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.

Brown highways

I am not the cleanest dude, nor the dirtiest either. Let's say that by American two-showers-a-day standards, I'm a filthy pig. But by European standards, I'm not doing too bad. I've never actually had head lice, for example. No bed bugs that I'm aware of. I try not to come to the table with dirt on my hands or grease on my face.




So it pains me, dear reader, to have to warn you that the following paragraphs are a bit tawdry, and I'm just counting on the universality of the cycling experience to sort of excuse it all.

I'm sure glad they make synthetic red- and blue-colored chamois's (chameaux? Oh hell, shammies) these days, aren't you? I mean I have to tell you. I have waged a personal war against skid marks in my boxers for years now. It astonishes me that a person can be so thoroughly obsessed with wiping one's bottom -- I am ashamed at how many trees have died in order for me to wipe my butt as aggressively, and yet unsuccessfully as I have done these many years -- but when a person rides a bike roughly 20 miles a day in regular undershorts or, for that matter, in real biking shorts, well there are pressure points. There's friction. There are bodily functions. It ain't pretty, I grant you that. It ain't pretty at all.


I'm a big fan of actual honest-to-god chamois. Big fan. Second skin, from the softest skin of the finest deer of the remotest regions of Provencal, France, whatever. From the slopes of the Ventoux, the leaping hinds of the Black Forest. Whatever. And I like the whole idea of chamois butter. It's old school, man. Like you're supposed to put mineral oil on your cutting boards and your knife handles. Mink oil on your Red Wings. Turtle wax on your moustache.

But you know what? Every pair of bike shorts I have with a "real" chamois? Burned down the middle with a permanent shit stain, like it was the launch pad of the goddamn NASA Uranus Explorer. This makes it somewhat embarrassing to dry my shorts on the clothesline during the summer, and it sure as hell doesn't win any points with the wife or the kids or the neighbors. (Extra credit: Do you put your shorts in the dryer? Why do you do that? That isn't very smart. PMax, the frugal cyclist, taught me that lesson.)


Now I have had my battles with... uh, let's call them piles because I honestly can't spell... hemorrhoids? (I tried). Be honest: Do you ride 20 miles a day in cotton boxer shorts and tell me with a straight face that you haven't had this problem? Do you tell me that?! With a straight face?! Feh!

A field guide to personal transportation

Seen in the morning papers...




Uh. No, there are significant differences, such as no seatbelts or power steering for example.

What a hardened gendarmes says in the company of other hardened gendarmes when they arrest a doper

*I will blind him with the anti-redeye strobe on my CoolPix!

**I will spear him with my ballpoint pen. If only I'd brought my fountain pen.

***I will remove one of his kidneys with my teeth. Your ears are tempting.

Fun with journalistic standards & practices

I had to laugh when I saw that VeloNews and Cycling News both obviously had tape recorders in front of David Millar's nose at the same time. It's common practice to clean up transcripts so that the written word and the spoken word meet in the middle, at a point where you hope you've captured the speakers intentions. I rather prefer the uncensored version, because it tells you... well, it tells you how fucking pissed David Millar is. (I took the liberty of spelling out what Cycling News sort of lamely bleeped out with their silly typ0graphic fig leaves.)

VeloNews: “The unfortunate thing is when things look like they’re too good to be true, they are too good to be true. He did look pretty good,” said David Millar of Garmin-Chipotle. “It’s just amazing that he’s that irresponsible and doesn’t have any love or respect for the sport.”

CyclingNews: "It is bullshit... I think it's unfortunate that when things look too good to be true, generally they are too good to be true - and he did look pretty fucking good," Millar told Cyclingnews. "It is just amazing that he is that irresponsible and doesn't have any love or care for the sport. What a cunt!*"

And just to be clear: Journalists--myself included--edit quotes all the time to clarify the intent of the speaker and to generally lessen the risk of making them look like stuttering idiots. Tape yourself speaking sometime, and then write a verbatim transcript. You'll immediately understand what I'm talking about.

*Also, I made up that last sentence and added it to the Cycling News quote. You know, to clarify intent, and to be funny.

On closer inspection

Sometimes the evidence is right there under your nose!




Joking! Everyone knows you take CERA in a huge suppository, duh!

Seriously though: Not to impugn the battle-tested and heavily decorated Piepoli, but... y'know why their whole team now? What about Barloworld and Liquigas?

Fixie Hipster Bingo

OK, I've been working on this for a couple of days, and now I commend it to you, dear readers. Take it to your favorite bar or cafe, or the next hipster alleycat.

Enjoy! Argue! Get pissed! Get a haircut! Be a lover not a hater!

Secondary finding: Nude biking will not help

Seen in the morning papers...




I love that last part: Choosing a wrong bike may cause sexual problems among male cyclists.

I'm thinking the Cannondale Scalpel. And any bike by Felt. (Sorry Garmin-Chipotle. Look to your Directeur Sportif!) Then again, the Trek Madone has caused all kinds of sexual problems.

Your thoughts, Gentle Reader?

Even more demoralizing than Mavics + Connies

Dang, I just spent an hour trying to get some old Connies on a pair of vintage Campy rims. It ended in tears, with bloody knuckles, three bent spoons, and two flat tubes. The dog won't even look me in the eye, after the blue streak that came out of my mouth.

So that's when I remembered an important truth to help me keep things in perspective. Punk rock kills!

Dept. of Unspoken Innuendo

Seen in the morning papers...

Hmmm. No further comments.

Breaking! Man who had sex with bike pleads guilty!

MAN WHO HAD SEX WITH BIKE IN COURT

[Wait, he had sex with the bike in court, too? We're confused.--Eds.]

A man has been placed on the sex offenders’ register after being caught trying to have sex with a bicycle.

Robert Stewart was discovered in his room by two cleaners at the Aberley House Hostel in Ayr, south west Scotland, in October last year.

On Wednesday Mr Stewart admitted to sexual breach of the peace in Ayr Sheriff Court, where depute fiscal Gail Davidson described how he had been found by the hostel workers.

She said: "They knocked on the door several times and there was no reply.

"They used a master key to unlock the door and they then observed the accused wearing only a white T-shirt, naked from the waist down.

"The accused was holding the bike and moving his hips back and forth as if to simulate sex."

Both witnesses, who were extremely shocked, notified the hotel manager, who in turn alerted the police.

Early reports suggest that the bike was a 2008 Specialized Stumpjumper FSR. Police vice units around the world have been put on alert in anticipation of December shipments.

(The bike the Telegraph used to illustrate this story is a GT. Obviously, their photo editor is not a cyclist.)

(Also this: If you can't have sex with your bike in the privacy in your own hotel room, where the hell can you? Don't answer that...)

Renewable energy resource

To paraphrase one of our favorite sig files -- hey Burnsie! --

Work to eat, eat to live,
Live to ride, ride to work,
Save up any excess energy, and use it to light your home.

Mounts, dismounts, stuttersteps, and trumpets

You've probably already seen this, and it bears no direct relationship to cycling issues, other than this: It's an awesome metaphor for how we feel vs. how we look in a cyclocross race.

Oops, did I say that out loud?

Seen in the afternoon papers...

We're at a loss as to how riding across North Carolina will raise public awareness of oral cancer, although we've had some pretty nasty nosebleeds during RAGBRAI.

That's doubly a wicked joke, given that we've never ridden RAGBRAI, and our brother is an oncologist in Raleigh. (Hiya, Charlie! Haven't cleaned that muddy GT up yet!) We are going to hell, and we deserve it. But we did have some unexplained bleeding after the Dakota 50.

Nobody tells a good anal sex joke like a toothless cowboy

This one is just too rich to pass up, and we're sure you'll enjoy it.

Likely this cowboy lost his teeth on the saddle horn, as it were, rather than the stem. So what's the connection to cycling? Well, hold your horses, and lemme tell yis. It's brought to you by "Why did the bicycle cross the country?" -- a flimsy excuse for two earnest and unpretentious cycling buddies to ride their bikes coast-to-coast and ask everyone they meet the easiest journalistic question known to man: Know a good joke?

You can read all about their Surly-sponsored antics here. We can't promise the jokes or the joke-tellers get any better.

(For the record, we at first thought this was another Bob Roll sighting. Jury is still out, and the video is at forensics.)

We all have our reasons...

...and as reasons go, this is a shockingly common one.

Joking aside, this is a worthy cause, and we do nothing but impeach our own credibility by twisting it into some poor excuse for a jest.

Still. Heh heh.

Working our turf: Heart-scalding!

Seen in the morning papers...

Hey! Bad puns and empty frippery is OUR territory. Back off, Halifax Chronicle-Herald!

Introducing: The Harlem Globetrotters of Cycling!

Perdue Chickens and GoldN' Plump have teamed up to sponsor the world's first all-dope super cycling team! They'll come to your town and rip the legs off your local Cat Ones. See them pedal-drop and DeSoto garbage cans on their carbon Canondales! Watch them lap your crappy Tuesday night crit on the first lap! Grok them as they guzzle calf's blood by the bucketload!

No rules, no fools. These guys are all about the entertainment!

Liner notes: A picture is worth ten thousand words, but you only get one or the other around here.

I pretty much burned out my computer putting this together, so that's why not so many words... as you can see, I'd better stick with the day job and let my unemployeed flunkie, Jerry, do the heavy lifting around here.

Locking up the competition

The Kryptonite folks are understandably sensitive to crazy internet rumors and sensationalism. Now the company is not too happy with a British television documentary that showed its New York chain getting cut with a 42-inch bolt cutter. The problem was that iTV chose to have one of Kryptonite's competitors do the cutting--without cutting their own lock, too.

42-inches will cut anything you can get into its jaws. Thing is, when you carry that sort of bolt cutter down the street, it tends to draw a lot of attention.

One of the more interesting things Krypto is doing these days is making their keys much larger and battery-powered. Eventually, they'll introduce a remote key that can unlock your bike's doors from a block away, and taze anyone within 10 meters!

Why you should never piss off your bike mechanic. (Or: "Is that smell coming from ME?!")

Overheard at the shop:

So, this out-of-town dude comes into the shop. It's totally busy, fifteen people standing around waiting for service. He pushes his way into the shop and says, "I'm on a cross-country trip and I need my wheel rebuilt, right now!"

I say, "I'm sorry sir, if you could get in line and wait your turn, there are about a dozen people here ahead of you. We'll help you as soon as we can."

And he says, "I don't think you understand. Cross-country bike trip."

I'm thinking I don't care if you're the fucking President of the United States who needs his tires pumped, you gotta wait. But I said, "I understand. But you'll have to wait your turn."

He screams, "CROSS COUNTRY BIKE TRIP!" and throws down his bike.

So I said, "OK, we'll get right on it. You go across the street, have a cup of coffee, we'll get you fixed up in 30 minutes. Straight to the head of the line. Cross-country bike trip!"

He leaves. I wait a few moments and follow across the street, only I go into the deli next door. I hold out my hands and say, "Give me a pound of egg salad."

They look at me like I'm nuts. "Go ahead. Pound of egg salad." So they spoon a bunch into my hands. I run back across the street, take the guy's seat out, and squeeze a bunch of egg salad into the seat-tube, put the seat back in, get it all cleaned up, and true the guy's wheel.

He's back in 30 minutes, pays up, and heads out the door. Not even a "Thank you."

I wonder what he smelled like when he got to Arizona.