused by becoming a cropper or taking a header as of a result of riding a penny farthing replica.

Seems to me he'd have enough washing machine parts left over to make you a helment--though personally I'm waiting for someone to build a geared, freewheel bike with pennyfarthing geometry.  A nice one, though, not a kludgy one like this:

Needs more washing machine.