Sir Amorous Whimsy, or: The Disappointed Macaroni. A Poetical Tale.

Firstly, with regard to this guy:

Commenter "DB" asked the following:

DB said...

Hey, Snob:
Who's our new friend promoting the lox?
I don't recognize him.
What's his back story?

June 15, 2015 at 11:57 AM

Glad you asked.  See, I found him on the Cipollini Bike Academy website, where he lay broken, naked, and afraid under the prone and pumping figure of Mario Cipollini himself:

("I feel so dirty."--Our new friend)

So I took him home:

Cleaned him up:

And introduced him to the gang:

(From left to right: Nonplussed Bib Shorts Guy, my daughter Chainstay, my wife Cleopatra, my son Chaintooth, me, Thumbs-Up Boris Bike Guy, and Cipollini Victim Guy)

We all live together in a poorly-constructed house in the far exurbs with a subprime mortgage (balloon payment due imminently) and no train service to the city, though it's all worth it because we do have a garage so when we get home from Costco we can bring our groceries right from our leased crossover vehicle to the kitchen.

(A staple in our household.)

Hey, they're gluten fee:

That makes them healthy you know.

Speaking of Cipollini, you might think that after his retirement cycling would have "classed it up" a bit as far as male chauvinism goes, but you'd be wrong:

This is the podium of today's Flanders Diamond Tour, a UCI 1.1 women's race. What an utter disgrace @LottoCyclingCup! pic.twitter.com/lVHu8ksqGe

— Marijn de Vries (@marijnfietst) June 14, 2015

Embarrassing.

If I were in charge of the UCI the very first thing I'd do is institute a law banning "podium girls" from all men's races and replacing them with "podium guys," all of whom would have to meet the following criteria:

--Must be clad only in g-string;
--Must tongue-kiss the winner as well as the second- and third-place finishers;
--Must have participated in at least one (1) Smallest Penis in Brooklyn Contest.

That would put an end to this sort of thing once and for all:

And instead we'd get to watch these doper-douches writhe and squirm as they get "Frenched" by some exhibitionist with a preternaturally small wang.

As for the the women's races, I'd form a committee of Portlanders who would be tasked with re-thinking what the podium ceremony should be, and I suspect it would wind up looking something like this:

Basically the entire peloton forms a Circle of Love around the winner, who sings songs of thanks to Gaia the Earth Goddess for her victory.

Granted, as UCI President I realize this is still professional sports, and that even the most progressive podium ceremony needs to be "sexed up" a bit if there's going to be any hope of attracting spectators.  No problemo:

Done, and done.

Now look at his smoldering expression and tell me that's not sexy.

Then my final act as UCI President would be to allow recumbents, just to spite everybody.

While we're on the subject of Portland, let's move away from the world of crabon and on to its antimatter, which is of course leather.  You may recall a Portland artisanal concern by the name of "Walnut Studiolo"--the company which brought you the leather bike handle:

Incredibly they raised like $20,000 for this thing, even though leather straps are for horses and a bike itself is essentially its own handle:

(See, that's how it's done.)

Anyway, in addition to the bike handle Walnut offers a whole line of overwrought and redundant leather beverage-portaging accessories:

Hey, I love riding bikes, and I also love drinking adult beverages, but do you really need two leather six-pack carriers?  "Hey guys, I brought the beer:"

"Just give me a few minutes to transfer the contents of this six-pack from my under-the-top-tube carrier to this hand-held beer harness:"

Who the hell has that kind of time?

And that's not all, because Walnut Studiolo want you to know that they're now offering an adjustable water bottle cage:


Because if you've ever used a water bottle cage--perhaps the simplest and most useful cycling accessory there is--the one thing I guarantee you never said to yourself was, "If only I had to open and close two tiny belts first:"

The idea here though is that you can carry differently-sized drinking vessels on your downtube:

Because this is Portland, where people drink out of fucking jars:

And where you never know when you're going to want to ride a road bike while carrying a $50 bottle of Scotch:

I happen to love Scotch, but I have never, ever experienced a moment in which I was frustrated because I could not carry an entire bottle of it in my water bottle cage.

Sure, you could say that's because I'm not having enough fun in my life, but I prefer to think it's because I live on the planet Earth, where most of us simply don't have time to harness everything we drink in artisanal leatherwork like we're Victorian stable boys dressing horses--which I suppose would explain the hat:

In any case, the upshot of this is that Walnut needs a laser engraving machine so that on top of all this you can have one of these things with your name on it:

Which is necessary in a city where the typical cyclist is laden with more leather accessories than Rob Halford.

Lastly, you can now add "dedicated bikepacking bike" to your list of bicycle marketing niches:

Even though people have been “bikepacking” as far back as the late 1800’s, the idea of a bikepacking category of bicycle is still fairly new. Typically built to allow for massive amounts of on-bike storage for all of your camping needs, the bikes also usually include clearance for bigger tires, comfortable positioning, and fairly rugged (read durable) frames and forks.

So an Ultra-Fredified Rivendell basically.

Got it.