Titles Are The Pie Plate Of Literature

(Good deal on some crabon, via a reader.)

If you need me at any point today, you'll be able to find me on the sofa watching this recently-Tweeted-at-me video, over and over and over again:



Is there a more satisfying sight than wave after wave of triathletes falling down like an invading army trying unsuccessfully to storm the walls of Castle Fredliness?  I would argue that there is not.  I'll also acknowledge that I probably couldn't make it up the hill either, but that's why I'm sitting here laughing at them instead of wearing armwarmers with a sleeveless vest and trying to ascend a 31% grade on a bike with aerobars.

Yes, life is good here on the sofa.  Shuck it all, life is good in general, I'm not going to lie.  Every morning I take a stroll down to the seaside where I greet the local fishmongers and the merchants returning from the East with exotic trinkets and fragrances.  Then I walk back home through the winding cobblestoned streets, put on my trinkets and douse myself in myrrh, and eat thirty-seven oysters for breakfast.  After that I plant myself on the couch and watch videos of triathletes falling down, until those bivalves start working their aperient magic and I adjourn to the restroom where I read and reread copies of my own books until I am voided.  (My books make a great holiday gift, by the way, though not the copies I keep in the restroom.)

Speaking of exotic trinkets from the East, it's hard to imagine I'll ever get tired of the falling-down triathletes, but if the unthinkable happens and I actually do I'll then turn to this equally beguiling promotional video for Tiso electronic shifting that was forwarded to me by Klaus of Cycling Inquisition:



I was sold on this stuff as soon as I heard that first smokin' guitar lick, but if that's not enough for you consider it has twelve speeds:

Those tridorks totally would have scaled that hill with an extra cog.

Not only that, but you can also shift remotely:

It's not hard to imagine the many uses for such a feature.  For example, most aspiring Freds hire coaches now because they can't figure out how to ride their bicycles on their own, so for an extra fee they can pay their coaches to select their gears for them too.  Also, when you're riding the home trainer you can have your butler or manservant shift for you while you read the Wall Street Journal.

Most impressive of all though is that the Tiso wireless shifting system has been battle-tested by this guy:

If it's so cold he needs a balaclava then I'm not sure why he isn't wearing gloves, but maybe it's to showcase the heated brake levers.

In any case, while Tiso may not have invented electronic shifting then they've certainly perfected it.  As for the bicycle itself, it's difficult to verify who first came up with the concept, but according to one man with a great deal of Italian pride and a YouTube account it certainly wasn't those sneaky Koreans:

This guy's not letting those Koreans get away with anything.  By the way, here's the article he's talking about, which appears to be a primitive attempt at humor:

Sure, it's a little dry now, but I can assure you that shit was fucking hilarious in 1904.

By the way, while wading through the New York Times archives I also discovered that the first-ever New York City bicycle crackdown took place in 1893:

Only then the excuses were a lot more creative:

Miss Douar is the first woman arrested under the ordinance governing bicycle riding in the streets, recently passed by the Board of Aldermen.  When arrested she claimed that her lamp was burning when she left home, and that it must have been extinguished by a gust of wind.  She was taken to the Thirtieth Street Station and given in charge of the matron.

I too blame the mighty god Zephyrus when I get pulled over for riding without a lantern on my steampunk recumbent:

By the way, when you're riding a steampunk recumbent you should always wear a pith helment:

And obviously an astonishing steampunk monocle:

But while recumbents may be timelessly dorky, if you had asked me whether cyclocross was still the bikey sport all the cool people were doing, I'd have said yes--until this morning, which is when I saw this cringeworthy display which I'd strongly suggest you don't watch:


This should cause all those new cyclocross converts to defect in droves--and when I say "defect" I mean they're going to stop saying the're totally going to do a 'cross race one day once their custom bikes are finished.

SRAM really could learn a thing or two from the marketing department over at Tiso.