Ubiquity: Wherever you Ride, There You Are

Webster's dictionary defines "ubiquitous" as follows:

ubiq·ui·tous adj \yü-ˈbi-kwə-təs\ : being all over the freaking place : like, everywhere : an especially pungent form of hummus [a ubiquitous outbreak of herpes]

And when it comes to ubiquity, nobody embodies this quality like the time-traveling t-shirt-wearing retro-Fred from the planet Tridork, who a number of readers in the UK have informed me has finally scored his first magazine cover:

They say once you've done a Digital Photography Enthusiast cover stardom is all but assured, so from here on in all he has to do is keep his flavor-saver down, hold on tight to those clip-on aeorobars, and let the offers roll in. I predict that he'll be on every billboard in America (or, if you prefer, Canada's flavor-saver) in a "fortnight," which Webster's defines as follows:

fort·night noun \ˈfȯrt-ˌnīt\: a pretentious two weeks : a night you spend in a fort [in a fortnight the time-traveling t-shirt-wearing retro-Fred from the planet Tridork will be ubiquitous in Canada's flavor-saver]

By the way, if you'd like to know what that issue of Digital Photography Enthusiast looks like in its natural newsstand setting, here it is courtesy of one reader, complete with a pair of disembodied hands:

Presumably as I type this, thousands of digital photography enthusiasts are enjoying a similar view as they peruse it on the toilet. And as for the question of whether the person who took the above photo is himself a digital photography enthusiast, it all depends on what he was thinking as he shot it. If he thought to himself, "Hey, I'm really enjoying this!" then I guess that would make him an enthusiast, but if he thought, "I can't wait to get this over with and check out that issue of Sky and Telescope" then that puts him squarely in the digital photography indifferentist camp. As for Sky and Telescope, I'm pretty sure what to expect for the cover of next month's issue:

Incidentally, Sky and Telescope is a magazine so nerdy it makes Bicycling look like Vice, and the typical subscriber probably spends hours a day watching the skies for evidence of life on other planets, having long ago abandoned the far more elusive search for a date.

Speaking of fruitless searches, as you're no doubt aware there is considerable unrest in Egypt right now, and as the story continues to unfold I've become increasingly concerned about the well-being of those fixed-gear riders who went there to look for the pyramids:

(Where are the pyramids? I must inflate them with my floor pump!)

Granted, at least one of them is wearing a truly "epic" helmet, but I fear that may not be enough to protect him. Indeed, in these turbulent times, whenever I read about trouble in any far-flung corner of the globe (insasmuch as globes can have corners, which is not at all), my mind immediately goes to the fixie crew that is undoubtedly trapped there. This is because, in the past few years, undertaking poorly-planned "epic" fixed-gear journeys to remote destinations and filming them has become the fixed-gear equivalent of a trip to Sandals, and there is scarcely a country left where one of these ill-conceived theme vacations is not underway. Once upon a time, the sun never set on the British Empire--now it never sets on some hipster with a track bike, a giant messenger bag, and a video camera. So ubiquitious is the phenomenon that the State Department even issues fixed-gear travel advisories now:

Fixed-gear filmmakers are like missionaries, spreading the Gospel of Self-Importance to exotic peoples with far more pressing concerns. Skid-patch calculation will surely be remembered as the navel-gazing of the 21st century.

This is not to say that you should refrain from taking cycling vacations--just make sure the place you're going is safe, and also think carefully about your equipment selection. For example, when traveling long distances, you might want to leave the bike designed for riding around and around in tiny circles at home and opt for something that can accommodate racks. Speaking of racks (and disembodied hands, as I was earlier) another reader has forwarded me the following:

Which includes not a disembodied hand, but rather the very tip of a disembodied digit:

My best guess is that they're fingertips, but without further evidence I won't rule out the possibility that the person (or simian) holding the rack has prehensile feet.

Meanwhile, you may recall that not too long ago I was generally whining and griping about how I wanted to leave New York. This is no doubt due at least in part to seasonal affective disorder, since right now the area looks like this and we've got so much snow that the rats have started wearing penguin costumes. Meanwhile, yet another reader is taunting me about life in the cycling paradise that is Portland, and informs me that not only is there no snow, or ice, or police obstructing the bike lanes, but that there are also riders who have what appear to be prehensile butt-cracks:

I'm not sure what she's actually "portaging" in there, but I did fire up the Gary Klein telescope and it appears to be a paperback book:

I don't know why she wouldn't just carry the book in her fanny pack instead, though it's also entirely possible she realized that the moon was visible over the horizon of her pants and she stuck the book in there out of modesty. Either way, you certainly don't need a rack when you've got that kind of posterior dexterity.

Lastly, I should remind you that registration is now open for the Five Boro Bike Tour. If you want to know what this ride is like, just imagine the streets of New York choked with over 30,000 people who look pretty much exactly like the time-traveling t-shirt-wearing retro-Fred from the planet Tridork and you've got a pretty good idea. In any case, I was reminded that registration was open when I received this promotional brochure via the actual mail:


Which featured a bicycle equipped with a rather perplexing drivetrain:

I wonder of the bicycle crackdown will still be in effect when the Five Boro Bike Tour gets underway. Hopefully it is, since I think handing out over 30,000 tickets in a single day might finally get it out of the city's system once and for all. I also wonder if they gave out any tickets to the participants in this past weekend's "Idiotarod," which I'm sure involved plenty of light-running:

It's just like a Portland cyclocross race, only without the bikes.