Tempting Fate: Look Ma, No Hands

(A reader's AYHSMB vanity plate in the eye-catching Massachusetts "colorway.")

Bicycle photography is a rule-bound art form, governed as strictly as any haiku or sonnet. Consequently, bicycle photographs generally include certain elements: among these are the drive-side shot; the Obligatory Robust Bottom Bracket Shot (or ORBS); and the "Wow, I'm a genius, I built up a fixie with a straight chainline" shot. However, my personal favorite is the "disembodied hand" shot, which I mentioned in yesterday's post.

The disembodied hand shot is my favorite precisely because it is whimsical and improvisational, and consequently an antidote to the contrived stuffiness inherent in most bicycle photography. This is why I occasionally catch myself slavering over disembodied hand porn, and why I was pleased to receive this example from a reader:

Sure, intentional disembodied hand parody shots like the ones I mentioned yesterday are entertaining, but nothing is as satisfying as the real thing--especially when it's in the classic Michelangelo "Hand of God" style:

("All You Deities Finger My Fixie")

Speaking of disembodied hands, another reader forwarded me this interview with a top hand model, whose manner of speaking is so ethereally lilting that she seems to be hypnotized by her own gesticulations:



"I can make a full-time living off about five inches," she reveals to Katie Couric while her hands twist slowly like shwarma on a skewer:

This is quite impressive--even more so than adult film star and total über-Fred Jack Lawrence, who also makes a living off of a single appendage, though presumably with a few more inches:



But still, nobody tops Adam, who managed to father the entire human race with little more than a centimeter:

Put that in your hand and model it, Ellen Sirot.

In any case, if you enjoy disembodied hand shots you owe a debt of gratitude to the fixed-gear "culture," whose obsession with photographing their crappy bikes has resulted in a veritable disembodied hand bumper crop. However, I'm not sure this makes up for the rest of their excesses--though you've got to give them a disembodied hand for continuing to find increasingly stupid things to do with what are essentially very limited bicycles. First there was the awkward herky-jerkiness of "fixed-gear freestyling," then there was the senseless knee abuse of long-distance fixie touring, and now there's the utter mindlessness of "hill bombing," as evidenced by that guy on the Stelvio, as well as these riders in San Francisco:

Potrero Hill Bombing from Lester Lyons-Hookham on Vimeo.

In it, we see a rider who looks less like an actual "hipster" than he does someone who has dressed up as a stereotypical hipster for Halloween:

Next, this parody of a hipster rides down a hill, skidding occasionally in order to scrub off speed and to show off his Daisy Dukes:

The object being, of course, to blow a stop sign and experience the thrill of almost being hit by a car:

I'm not sure why you'd make a video like this and put it on the Internet unless your goal is to figuratively urinate on the graves of every cyclist who has ever been killed by a motor vehicle through no fault of his or her own. Presumably they're working on a sequel in which they take one of those "epic" fixed-gear trips to an impoverished country in order to burn a bunch of food and money in front of the villagers. Anyway, you'd think that if your favorite pastime was riding down hills and skidding to a stop you'd at least put some thought into tire choice, but even this seems to be beyond them:

You'd also think that, in a city like San Francisco, climbing hills quickly would be the true measure of cycling prowess, but I guess water and stupidity always find their own level.

Now, I'm not one to wish crashes on people, but I can't help thinking that cycledom might be better off if these riders were to fall of their bikes and vow never to get back on again. Nothing serious, mind you--just enough to dent their fixies and their pride. Speaking of which, while I languished in the shed last week, the New York Times published the following article on just that, only with "Traditional Freds" instead of the "Nü" variety:

In it, the writer chronicles the events leading up to her own traumatic crash:

My crash came 8.9 miles into a 100-mile ride (of course I knew the distance, because of course I was watching my bicycle computer). My friend Jen Davis was taking a turn leading; my husband, Bill, was drafting — riding close behind her. I was drafting Bill when a slower rider meandered into his path. Bill swerved and I hit his wheel. Down I went.

Clearly this was a "clusterfred" of the highest order, but I'm not sure we're getting the whole picture and I think this testimony still requires some Johnny Cochran-esque cross-examination. Setting aside for the moment the fact that she was staring at her computer instead of watching what was going on around her, I'm not sure how, if she was drafting behind Bill as she claims, his swerving would cause her to hit his wheel. The only plausible explanation would be that they were attempting an "echelon," a maneuver that no Fred should ever attempt. In fact, I'm not even sure most Freds should attempt regular drafting, given that they're generally rapt by their various computers and gizmos like crows are transfixed by shiny things, and in addition to cars staying three feet away from them they should probably also stay three feet away from each other:


The only objects that move more erratically than Freds on Pinarellos are hummingbirds and UFOs.

Meanwhile, when I'm not browsing disembodied hand porn you can be reasonably certain I'm looking at ZBCs, or "Zany Bicycle Cockpits." Sure, the contest is long over, but fortunately for all of us ZBCs will continue to bloom on bicycles like flowers of absurdity. Moreover, the ZBC is not confined to the tinkerer's shed, and can even be found in the realm of elite competition. Consider this pair of hydraulic brakes, modified to work in tandem with road levers and documented by Cyclocross magazine:

Where there's a will, there's a kludge.

Lastly, I was pleased to receive from another reader what may be the most "epic" fixed-gear video to date:

Helps put all that hill bombing in perspective.