Bikes: So Insidious Even Portland's Giving Up On Them

So I was flipping through the old Tweeter when I saw this:

@bikesnobnyc Not to be too impatient or anything, but WHO WON THE DAMN 200 WORD ESSAY CONTEST?? I'VE BEEN SITTING BY THE MAILBOX FOR WEEKS!
— The Private Cyclist (@PrivateCyclist) October 9, 2014

Oops!  You know that feeling when you forget to collect your laundry from the dry cleaner?  That's the deep shame I'm now experiencing.  Just give me a few days to find my ticket and I can assure you I will declare a winner in the next few days.

Between my pending L'Eroica report and this I am officially sitting on a backlog, which means that as a blogger I'm now flirting with a demotion from semi-professional to amateur.

Speaking of demotions, remember how Portland used to be the Bike Capital of America?  Well, they've tumbled from grace so spectacularly that they've given up on bikes altogether and are now trying to be the...uh, the themselves of walking:

Portland’s annual three-week festival of fun on foot, inspired by PedalPalooza, has its first big burst of action this Saturday.

Walktober is run by advocacy group Oregon Walks. Like PedalPalooza, anyone can create an event online; the most interesting will survive.

Wait a minute.  A series of theme walks in October?  Come on, Portland.  Every city in America already has that.  It's called "Trick-or-Treating," and you'd know that if any of you had TVs:

Then again, most Americans experience a sense of shame when they continue to engage in these sorts of activities well into their 30s.  This is not the case in Portland, hence a bikeless "Zoobomb" called "Shoebomb:"

Put on your full-face helmet, pack a snack, and get on the MAX. We're going to bomb the west hills...on foot! Tighten those laces and hold on tight as we walk briskly around hairpin turns and sashay vigorously down perilous slopes. 

Oy.

Poor Portland.  I can only assume that the producers of "Portlandia" sucked all the life out of the city and this desiccated shell is all that's left.

It's only a matter of time before Vanilla moves into the shoe business--oh, wait, they already have:

Yeah, I know they've been selling these boots for like six years but I'm sitting on a backlog, remember?

I've also got like two thousand fixies on Fixedgeargallery still to pick apart.  Check out Bamboo Fred, for example:

(Actually, a "Bamboo Fred" is technically called a "Gilligan.")

Fixegeargallery...still going, still ridiculous.

Speaking of ridiculous, did you know that bicycles are a greater threat to American society than mass shootings?  Well, it's true, at least according to this "article:"

(Wow, typing the word "article" really stuck in my knuckles here.)

For example, the CDC bicycle-related injury report for 2010 shows that almost twice as many people died on bicycles in that one year than were killed in "mass shootings" during the 14 years studied by the FBI. Thus, while there were 418 deaths in "mass shootings" from 2000 to 2013, there were 800 deaths by bicycle in 2010 alone.

Moreover, there "were an estimated 515,000 emergency department visits" due to bicycle accidents.

Yep, there you go.  Iron-clad logic American style.  Seems pretty clear to me that if every American had a gun instead of a bike all our psychotic violence problems would be solved.  We really need to ban bikes already--and ladders, counters, roofs, and mountains while we're at it:

And CDC death statistics for 2010 show there were 26,009 deaths from "falling" for that year alone. That's right--26,009 deaths in one year from falls from ladders, counters, roofs, mountains, etc. 

After all, you know what they say:

In fact, I say we go one better and ban gravity altogether.  That should solve that pesky "falling" problem.  Then we can all float around in "Zero-G" happily shooting at one another like the movie "Moonraker:"

("When moonrakes are outlawed only lunar gardeners will have rakes.")

Oh, while I'm on the subject of outlaws, here's a thing:



Yeah, I'd just run the fucking light, but that's just me.  See, there's a question Fredly philosophers have pondered for ages, and it is as follows:

"If a Fred runs a light in the city and there's nobody around to see it, did it really happen?"

And here is the answer to that question:

"No.  No it didn't."

But now there's a new option for this moral quandary, which is futzing around in the middle of the street looking for a sensor:

So there you are late at night, rolling back and forth and lifting your rear wheel up like a dog looking for the ideal spot to take a dump, when a drunk driver comes along and closes the circuit on your mortal coil, turning you into another statistic and further bolstering the case against gun control.

Oh, the indignity of being a cyclist in America.  That's why the media snaps to attention the very moment WHEN BICYCLES ATTACK!!!



If only Hilary Abramson (a journalist, as it happens, which is why you should never run into a journalist with your bicycle) had been carrying a firearm at the time then she could have shot the bicyclist and all of this might have been averted.

Lastly, remember New York State Senator Diane "Find A Fucking Bike Lane And Get In It" Savino?  Well, the best course of action when you're a politician beset by bad publicity is to deploy a smokescreen--ideally a heady one made of intoxicating marijuana smoke:

 Hey, Savino: Find a fucking bong and stick your face in it.