Under the Table: Baby Got Beard

Like most living creatures, I have a morning routine. Once I manage to harness the power of gravity and pull myself down from the ceiling, I kneel before my lobster fountain and perform my daily ablutions. (Despite how it sounds, "ablution" is ceremonial washing, not a stomach-flattening exercise.) Then, it's breakfast, after which I walk my helper monkey Vito to school (he's studying HVAC repair at a local technical institution), followed by a "period of reflection" in the bathroom, during which I read The New Yorker.

I have a knuckle-tattoo-cliché relationship with The New Yorker, the latter part of which is due almost entirely to "pop music critic" Sasha Frere-Jones. I have nothing against pop music or pop culture, and like any member of the coveted 18-59 demographic I consume my share. However, I don't read The New Yorker for pop culture; I read it for its coverage of "highbrow" subjects I'm too intellectually lazy to explore firsthand, and I'd rather read a lengthy article about an avant-garde composer I'll never listen to than a thousand words about some band I'm all too familiar with because their music is everwhere. Reading endless variations on "it's catchy" fortified with gratuitous references to the writer's record collection is a lot like reading most bicycle reviews, which are basically riffs on the "laterally stiff and vertically compliant" theme substantiated by comparisons to the many exotic bicycles the reviewer has ridden.

Obviously, by this point I'm angry--angrier than one should really be in the bathroom--and so to calm myself I like to take a crack at the "Cartoon Caption Contest." Here's the most recent one:
Here's a closer look:

As you can see, a bunch of people are sitting around a table and engaged in various forms of personal recreation, and a woman with a book is looking quizzically at a man who appears to be doing nothing. As it was, I didn't find it particularly compelling, but once I added some "motion lines" to his right shoulder and a lascivious smile the caption practically wrote itself:
If you're offended at the implication that the gentleman is "foffing off" under there, I'd like to say two things in my own defense. Firstly, he's not necessarily foffing off; he could just be shaking up a Yoo-Hoo. Secondly, I draw my cartooning inspiration from my environment, and yesterday was St. Patrick's day--which, in New York, can be a sordid affair. Besides being a day to demonstrate your Irish pride, it's also a day during which New Yorkers with little or no Irish heritage like to reduce an entire culture to a stereotype by getting drunk. (It's sort of like a bunch of goyim celebrating Rosh Hashanah by eating bagels, saving money, and acting slightly neurotic.) On top of this, it was also a delightfully sunny day, so people were celebrating even more vigorously than usual. In fact, as I made my way through downtown Manhattan on my way back to Brooklyn, I noticed this:

I realize the quality of this photo is extremely poor (even by the already low photojournalistic standards of this blog), but when you see something like this you don't slow down and take time to frame the shot. Instead, you actually pick up speed, point the camera in the direction of the subject, and hope for the best. In any case, what's happening here is that the gentleman is lying on the sidewalk with his feet in the gutter. From a distance, he appeared to be passed out, and I worried that he might be in distress, but as I drew closer it seemed that he was at least partially conscious. Furthermore, his pants were unfastened, and his right hand was also moving suggestively. At this point, I abandoned my plan to offer assistance and instead chose to flee. Granted, he didn't seem to be doing all that well, but at least he was prepared, for he had a number of towelettes (Action Wipes? Doubtful, but still possible) at the ready:

I realize it's a disturbing image, but I will not shy from pointing my crappy lens in the general vicinity of reality.

Speaking of reality, the furthest you can get from it (at least in cycling terms) is the "concept bike," and the second-furthest is the bicycle concocted by a manufacturer of motor vehicles. A reader was kind enough to send me this machine, which is apparently BMW's attempt to build an über-douchey hybrid:

If you're looking to turn some heads at your next charity ride or spirited jaunt down the local recreational lane, this is undoubtedly the bicycle for you. However, the writer of the article obviously has only a passing familiarity with bike review-speak:

Firstly, everybody knows the adjective "beefy" should be reserved exclusively for the bottom bracket area. Even more unorthodox is comparing the weight of the bicycle to that of "a six-month-old child," a bizarre turn of phrase the reader made sure to point out to me. Of course, we've already seen milk used as a frame weight reference--you may recall that, when lifting the new Cervélo for the first time, Thor Hushovd said something strange along the lines of, "You know when you go to the store and buy milk? It weighs as much as that." So, maybe using babies is the next logical step. Perhaps people will soon stop you in the street and ask, "How many babies is your bike?". Or, maybe when you're at the LBS and you're shopping for a road bike, you'll cut the salesperson off and demand: "OK, enough technical jargon. Could you put that in babies please?". James Huang of Cyclingnews should have some fun with the new benchmark. I can't wait for him to hit the Dr. Spock books for pediatric metaphors.

Sure, it may seem unlikely that babies will become the new kilograms, but stranger things have happened. Since Monday's post, New York City has officially legalized beekeeping, and making honey is well on its way to becoming "Fixie 2.0." This is not limited to New York, either; another reader has forwarded me this:

Until now, a flat brim cap and a beard were all you needed to be "cool;" soon, you're going to need a pith helmet and a beard of bees:

Another growing trend is the Craigslist bicycle consultant, which I mentioned in yesterday's post. While some of these consultants profess knowledge of all aspects of cycling, others have highly specialized areas of expertise. Yet another reader has forwarded me the following listing, which I present below in abbreviated form and which is the work of someone who specializes in lightweight touring bicycles with an emphasis on "cockpit curation:"


The bars were designed specifically for minimizing wrist pressure on long rides. They can be adjusted so that a percentage of your weight is on your wrists, and the rest of the force is on your elbows, making for a much nicer ride. When you come to pick up the bike, I will measure you and set up the bars to fit your body perfectly. In an effort to make the bike even more comfortable, I will buy you a seat that fits you specifically. In my years of touring, I have found that the most important points on a bike are the contact points (the seat, bars, and cranks) and since I already covered the bars by going custom, and the cranks by going carbon, I’d like to buy you the best seat I’ve ever ridden: Alay’s racing saddle. Topeak makes a seat the utilizes an air filled bladder to control the pressure on certain *ahem* sensitive areas. It works wonders, but is a bit pricey, coming in at $130 plus tax. The seat comes in sever sizes, (small, medium, large,) so when you buy the bike, I’ll go down to the bike shop and pick you up one of these seats in your size. Also, to further sweeten the deal, I’m throwing in a bunch of accessories! When you come to pick up the bike, I’ll give you two Knog lights (one red, one white), an Axiom carbon fiber pump, a Cat Eye computer (with calorie counter), a pack of Park tool tube patches, a spare inner-tube, three tire levers, and a pack to hold it all.

I wonder how many babies this baby weighs. I also did not realize cranks were a "contact point"--foolishly, I've been placing my feet on the pedals instead of on the crank arms--though obviously the proverbial "centerpiece of the groupo" is the nearly vertical aerobar cockpit setup, for which the seller even provides an exquisitely-rendered schematic:

If nothing else, this goes to show how what might appear simply accidental is in fact often painstakingly calculated and planned. I guess some people work out their aerobar angles in the wind tunnel, while others do so by stretching their pencil compasses to their very limits.

But you don't need to travel to Vancouver to see innovative cockpits; we also have them right here in New York. Not only is the whole wooden bar thing still going strong:

But some people are also getting creative with bar wrapping:

From afar, it might just look like regular tape, but a closer look reveals it's actually made from Vittoria tires:

Note the bee-themed "colorway." I wonder if it matches the rider's beard.