No time for titles, we're burning daylight here!

There was big scientific cycling news over the weekend when, after years of speculation, the New York Times officially confirmed the symbiotic relationship between owning a Cervélo and being a douche:

Scientists accomplished this by giving a Hamptons douchebag (douchedom was confirmed by genetic testing) a Ferrari and then sending him out for bagels:

HIT THE GAS I take my car to go to the bagel shop. I take the Ferrari. I get a rush a little bit, zero to 60. When you are doing it in three and a half seconds, I love that. This happens around 8:30ish.

After which they hid behind a one-way mirror to see what the horsepower-and-carb-addled douchebag would do next.  Sure enough, he grabbed his Canadian Colnago and hit the road:

CALL OF THE ROAD After that I usually like to go on a bike ride. It’s a Cervélo, light and cool. I go for a minimum of one and a half hours. It can go up to four and a half hours if I go all the way to Montauk and back. For me that is another kind of therapy. After half an hour, 45 minutes, your mind, there is nothing left except for the road. I don’t listen to music; I just go with it.

The entire study can be summed up in Latin thusly:

Cervélo, ergo douche.

By the way, the above photo was taken mere miles from where I was stricken down by the hives and nobody stopped to help me, unless you count the people who slowed down long enough to tell me to get out of the road and into the tick-infested undergrowth--you know, for my "safety."

Hopefully these same scientists can next secure funding to prove my long-held theory that Long Island is home to the highest concentration of assholes in the United States--and let's be absolutely sure to remember that Brooklyn is, strictly speaking, a part of Long Island, because last I checked there ain't no bridges between the Brooklyn Heights Promenade and the Montauk Lighthouse:

Also, I spent nearly four decades living on that great big glacial wang and I too am an asshole, so I think know what I'm talking about.

Meanwhile, in a little over a week this asshole is headed out to Steambutt Springs, Collarady for the IMBA "World Smit:

Which means I'm in a lot of trouble, because I suck at riding bikes, and apparently one of the rides we'll be doing looks like this:

24.8 Miles 95% Singletrack 1,952’ Ascent -4,589’ Descent 6,917’ Low 10,397’ High

A swift ascent followed by a long descent, this ride promises to be a fitting metaphor for my life, because that's exactly the trajectory my blogging career is following.

By the way, this MTB Project site is really cool, and I was even able to take a "virtual ride" of the route:

Though they've clearly got some bugs to work out, because it left out all the parts where I fall down.

ANYWHOO (that's a funny way of saying "anyway" that I just made up), this past Friday I successfully used this trip as an excuse to grab a rugged, all-terrain bicycle and ride to some mountain bike trails:

Because I am pretentious, I eschew bike computers and Garmins and Strava and all the rest of it (I also "eschew" things instead of simply not using them), and instead I calculate my mileage using only bits of decaying infrastructure as clues.  For example, the above mile marker (a remnant of when this trail was a railroad line), told me I had traveled roughly 22 miles from New York City by that point, and shortly thereafter I arrived at the trailhead:

Dry weather?  Check.  Sun still high in the sky?  Check.  All-terrain bicycle under my scranus?  Check.  I was in compliance with the signage and then some, so in I went:

I wasn't able to find 1,952 feet of ascent, nor was the highway ever completely out of earshot, but I did see a hawk, and I think I also caught some deer "doing it," so goddamn it I'm as ready for Collarady as I'm ever gonna be.

Then I stopped to rest and congratulated myself for moving off Asshole Island and onto the mainland, because now I can ride to my mountain bike rides:

Not that the 20 miles I traveled to this particular trail is especially convenient, but the ride to this ride happens to be very enjoyable in itself, whereas the route to any decent mountain bike trail from, say, Brooklyn completely and utterly sucks balls.

Then, on the way back, I treated myself to an artisanal lunch befitting my own high levels of pretense:

This is basically one of those "farm to table" operations, which is another way of saying you can give the animal you're about to eat "the finger" before you do, yet you don't have to actually do or see any of the killing, so you can still retain a measure of consumerist detachment.

It was quite serene:

Which was a good thing, because I was really hungry, and the bucolic surroundings were the only thing keeping me from murdering the people in front of me as they endlessly deliberated between the World's Most Expensive Bologna Sandwich and the organic sustainable quiche garnished with truffle oil and gander semen.

Sated and poor after my sandwich, I hummed along some rolling roads on my knobbly tires:

Veered onto the paved bike path for a bit:

And then passed through town, where I briefly considered hopping a train back home:

That's the other thing about riding to the trails around here; every few miles there's another town where you can fuel up at a cutesy café and/or wuss out and hop on a train.

However, the bologna sandwich proved to be worth the $75 or whatever I'd paid for it, and so fortified was I that I decided "fuck the train" and hopped onto the dirt trail that takes you almost all the way back to the city:

All in all, not to shabby for a dirt outing in the New York City environs, and at the very least it sure beats schlepping to Nyack on the Fred chariot--or riding around Manhattan looking for love:

you were on a bike on the most east of streets - m4w (Midtown East)

ok, so this is the longest shot ever!, but hey, can't blame a guy for trying, right?

you: tall ish, maybe more than 5 7? pale ( could be wrong about that since I saw you at around 10 15pm). on a citibike ( 70% sure it's a citibike, or maybe just your own blue ish dark blue ish bike?). 

riding south on FDR drive's bike lane, between 30s and 20s around 10 15pm. you have a short bob of a haircut, that much I'm certain. in the most irrational statement ever, I might love you. 

me; was in dark shorts and a multi color seersucker (though possibly impossible to tell at that hour). and the only reason why i'm writing. we crossed each other, and you definitely looked back as you were riding away. 

anyway, let's pretend i didn't just confess my love to a stranger. it'd be sweet, to simply get to know you better

The End

So if you're a woman turned on by the idea of a relationship with someone who falls in love with vague shapes in the dark he is reasonably certain are females, be sure to drop him a line.