The Indignity of Sharing A Bicycle: Saddle-Borne Scabies (Just Kidding!)

In the comments section of yesterday's post, a reader said the following:

Anonymous said...

No mention of Dave Matthews riding SWORKS. BOO

July 16, 2013 at 2:57 AM

Sorry, but I have no interest in Dave Matthews or in Specialized bicycles, both of which make me think of fraternities, ratty baseball hats worn backwards, and plaid shorts with flip-flops worn right up through October.  Therefore, when you put them both together the repellent effect is synergistic and I run screaming the other way.

Actually, that's not entirely true.  My kid rides a Specialized, but it's just a gap bike for when his Vanilla is ready in 20 years.  Sacha White's team of clairvoyant artisan bike-fitters use foraged herbs, sooth-saying, and lasers to accurately predict a child's adult proportions.  Unfortunately, they can't predict future bottom bracket interfaces, so by the time the bike's finished it will already be obsolete.

Speaking of people who listen to Dave Matthews, check out this duder using the Citi Bike as his personal office and receiving a "high five" for doing so from his erstwhile fraternity bro:

("Duuude, that's aaah-some!"--Sneaker-Blazer Guy)

Yes, Citi Bike has profoundly altered the face of New York City cycling, telecommuting, and duder high-fives, though the system is not without its growing pains.  (I mean the bike share system.  As far as I know there's not a system for duder high-fives, though maybe they do find each-other via some "duder app" so they can slap hands during rush hour.  I wouldn't know, I was never in a fraternity.)  See, here's what the Citi Bike app looks like on your handheld smart phone device.  I'm the blue dot, and I'm standing right at the station:

See how the bike share station balloons are two shades of blue?  That's supposed to indicate how full or empty they are.  So when I headed to the station to which the green arrow is pointing, I naturally assumed it was half-empty.  (Yes, half-empty.  I'm a pessimist.  If I were the kind of optimistic hand-slapper who through things were half-full I'd be listening to Dave Matthews and spinning on a docked Citi Bike right now, waiting for high-fives.)  However, as it turns out, it wasn't half-empty or half-full.  It was totally empty, save for one bike with the seat turned around, which means that shit was broke:

Also, as I approached the station, I witnessed a woman checking out the very last working Citi Bike, and here she is salmoning away as she cradles her cellphone to her shoulder:

My first instinct was to give chase and insist she surrender the Citi Bike on the grounds that her behavior was highly illegal and if she didn't I'd turn her in to the NYPD.  My second was to un-dock the broken Citi Bike anyway, since as far as I could tell all that was wrong with it was that it had a flat tire.  So why not just "rim" the fucker to the next station and swap it out for a better bike?  It's not like it's my bike, so who cares if I trash the wheel?

But then I realized that was silly, since there's a Citi Bike station roughly every four feet, so I might as well just walk to the next one.  Here's me heading downtown to another dock:

("15 bikes my scranus!")

This station was also far emptier than the app indicated, but there were two working bikes:

However, when I approached, this guy told me the station wasn't working:

"Who the hell is this guy and what does he know?," I thought to myself as I inserted my key and discovered that he was exactly right.

By this time I'd inadvertently walked halfway to my destination, and a reasonable person would have simply said "Fuck it" and continued to do so.  I, however, am not reasonable, and at this point I wanted a Cit Bike out of spite.  In fact, I was prepared to continue walking past my destination if necessary, stopping only at the first Citi Bike station with a working bike in it, or at the Staten Island Ferry, whichever came first.

Fortunately, at the next station, I spied a bike waaay in the distance:

Actually, there were two bikes, and a guy in a green shirt was staring at one of them as if willing it to un-dock itself:

I was ready to fight him if necessary, but it wasn't, and I finally checked out a bike and rode it a mere ten blocks to my extremely important recreational beer-drinking appointment.

As far as I know, the guy in the green shirt is still there.

By the way, there have been a lot of complaints about Citi Bike, but how come nobody is outraged by the wanton seductresses who parade their wares at each station?

I assume they loiter there in order to take advantage of the sorts of rubes who think things are half-full.  "Hey there, tiger.  My Citi Bike key isn't working.  Could you check out a bike for me?  I don't want to be late for my waxing appointment.  If you wait here for me I'll let you inspect it."  Then they ride off into the sunset, never to return.

Actually, maybe that's what happened to green shirt guy.

At any rate, once I had my Citi Bike, I joined what in New York City these days is actually shaping up to be something like a bicycle rush hour:

Though as soon as the light changes, the attacks begin--and not the Cat 6 attacks, either.  No, I mean the "dooring" attacks, visible in the distance:

Note the silver car parked in the buffer, and how the passenger flings his door open and leaves it there like it's trawling for tuna:

Note also the New York State plaque indicating the driver is a judge or something (I didn't actually stop to look at it and my shitty photography renders it unreadable) and thus part of a vast anti-cycling conspiracy:

I also attempted to get a shot of the shitty passenger responsible for the dooring attempt:

Sadly I failed, but I did at least get a shot of the numbnuts in the passenger seat:

Honestly, I don't really care if these guys want to sit around in the middle of traffic rubbing their schlongs because they're in the government mafia, but could you at least just close the fucking door please?

Fuck you very much, I appreciate it.

Next come the attacks from the pedestrians:

I suspect that at least 75% of the people who complain about sidewalk cyclists have no idea that they're actually walking in the fucking bike lane:

("Loving these new green sidewalks!")

I also suspect that the guy in the business casual attire is schlepping a duffel bag full of body parts:

As for this guy, clearly he found himself on the wrong side of the scaffolding, didn't want to walk over the grates lest he fall through and join the C.H.U.D.s, and so now he's making his phobia your problem:

He'll be penning an angry anti-cyclist screed to the New York Post as soon as he gets home.

Meanwhile, in more Fredly news, James Huang is now taking on tubelessness in his "Yeah, I Just Went There" column:

(James Huang likes tubeless.  Yeah, he just went there.)

Inner tubes are notably rare on other high-performance vehicles, so why are we still using them on bicycles? While they're not always the easiest to set up, I can't think of many good reasons why most riders shouldn't go tubeless.

I dunno, belt drives are rare on high-performance motorcycles but that doesn't stop the bicycle tech geeks from "foffing off" all over them.  Also, other high-performance vehicles go 100mph and have tires that weigh more than my entire bike; meanwhile, I can fold up a bicycle tire and stick it in my jersey pocket.  So maybe we're still using inner tubes on bicycles because they work and you can repair them like a million times, and also this:

The biggest obstacle to widespread acceptance of tubeless, however, continues to be convenience. While you can easily swap a tubed tire in less than five minutes, stubborn tubeless tires can take far longer and sometimes require a compressor to properly seat the bead. Then there's the messiness of sealant — especially if you blow a tire off the rim.

Sounds really fucking annoying.  It's remarkable how inconvenient the cycling industry wants the bicycle to be.  Plus, I don't think any of those high-performance vehicles (whose owners never repair their own flats anyway) require ejaculating sealant into the tires on a regular basis.  I certainly don't squirt Stan's into my car tires, and I didn't do it when I had a motorcycle, either--though my motorcycle did use inner tubes.  

Sure, I do like the tubelessness on my mountain bicycling cycle so I can keep my tires all mushy, but on a Fred bike it just seems like a pain in the scranus.

Nevertheless, clearly it's only a matter of time before every Fred bike has electronic shifting, hydrolic dick breaks, a gigantic pain-in-the-ass press-in bottom bracket, and impossible-to-mount tires brimming with spermy sealant, so when it breaks you'll have to bring it in to the local dealership for a "diagnostic" and have your tires mounted and spin-balanced with a machine.

I totally plan to do a helicopter conversion on my Fred bike though:

Now that's how you avoid a pinch flat.