In Xanadu did Kubla Khan/A stately pleasure-dome decree:/Where Alph, the sacred river, ran/Through Wednesdays measureless to man

So you wave to other bike dorks while you're out on your dorky bike ride.

Good for you.

But do you flush after you use the urinal?  Because what the fuck?!?  Maybe I'm getting old, but seems to me there was a time you could sidle up to a urinal and it would be empty.  Now every time I step up for my turn I get two nostrils full of someone else's pee.  (The smell of the pee, I'm not getting actual pee in my nostrils.)

And finish your goddamn ATM transactions while you're at it.  Don't leave it for me to press that "Are you finished?" button and then deal with your stupid receipt.  And it's not even like I can clear out your bank account as a little "Fuck you very much" gesture, because it asks for your PIN again.

The point is, before you award yourself a congratulatory wank for being such a "friendly Fred," take inventory of yourself and make sure you're practicing the courtesies that actually matter.

Anyway, who has time for waving with all this data?

(As tweeted by Stevil Kinevil)

Maybe Strava should add a waving function.  I don't use Strava myself (no particular reason apart from I think it's stupid and it runs contrary to everything I love about riding a bicycle), but as I understand it they will alert you when some other dork steals your KOM.  (At which point you drop what you're doing, run out to reclaim it, and promptly die.)  So why can't it also send you an alert that says, "A fellow Fred just waved at you"?  (I guess the danger there is you might drop what you're doing, run out to wave back, take your hand off the bars at just the wrong moment, and promptly die.)

Speaking of taking your hands off the bars at just the wrong moment, it's a good thing I wasn't too distracted by waving yesterday to notice this:

(That's a big-ass hole, and it's kind of shaped like Batman.  Draw your own conclusions.)

I'd like to say I've never been so distracted that I've ridden into a barrier that size, but it's not true, I totally have--but not this time!

In case you're wondering, this hole lies on the Hudson River Greenway, just north of the George Washington Bridge.  (New York City Freds will be stunned to learn the Hudson River Greenway actually continues north of the George Washington Bridge.)  I like the Hudson River Greenway, as I do most greenways, but the one problem with them is that they attract an undesirable element.

See, here's how it works.  Here in America, we've been beaten into submission by the automobile, so either we spend most of our outside time cowering from them or else cowering inside of one.  Consequently, we have a lot of repressed transportation exuberance, so when we finally get access to a roadway that's free from motor vehicles we're unable to transport ourselves on it in a dignified fashion.  Instead, we're so excited that we do stupid stuff like this:

You're supposed to tow your friend on the skateboard when you're eight, not when your twenty-eight.  

Anyway, eventually I made my way through the skitchers and the Rollerbladers and the unicyclists and the triathletes and the e-bicyclists and all the other disgraces to human-powered transport and got to where I needed to be, at which point I locked up my bike:

  

As you can see, my new locking system involves simply confusing the thief until he gives up and walks away--or at least moves on to Dreddy Merckx's bicycle instead:

Of course, if my bike gets stolen anyway I'll just replace it with an impossibly exotic custom, like the latest one from the Pez guy, to which I was alerted by a reader:

When we last checked in with Pez guy he had obtained a ridiculous Serotta that even the most ostentatious dentist would be embarrassed to ride.  However, it turns out that this was merely a "gap bike" until he could finally "curate" the world's most baroque douchecycle:

While I know there are other people capable of knocking out what I wanted, nobody else but Kelly smiled (much less said “yes”) when I asked for a… Lugged Stainless steel bike (strike one for some) with an ISP seat mast (strike 2 for a few “traditionalists”), a lugged press fit 30 BB (strikes 3 and 4 for guys who either couldn’t fabricate the BB from scratch or just refuse to acknowledge BB30), an oversized stainless head tube (strike 5 for the folks that couldn’t machine it in the right size), internal routing for a center of seat lug brake cable exit (see strike 2 again as you can’t do that without ISP and add strike 6 as some couldn’t handle making a solid internal channel for ease of cable routing) and lastly strike 7 for the guys that didn’t want to make a bike to handle an internal Di2 system.

At a certain point, pathological consumers reach the stage where they become obsessed with owning paradoxes--it needs to be old yet new, traditional yet modern, robust yet delicate, blah blah blah.  Concomitant with this is getting a total boner from presenting craftspeople with a list of ridiculous demands as you simultaneously finger your bloated wallet.

Sure, it may seem fun at the time, but unfortunately here's what you wind up with:

Eeew..  What's with all the white crap?  It looks like it has Knogs all over it.

And here's the douchecycle's signature touch--a lugged PressFit 30 bottom bracket shell, which is about as elegant as a threaded-to-threadless stem adapter:

Of all the parts that really needed a dead on paint match, these were they. The cranks and lugs sit too close together to have the colors be off even a little. 

If you ever find yourself stressing this hard over white paint you should immediately stop what you're doing and move on to something more productive, like masturbating or making ice sculptures on a sunny day.

Anyway, it's a cautionary tale that should only make you appreciate your off-the-shelf whatever-you-ride that much more.

Meanwhile, it turns out that Dorothy Rabinowitz was right, and that bikes really are begriming New York City's best neighborhoods:

Yes, that "accident" scene would be a lot more attractive without all those unsightly crushed bicycles.

She's also right about that all-powerful bike lobby:

But this week, advocates for cycling and pedestrian safety will begin perhaps the most decisive test yet of their influence: issuing endorsements of candidates on the criteria of streetscape policy positions.

The group behind the endorsements, a political action committee called StreetsPAC, has already thrown its support behind five candidates in City Council races, with plans to wade into the mayoral election and borough presidents’ races, among other contests this year.

And, perhaps most incredibly, mayoral candidates are suddenly turning pro-bike:

Bill de Blasio really likes bike lanes now.

"Right now, the city’s goal is to increase bicycling to 3 percent of all trips by 2020," reads the public advocate's mayoral campaign policy book, released late last night and available here. "Bill de Blasio will double that goal—using education, promotion and safer streets to grow bicycling to 6 percent by 2020."

Also, "De Blasio will continue expanding bike lanes around the city so that bicyclists have a safe, dedicated space to ride—and drivers and pedestrians will have more predictable streets. He will expand the public Bike Share program to outer-borough neighborhoods and increase education outreach to promote safe riding. With these tools, de Blasio will set a goal of cutting serious cycling injuries and fatalities in half—even as the number of cyclist continues to grow."

Wow, it's almost as if politicians are realizing it's stupid to be against things the majority of people actually want.

Still, I'm not impressed.  Wake me up when one of them actually suggests drivers should get in trouble for killing people.