What's the boiling point for credibility?

Here's an amusing little antidone antelope story that should warm your cockles on this cold Febuwary Februrary month-after-January day:

I returned to a bicycle coated with ice and attempted, shakily, to navigate an ice-covered street. A man watched and literally scoffed at me with the “sorry, sucker” look on his face, then climbed into his car. Slowly, I wobbled the bike past his car as he started it and hit the gas. The car didn’t move a bit, but the wheels were spinning plenty.

Delightful.  There are few sights more amusing than that of a floundering driver, which is why I watch this whenever I need a little pick-me-up:



The only thing that would have made this video even better would have been if a cyclist passed by and yelled "You suck!" at the hapless motorist.

Speaking of angry idiots, remember this?



I certainly do.  In fact, when I watched that video for the first time five years ago, I fell to my knees and prayed to the Almighty Lobster On High that this hateful Hutt would one day wind up a crackhead who has to resort to selling his own pajamas on eBay for his next hit.

Well, guess what a reader tells me he's doing right this very moment?

Yep, that's right.  The Lobster God is real, and S/he is spectacular:

You are bidding on an original piece of memorabilia from former Toronto Mayor, and current Toronto Councillor Rob Ford.

These are the print patterned pants that Councillor Rob Ford was seen wearing on a shopping trip to Wal-Mart.

http://www.torontolife.com/tag/twitter/page/3/
http://www.torontolife.com/informer/toronto-politics/2012/08/02/rob-ford-walmart-book-pyjamas/

This item ships to Canada and the USA.

Once again, this is the original piece, not a reproduction - there is only one of these in existence.

This item comes accompanied with a signed, original, Certificate of Authenticity from Councillor Rob Ford himself.

Of course, while the Lobster God may giveth, S/he also taketh away (to say nothing of that dreadful lithp), because there I was all full of mirth and laughing at that Jared Fogle-esque photo when it occurred to me that he was probably undergoing painful chemotherapy at that very moment.

There went my mirth.  So thanks for nothing, so-called "Lobster God."  THE GUY GETS HIS COMEUPPANCE AND NOW I CAN'T LAUGH AT HIM BECAUSE CANCER?  I RENOUNCE YOU!!!  BLESSED BE THE HARDY MAINERS WHO WREST YOU FROM THE SEA TO BE BOILED FOR OUR CULINARY DELECTATION!!!

(Via here.)

Sill, while I may have felt a degree of shame for laughing at a guy with cancer, I'm far more ashamed that I was ever a fan of professional cycling, a sport which now exudes the same sort of desperation that causes you to slowly back away from people in bars.  To wit, this ad for everybody's favorite bike race named after a motorway, the "E3 Harleybeak;"

Classy.

Here's the story:

This year’s campaign plays on the infamous moment when Peter Sagan decided to grope podium girl Maja Leye’s bottom as she planted the obligatory winner’s kiss on Fabian Cancellara’s cheek at the Tour of Flanders in 2013. He later presented her with flowers, because flowers make everything alright after a sexual assault, don’t they?

Hey, in fairness to Peter Sagan, he didn't just give her flowers.  He also issued one of the creepiest and least sincere video apologies of all time:

(Peter Sagan: Sex Offender)

Seriously, at least finish wanking before you press "record."

As for the E3 Hairybeaker, here's a less controversial ad for you:

You're welcome.

I look forward to yet another year of bike dorks with dodgy feeds live-Tweeting the event to their dozens of followers.

Another outstanding example of cycling's cloying desperation is that they have to go to the desert and ride around in deadly heat for the amusement of absolute monarchs:

High winds and temperatures caused headaches on Saturday for Merckx, who co-owns and organizes the Tour of Oman along with the Tour of Qatar.

Merckx had to move the stage 5 start from the Al Sawadi Beach to a new point closer to the finish at Muscat’s Ministry of Housing because of high winds kicking up sand. In the capital city of Muscat, though, triple-digit temperatures caused some tires to explode while the cyclists descended on the first neutralized circuit.

The riders — led by Tom Boonen (Etixx-Quick-Step) and Fabian Cancellara (Trek Factory Racing) — stopped and protested. Boonen said, “It’s life threatening when you’re going 90 kilometers an hour and the tire explodes. We are all fathers and sons, we are not here to fight a war.”

Merckx dismissed the riders' concerns:

Merckx retorted that had the peloton been racing, the heat would not have been a concern.

“It was only 38 [100°F], that’s not so hot,” he said. “The problem was that the riders came down in a bunch and everyone was braking. If they would’ve been racing, coming down one by one, the problem wouldn’t have occurred.”

Oh, shut up you old doper.

As for the riders, it could be worse--they could be Omani:

Oman is an absolute monarchy. The Sultan Qaboos bin Said al Said is the self-appointed leader of the country since 1970. Sultan Qaboos does not tolerate criticism and Omani citizens have very few rights.[58]

The practice of torture is widespread in Oman state penal institutions and has become the state's typical reaction to independent political expression.[10][11] Torture methods in use in Oman include mock execution, beating, hooding, solitary confinement, subjection to extremes of temperature and to constant noise, abuse and humiliation.[10] Since 2011, the Omani government has arrested and tortured many Omanis,[10] there have been numerous reports of torture and other inhumane forms of punishment perpetrated by Omani security forces on protesters and detainees.[12] Several prisoners detained in 2012 complained of sleep deprivation, extreme temperatures, and solitary confinement.[59] Omani authorities kept Sultan al-Saadi in solitary confinement, denied him access to his lawyer and family, forced him to wear a black bag over his head whenever he left his cell, including when using the restroom, and told him his family had “forsaken” him and asked for him to be imprisoned.

I'm sure Old Man Merckx would have done the same to Boonen and Co. if he could.

But of course the most important question in all of this is "Would any of this have been mitigated if the riders had been using dick breaks?"  Well, according to Lennard Zinn, the answer is "Not really:"

Certainly, disc brakes would make the rim-heating problem a non-issue, but I don’t think we are yet at the day where little lightweight road disc brakes with tiny rotors have sufficient heat capacity to not boil the fluid on 120-degree days, particularly under heavy riders who brake in a prolonged way. I don’t think anybody wins the argument of which is preferable — blowing a tire or having total brake failure!

Furthermore, I posit that even if the riders had not been braking at all and instead were descending at speed, they would simply have burst into flames.  Therefore, it seems fairly obvious to me that the next Tour of Oman should be on fixies:

That way they can descend slowly without transferring heat to the rims and tires.

Lastly, if cycling is the new golf, then triathlon is the new Scientology:



I wonder if they can help triathletes reach that most elusive of goals: riding a bicycle without falling down.