In The Air Tonight: Weird Cycling and Bike Love

Cycling has a rich and smarmy history of Casanovas. And when love and bikes collide, it can be difficult to tell the butterflies of excitement from the waves of nausea. Just a few of cycling's more amorous characters over the years have included:

Mario Cipollini, the man who proved you can use the same lube for chain, coiffure, and coitus;

Amir, the lovelorn financier, who considering the state of the economy may by now have lost his shirt (much to the delight of female cyclists everywhere);

And of course Floyd Landis.

If you're a female cyclist and you've somehow managed to elude all the suitors above, I must warn you for chastity's sake that you should not allow yourself to grow complacent. Because there's a new low-riding lothario on the scene, and there's a very good chance you won't see him coming until it's too late and he's already beneath you. That's right, he's on the make--and he's riding a recumbent:

If you're unfamiliar with the recumbent, it's similar to the bicycle in that it has two wheels and it's human-powered, but it's also very different in that you kind of lie down on it. Also, it replaces the saddle with a lounge chair and your dignity with a big gaping hole. This particular fellow is looking for one particular lady, but that doesn't mean the rest of you are safe:

Looking for tour de bronx asian girl - m4w - 30
Reply to: [deleted]
Date: 2008-10-20, 8:27PM EDT

This past sunday ( Oct 19 2008 ) I was volunteering at the Tour de Bronx on my strange looking bike. There is a cute chinese girl riding the 40 mile route. Unfortunately I didn't get your contact info.. That's me on the left and the girl on the right is the one I'm looking for.. ;>

I would like to meet you and get together for lunch/dinner sometime soon.

Our would-be wooer did not get this woman's number, but he did manage to take a photograph of her and post it on Craigslist, which I regard as both putting the recumbent before the horse and just plain creepy. Even creepier is the vantage point of the photo, which is taken from below and suggests that he may have shot her while he was actually riding the recumbent. (Or in flagrante recumbo, as they say in 'bent circles.) I'm sure as he rolled by he assumed a seductive pose and perhaps even reclined imperially:

She's smiling in the photo though, so he must have captured her milliseconds before the look of abject horror crossed her face. Then again, she may have actually been charmed by his recumbence. After all, my own Ironic Orange Julius Bike is a plain old upright, and people only regard me with thinly-veiled disgust. (Though that may be due to my new handlebar accessory.) Perhaps I could curry a bit more favor on a rolling La-Z-Boy.

Clearly, though, freaky and perverse cycling is in the zeitgeist right now. A reader has just informed me that the 2008 Indoor Cycling World Championships is set to begin on Friday in Dornbirn, Austria. As you can see from the official site, "artistic cycling" is just one of the disciplines you can find there. There's also Radball, which is to bike polo what artistic cycling is to fixed-gear freestyling, and which should not be confused with either Madballs, Madball, or my new handlebar accessory. Best of all, it looks like there will also be live music of some kind:

I don't know who these guys are, but they're probably the Austrian Madball. In any case, it's exciting. And with the UCI overseeing things, you can be sure that the drug restrictions will be even tighter than the unitards.

But when it comes to the zeitgeist, the only scent heavier than that of freaky and perverse cycling is that of Obama-themed fixed-gears. Just a week after the last one comes another:

Fashion-based fixed-gears aren't always the best transportation vehicles, but they make excellent marketing vehicles. And among fans of fixed-gear fashion the Obama brand is almost as hot as Nitto and Sugino. (Thanks at least in part to his "youth marketing agency.") I was especially moved to see that the designer, Tristan Eaton, is a "vinyl toy designing auteur," because if there's two things toy designers know it's bicycles and politics. This should catapult Obama right into the White House and the rider right into an oncoming car.

In the interest of fairness though I'd love to see Eaton design another bike for McCain. Then he could really use those toy-designing chops. He could even incorporate a few Madballs.