Winter Storm Maximus has kicked us right in the gluteus.

First of all, I wrote a new column for Bicycling magazine, and you can read it here:

That's like a post-within-a-post, which is a device similar to the play-within-a-play you'll find in "Hamlet," which was a movie starring Mel Gibson.  (I went to a college.)  That makes this blog literature, so how you like me now?  (Shakespeare actually coined the expression "How you like me now?"  Shylock says it in "Merchant of Venice" after busting some sort of move.)

Also, I see the Bicycling column has zero (0) comments on it so far, which means you can be the very first person to log on and call me a fatuous douche-wallah.

Speaking of my formidable artistic abilities, having mastered literature I've moved on to landscape photography, and I've quickly mastered that too:

(How you like me now?)

Seriously, it's got water fowl and everything:

If you'd like to make that image your desktop, simply hit CTRL-Open Apple-Alt-Option-Command with the shift lock turned on, and with any luck your computer won't explode or randomly open browser windows full of live pornography videos playing at top volume, resulting in your immediate ejection from the public library.

Also, you'll automatically be charged $15, but that's a small price to pay for looking at a cold bridge that has been rendered aesthetically pleasing by winter storm Maximus, which is what this last snowstorm was actually called, though I understand the makers of the Maximus Enhancement Cobalt Glider are suing for trademark infringement:

I've been running one of these in my PF30 bottom bracket shell along with a ceramic bearing upgrade and I figure I'm saving at least .00003 watts per kilometer.

Speaking of performance enhancement, a reader tells me a clean-cut youth says doping is a thing of the past:

Germany’s Marcel Kittel, a member of Team Giant-Shimano who is here for the Tour of Dubai this weekend, told Gulf News: “The most important thing for us young riders is to show that we are different. We need to show that we are here to fight for our voice and that we do not want to be compared to those riders who have cheated or are cheating. We are ready to fight for our idea of cycling and we want to make clear what we want.”

Yeah, right.  Save it, haircut.  Either this kid is lying, or he's a total dork and the cool kids won't let him come to their doping parties.

Or, even more likely, he's both.

By the way, apparently there's a Tour of Dubai now, which creeps me out in the same way that Bob Dylan Chrysler commercial did.

Meanwhile, closer to the cold, cold grave of the age spectrum, we all know that the hot new trend among middle-aged amateurs is pumping your scranus full of testosterone and then racing cyclocross--and if you're about to slap a patch on your chamois region you might want to think twice, because apparently it can make you have a heart attack:

The most recent study, published in the journal PLoS One and funded by the National Institutes of Health, followed about 56,000 older and middle-aged men. It found that those over 65 had double the rate of heart attacks as did those not taking the testosterone drugs, and that there was a similar increased risk among men under 65 with previous heart disease.

In other words, stick with EPO and ludicrously expensive wheelsets--though Mike Burrows says that, while some wheels can be laterally stiffer than others, they're all equally vertically compliant (or non-compliant):



So if your scranus thinks one set of wheels is smoother than another, apparently it's lying.

Lastly, here's a short news piece about bi-keen in Los Angeles:


And if you needed a reminder why so many drivers suck, here's a guy with a Hyundai who thinks bikes are a problem because he has to open his fucking eyes and pay attention once in awhile:

"Because you always have to make sure you look to the other side because if you're gonna dodge this guy because, um, see you don't wanna do a hit and run?  Um, you can also get into a car crash as a result of that."

Putz.