You know it as the speed at which Freds go "Woo-hoo-hoo-hoo!"
Let's watch the video of this phenomenon again:
He's the Chuck Yeager of Freds.
Now, you too can evoke blistering speed, derring-do, and exuberant cries of "Woo-hoo-hoo-hoo!" even while standing still, thanks to my latest "collabo" with the hatters at Walz Caps!
The hat they used is from their "moisture wicking" line, which means it's light, it's comfortable, and it feels like wearing a jersey on your head in the best possible way. It's also got a racing stripe on it because it's FAST!
And it's specially designed so that the brim automatically flips up the moment you hit 46mph:*
*[Disclaimer: This is a lie, brim must be flipped up manually.]
Also, if you stand at just the right angle while ordering your post-ride coffee, your barista will know that you regularly flirt with Fred "Woo-hoo-hoo-hoo" speed and that you read the World's Greatest Cycling Blog:**
**[Disclaimer: Bike Snob NYC is not the World's Greatest Cycling Blog, and if anything your barista will just assume you're a shitty tipper.]
Here's what it looks like to God from On High when He's conferring upon you all manner of blessings because He smiles upon all who wear this cap:***
***[Disclaimer: BSNYC Industries LLC shall not be liable for God failing to bless you because He cannot see the Holy Hat under your helment, for even though He is the creator of the heaven and the earth, oddly He cannot see through styrofoam. That's why you should always sin inside of a giant beer cooler.]
And here it is just sort of looking at you suggestively and saying "buy me:"
("I need some head. Literally.")
Which you can do here:
And you can even bundle it, or any other "collabo" cap, or even a regular non-"collabo" Walz hat with a signed (by me, unfortunately) book!
So there you go. It's a great time to be alive.
As for me, I've been testing out the "Woo-hoo-hoo-hoo" cap at the Tour de France, and I won't confirm or deny that one of yesterday's crashes was caused by the "selfie" I took in the middle of the course:
What can I say? I'm a part of the "selfie epidemic"--or, as I prefer to call it, "Selfiegate:"
Sure, the support of the thousands of fans that have shown up along the official route in England has been great to see, but as American Tejay van Garderen wrote on his Twitter account, "It’s a dangerous mix of vanity and stupidity."
As opposed to the pre-selfie days of amateur Tour de France photography, when it was just dangerous stupidity without the vanity:
Yes, there's just something about people riding bicycles that makes other people behave stupidly, and here's an article that examines this universal truth in the context of the Scott Simon Twitter Debacle:
But hey, let's not forget the vanity, and the best part of the article was the stuff about me::
(See that? I'm popular and long-running!)
After that I mostly just skimmed it, though the author does a good job of articulating the pernicious manner in which we've been brainwashed from birth by the Automotive Industrial Complex:
We’ve been conditioned since infancy to ignore most of these fatalities, along with the behaviors that cause them. If you’re a typical American, your first experience of speeding was while strapped into a car seat, and you rode past half a dozen fatal accident scenes before speaking your first complete sentence. A lifetime of exposure has convinced us to normalize, dismiss or ignore most traffic violations, to the point where we routinely exceed the speed limit despite the knowledge that speeding causes more than 30% of all traffic fatalities.
This normalization is entirely a product of exposure, and that’s what makes bikes so comparatively frightening: we prefer the devil we know, even when it’s infinitely more bloodthirsty than the one we don’t.
Or, to put in another way, Americans are gas-guzzling morons who do stuff like this, which I'd never heard of until a reader alerted me to it:
For as little as $500, anyone with a diesel truck and a dream can install a smoke stack and the equipment that lets a driver “trick the engine” into needing more fuel. The result is a burst of black smoke that doubles as a political or cultural statement—a protest against the EPA, a ritual shaming of hybrid “rice burners,” and a stellar source of truck memes.
Works great on cyclists too:
At least Keith Maddox kept his noxiousness inside his truck. Somebody needs to run a hose from this guy's exhaust right into the cabin and let him euthanize himself..
Lastly, returning to the subject of Fred "Woo-hoo-hoo-hoo" speed, here are some Canadians who are looking to almost double it:
Wow, these guys have put a huge amount of time and resources into projects that have no practical applications whatsoever. For example, you may remember them as the team behind this contraption:
"Considered by many to be physically impossible, the project captured the imagination of people around the globe, became one of Kickstarter's top 20 featured projects, and resulted in a life-changing experience for the students involved."
"Considered by many to be physically impossible?" I doubt anybody cared whether or not it was impossible. How about "Considered by many to be utterly pointless?" I'm fairly certain that flying around slowly on giant Leonardo da Vinci bicycle-copters is not, nor will it ever be, a viable solution to the problems of human mobility. I also can't think of a less worthy cause than providing students with life-changing experiences, since students have easier lives and give less back to society than pretty much any other group of people on the planet. They're supposed to be learning how to change our lives, not the other way around.
Nevertheless, next the team followed up with this useless airplane:
"We've developed the world's first human-powered flapping-wing aircraft."
Yeah? And I've developed the world's first pissing honey bear, and the world doesn't need that either. So what's your point?
(Okay, I didn't invent this. But I could have!)
But most of all, they're way into the whole superfast rolling Fred sarcophagus thing:
"As well as several speed bikes getting faster and faster with each iteration."
Okay, so every time you build one of these things it goes slightly faster. So what? Where do we go from there? Are we all going to be criss-crossing the continent one at a time in little suppositories one day? I don't think so. If you're going to improve upon human-powered vehicles, why not invent a nice bike basket or something?
Also, no way I'm backing two guys who look like this:
"We'll be working on the bike throughout the summer with the goal of challenging the land speed record this September in Battle Mountain, Nevada."
If you guys are working so hard then why aren't you more haggard? Where are the coffee-stained shirts, tousled coifs, and bags under the eyes from all the sleepless nights? I'm not giving any money to well-groomed people in $200 hoodies and pullovers. They don't look like they need it.
Then again, you can't put a price on Canadian pride:
(Ramming speed!)
It's only a matter of time before Canada attacks us with a silent army of bike-copters, flappy-wing planes, and fully-faired recumbents.
It won't be "Red Dawn" so much as it will be "Fred Dawn."
