Grinding Our Way To Year's End...

(Now that's an obit.)

In case you're still wondering where you stand as a cyclist in America, the answer is you don't stand at all.  Instead, you lie bleeding on the rear windshield of a speeding Mustang for two miles before the driver dumps you behind the garbage cans:

A Broward bicyclist was left in critical condition Tuesday after a hit-and-run driver struck him, then kept driving for two miles with the man caught in the car’s smashed rear window.

Once the driver arrived at his Pompano Beach townhouse, he removed the biker, identified as Craig Camlin, 53, from the car’s roof and dumped him in a wooded area behind a trash bin and bushes.

Then, the driver, who police said was 27-year-old Axel Inostroza, hid his damaged, black 2003 Ford Mustang to keep his girlfriend from seeing it and went inside to sleep, according to the confession he later gave investigators.

Merry Christmas!

(The shitter of humanity is indeed filled to overflowing with the feces of ill will.)

This is why you should never, ever trust a man with a sculpted beard and sculpted eyebrows:

I cannot think of single atrocity you could visit upon this person that would in any way make me even remotely uncomfortable.  In fact, I think they should just sculpt his facial hair with live rats like in "1984:"

Then when the rats are done with his face they could give him a little "manscaping."

It's not even lunchtime and I'm already fantasizing about rats gnawing off a man's testicles.

This is why it's so hard being a cyclist in the Internet age.  You can't go a day without reading something that makes you pray for someone's nuts to get eaten by vermin.

But hey, it's the holidays.  Let's set genital-gnawing rodents aside for a moment and focus on the things that tie us together as people.  Literally.  Because some "duders" out in California have invented a bike leash for skaters:



Flatland Towing for all Skaters or Launching Skaters into Rails or Ramps by temporarily clipping onto any bicycle seat then unclipping

I'm not sure why they need $15,000 to produce a device you could fabricate yourself from impulse items you can purchase at the counter of your neighborhood bodega and/or Petco, but then again I'm not a deeply stoned "engineer."

Also, it ain't no Bicycle Bungee:



Actually, that's not true.  It's exactly a Bicycle Bungee.

Still, it's marginally more practical than the Gear Grinder, to which I was alerted by a reader:

At first I assumed Gear Grinder was a band that put out an album on Earache in the early 1990s, but it turns out it's something even dumber:

Gear Grinder is the world's first pedal powered coffee grinder. It's a small chain driven coffee grinder that grinds a single hopper of coffee and is attached to the seat stay of a single speed bicycle.

Conceived and developed by two coffee drinking cyclists in London, Gear Grinder allows cycle loving  coffee aficionados to grind their morning brew the best way possible....by foot.

Okay, so like any coffee drinker I want my coffee first thing in the morning.  Ordinarily I'd just grind it in the kitchen, but with Gear Grinder now I can finally go outside, get on my bike, and ride around the block 10 or 15 times first, which sounds like a great way to streamline my morning routine.  Also, the Gear Grinder mounts to pretty much the filthiest place on your bicycle, so your coffee will taste of road grit.

Why anyone would fuck with the immutable order or morning operations (that being Coffee, then Bathroom, then Bike) is beyond me.

Or maybe this is a harbinger of something even more insidious, and coffee douchedom has gotten to the point that people are actually bringing their own grounds to the café for their post-ride slow-drip whatever.

"Hey, can you brew this for me?," asks the guy with the sleeve tattoos and the cycling cap.

"Sure, there'll be a corkage fee of $20," replies the guy with the sleeve tattoos and the cycling cap behind the counter.

"Gladly, you can't pay enough for authenticity."

It's strange.  I like bikes, and I like coffee, but for some reason when they come together I get extremely pissed off--except when it comes to my own coffee, of course, because I'm a whore:

Put that on your seat stay and grind it.

And wear a hat and read a book while you do it:

Hey, my toilet's not going to gold plate itself.

Speaking of me, around this time last year I made a New Year's resolution to not renew my USA Cycling license, and thereby cease being a card-carrying Fred:

Well, I'm pleased to announce that, with less than two weeks remaining in the year, it's extremely unlikely I'll be tempted to compete in an organized bicycle-cycling racing event, and so for the first time ever I will have actually fulfilled a New Year's resolution, meaning I am entitled to a reward.  I'm not sure what I'll treat myself to yet, but I'm thinking I may finally get that gravel bike I've had my eye on:

I'm going to blast the crap out of some gravel, though hopefully I don't need a special USA Cycling license in order to do so.

Also, I hope my Gear Grinder is compatible with it, because grinding gravel while grinding coffee puts you in the very eye of the cycling zeitgeist--especially if you wear orange and camo while doing it, at which point you become the embodiment of every single cycling trend going, until you go supernova and your SRAM hydrolic dick breaks explode, leaving you lying in a ditch with a brake fluid facial.

Lastly, anyone who rides a bike in New York City knows Access-A-Ride vans are the scariest motor vehicles out there (they make yellow cabs look like horse-drawn carriages), so it should come as no surprise that one has nipped onto the sidewalk and created another future passenger:

That's bicycle-lane bad, and I look forward to hearing how a cyclist was responsible.