Wednesday's Here And It's Equipped With An Aerodynamic Fairing!

Firstly, as part of my increased commitment to bringing you top-quality blogging content in 2015, here's more gratuitous triathlon crash porn:



Yep, that's the entire spectrum of human expression, right there in a single image:

Amazing.

Oh, and if you're wondering what else my increased commitment to bringing you top-quality blogging content in 2015 entails, it basically means I'm going to remind you even more often to buy jerseys and hats:

The hats will caress your head like a "Magic Kippah," and so silky smooth is the jersey that when Mario Cipollini sampled it at Interbike he immediately commissioned Walz to make him 20 pairs of underwear and a set of king-sized bedsheets out of the same fabric.*

*[This is not true.]

But yeah, it's a really nice jersey, and I can't wait until the winter's over so I can actually ride in the thing instead of just wearing it around the house and air-cycling** in the bathroom mirror.

**[Air-cycling is the bike equivalent of air guitar; it's when you put your fists out in front of you like you're in the drops and then squint intently like you're descending at Fred "Wooo-hoo-hoo-hoo!" speed.]

Speaking of cycling accessories you can't do without, remember Überhood?



Of course you don't.

Regardless, it turns out Überhood was merely ahead of its time, for behold...LEAFXPRO!






Do you hate straining against gale-force winds and horizontal rain while wearing an ordinary poncho?

Well, this guy does, and so he cut stuff:

And drew lines on paper:

And sewed stuff:

Until finally he'd created sort of an aero-umbrella to fend off the elements:

Not only is it ideal for fighting your way through squalls on those seaside slogs:

But it's also great for mountain biking:

And in addition to transforming your bike into a sort of "upright recumbent," it also administers a much-needed "wedgie" to you while you ride:

I'm also reasonably certain that's Bret mixing it up with a little offroad action for a change:

Sure, you might look a bit strange riding around the city with this thing on your bike, but you can draw attention away from the fairing by wearing a velvet king's hat:

Until I come out with my own BSNYC version you can buy yourself a similar velvet king's hat at Party City:

He looks nonplussed.

I should also point out that if you need a plastic windshield just to ride your local trail you should probably stay off it altogether until it dries out, lest you invoke the ire of your local IMBA chapter:

Or at the very least you could lay off the gratuitious skidding:

Best of all, when you get to where you're going all you do is unzip:

Extricate yourself from your rolling garment bag:

Throw the whole system over the shoulder of your corduroy jacket:

And run off into the sea due to sheer embarrassment, never to be seen or heard from again:

Speaking of shame, you know how parents don't like to talk about sex with their kids but they do it anyway, because they figure better the kid hears about it from them than from some friend who thinks HPV is the cable channel that "Hoarders" is on?  Well, I feel the same way about this video that was forwarded to me by Klaus of Alps and Andes--I'd prefer not to address it at all because it kind of creeps me out, but if you're going to hear about it from someone it might as well be from me.  Anyway, basically it's a video for some cheesy brö-metal song that features a cameo from that guy who lost all his Dauphiné Libéré titles:

Evidently, it's supposed to be some kind of statement about doping:

Appropriately, the accompanying track, the hard-rocking "Mountain Lion," concerns the misplaced outrage over performance-enhancing drugs. "The amount of attention given to PEDs is incredible," says Commerford, "especially when you consider the amount of drugs – recreational, illegal and pharmaceutical – that America supports and profits from."

Wow, man.  Now that's deep.

But what I couldn't get past was this:

"Lance is a friend, an awesome person and, as far as I'm concerned, a punk rocker," he says.

Really?  "Punk rocker?"  Are you kidding me?!?  I find that offensive.  Hey, I'm fairly pragmatic when it comes to his Tour wins (and yes, he did win them), but Lance Armstrong is categorically and objectively not a "punk rocker."  I don't care what your definition of punk is--whether it's Discharge or David Byrne or something in between, this guy ain't it.  Come on, even post-Oprah he's as corporate as they come!  If Lance Armstrong is punk rock then what does that make Thom Weisel, Malcom McLaren?

(Cash from chaos.)

Actually, there may be something to that.

Nevertheless, I suppose we should remember that this guy's old band, Rage Against The Machine, did change the world with their politically charged frat rock/rap, assuming your definition of "changed the world" is "got college dudes pumped to get tribal armband tattoos back in the '90s."

Lastly, some town in Colorado is putting bike racks on the ambulances:

The bike-friendly ambulance "is eliminating some of the concerns that our patients had in the past when they were like, 'I'm not going to the hospital if I have to leave my bike here,'" Steve Main, PVH's director of emergency medical services told The Coloradoan.

This is bike-friendly?  Oh, come on!  Yeah, like I'm gonna visit the town with the bike racks on the freaking ambulances.  Clearly the local officials already know where I'm going to wind up.  How far is this town from where Matthew Beaudin was hit, anyway?

Seems to me that riding in a town with bike racks on the ambulances is like eating in a restaurant where they put Imodium on the table as a condiment: nobody's expecting it to end well.