Titles: Why Bother?

Remember when Robin Williams got stopped for riding a bike on a New York City sidewalk?

"I had a single-speed track bike and I had on a balaclava, which basically makes me look like a terrorist or a crack dealer," Williams told the panel. He said no one else was on the sidewalk and police let him go with a warning when he gave them I.D.

At the time, people whined that he'd only gotten off because he was a celebrity, but that doesn't really make sense, because they took Alec Baldwin to jail for salmoning:

(Baldwin will spill hot Starbucks on your baby.)

So in retrospect, the fact that they let him go probably says more about his good character than his celebrity.

Moving on, much has been said about the silliness of the Oregon Manifest "Ultimate Urban Utility Bike" competition, and all of it was said by me.  Apart from a bunch of needlessly exotic bikes with dubious "features" like integrated cable locks and brushes instead of fenders, perhaps the silliest thing about it is that we already live in a golden age of urban utility bikes.  On one hand, you've got bikes like your WorkCycles, and your Big Dummys--and trust me, they're both fantastic, which I know because that's what Mommy and Daddy Rock Machine ride, and we are the very embodiment of the urbane cycling family.  But those bikes ain't cheap, so on the other hand you've got plenty of genuinely functional city bikes in the sub-$500 range, some of which are merely a mouse click away from companies like State Bicycle Co.:

Who are way better than all the other mail order purveyors of inexpensive bicycles because, in addition to offering a fine product, they support indispensable American cultural institutions such as this blog:

(State's advertisement, as seen in the right-hand margin.  The bald guy is Tim Whatley from "Seinfeld" in my favorite episode, "The Crystal Meth.")

Therefore, given all this Oregon Manifest mishegas, it seemed like a perfect time to try one of their city bike offerings, and recently UPS delivered a "Saturday Deluxe" to my estate:

I should point out that, even though I am the owner of two (2) custom artisanal bicycles, I am also a sucker for cheap bikes, and if I lived in an actual house with an actual garage it would probably be full of mail order impulse buys.  For example, while my Engin was being "curated" I used the wait as an excuse to order a single-speed 29er "gap bike" from a popular mail order company.  (However, that scheme backfired, because by the time the Engin was finished I'd completely rebuilt the "gap bike" to the extent that the only original components were the frame and the brake arms, at which point the bike was no longer "cheap.")  Also, I was for some years the proud (or at least not overly ashamed) owner of a Scattante.

The point is, I'm something of an authority on this subject, because I know what it's like to get an inexpensive bike in the mail, and I get a genuine thrill from cutting open the box and inhaling the scent of toxic packing materials.

Of course, the catch when it comes to ordering a bike online is that you're at the mercy of the goons at FedEx or UPS, and by the time the State reached me the fork had sliced its way through the box:

Fortunately, the bike was completely fine, though I think a couple of bolts escaped, which I'll address shortly.

Anyway, I opened the box and pulled out the bike, and while I've experienced the excitement of traveling down to Philadelphia and accepting a bicycle that was hand-fabricated just for me by a NAHBS-winning framebuilder, there's also something a little too "adult" about the whole thing, which is why I still love me a bargain bike wrapped in plastic:

If you remember how exciting it was to tear open the blister pack of a toy when you were a kid then you know exactly what I'm talking about.

Moments later, I was assembling the thing, and only afterwards did I notice this warning:

Too late!

Within about 20 minutes or so I had the bike together except for the front rack (which came in a separate box and which I'll put on later), as well as these bolts which I mentioned earlier:

These, it turns out, are part of the rear rack, and somehow a couple of small pieces must have made their way out of the fork slits in the box while in transit.  However, in my parts bin I have a drawer containing roughly eleventy-million odd nuts, bolts, and screws, and it took me roughly four seconds to find suitable replacements.

Once I had, I snugged everything up, topped off the tires, and took the bike for a spin around the neighborhood:

Again, I have yet to put on the front rack, but it's next on my agenda.  I'm sure you'll agree it's a smart-looking bike, and so far it rides very nicely too.  In any case, I'm looking forward to conducting more rigorous testing and I'll keep you duly apprised.

Speaking of riding bikes in cities, do you remember this putz?

Just in case you don't, his name is Courtland Milloy, and he's the guy who said this in the Washington Post:

It’s a $500 fine for a motorist to hit a bicyclist in the District, but some behaviors are so egregious that some drivers might think it’s worth paying the fine.

Naturally that caused a stir, and his bosses probably liked that he got them some clicks, so unsurprisingly he's back with some more bike-baiting:

By the way, if you're going to email me something, please turn off your foul language filters, because when I replied to the person who forwarded me the above article I got this:

[Deleted] filters inbound and outbound mail for unacceptable language.  Your message has triggered our language filter and has been quarantined.
Please resend your message without the use of inappropriate language.  Thank you.

I'm not sure how anybody expects me to read an article like this and not include the world "fuck" in my reply.

Anyway, the angle here is that Milloy goes for a ride in Washington, D.C.  And guess what?  He's still an idiot:

“See that?” Davis said, after a driver approaching from the opposite direction made a sharp left turn in front of us. “He was supposed to yield.”

Perhaps. But I’d been too busy fidgeting with the gear shifts on my handlebars to notice. Of course, if I had collided with the car, the driver would have been at fault. That’s because in this bike-friendly city, the driver is always wrong.

Moreover, because he's an idiot he thinks everybody else must be an idiot too, and therefore nobody should ride bikes:

And that’s my biggest problem with bikers on D.C. streets. Too many of them bike like me. They are clueless. Wouldn’t know a “cycle track” from an Amtrak.

By the same logic, nobody should be allowed to drive either.

But by far the most offensive part of the article was when he used one of my words:

While our group was lined up single-file in a bike lane, waiting at a light, I slow-rolled my bicycle from the middle of the line to the front. “We call that ‘shoaling,’ ” Davis informed me. “It’s not illegal, but it’s rude. Like people who cut in front of the grocery line because they have only one or two items.”

I get it. When a biker cuts into a line of bikers, it’s denounced as “shoaling,” but when a biker worms his way to the front of a line of cars waiting at a light, then meanders along without letting anybody pass, it’s a right.

Ugh.  I feel so dirty.  It's like knowing someone you hate just fingered your girlfriend.

As to his "point" (if you can even call it that), getting ahead of the cars at a red light when you're on a bike is not called "shoaling."  It's called "survival."

So what's Milloy's conclusion?  That everybody should buy a car, of course!

I noticed that in some places their bike lanes are being overrun with Segway riders, rollerskaters, skateboarders and joggers. Even people using motorized wheelchairs have taken a liking to the lanes. Near the Treasury Department, the bike lanes contained manure from a U.S. Park Police horse.

Who knows? A biker just might decide that enough is enough and buy a car.

What a bonehead.  Hey, Milloy, I have a car.  Come on up to New York, strap that camera between your tits, and let me take you for a drive.  I'll show you why motorists are the biggest idiots of all.

By the way, even though he's truly annoying, there's very little in Milloy's rhetoric that is genuinely alarming, since it's clearly the work of an increasingly irrelevant "journalist" looking for eyeballs in the Internet age.  No, what's alarming is that in American society it's socially acceptable to be both physically and mentally inept and completely unable to transport yourself over small distances in an urban environment without being inside an automobile:

(Milloy in the "GoPro Manssiere.")

Consider, for example, the manner in which a grown man is terrorized by a small puddle:

No wonder this country sucks.  We need two tons of car to protect us from puddles.

Consider also the fact that he only rode a bicycle this far, and yet his employer thinks it is newsworthy:

I think his next column should be about the helplessness of the American male and his profound fear of the environment in which he lives--which is not completely unfounded, as America is full of Courtland Milloys, and therefore he's pretty liable to essentially run himself over:

We can only hope.