Okay, let's get back to work.

I'm back!

You know, he makes a good point.  Why bother?  It's the year two thousand and something, and an online absence of a week might as well be an eternity.  Sure, I'm easily the World's Greatest Bike Blogger (a distinction akin to being Cleveland's Coolest Recumbent Rider), but even so the Internet has healed up over me, like the genital piercing you haven't worn since college.

("I still wear mine.")

Judge if you want, but at least his sinuses are clear.

That's like a carburetor hop-up kit for the schnoz.  The guy must breathe like a wind tunnel.

Maybe if the pro cyclists did this they wouldn't all need "asthma" medication.

But yeah, this blog has become totally irrelevant over the past week, especially now that the cycling world has turned its attention to the Touring of France:

(Warning: The symptoms of "Tour de France Fever" are identical to narcolepsy.)

I have not been paying attention to this year's race.  This has been incredibly easy to do, even with the Internet and Twitter and all the rest of it.  The hard part though is explaining to people why I'm not following it, since "I just don't give a shit" is not a satisfactory answer, and for some reason people want me to go deeper.  Therefore, instead of admitting I'm not following the race because nobody's paying me to do so, I simply pretend I'm following it.  This is far easier, because there is nothing easier than bluffing your way through a conversation about the Tour de France.  Honestly, it's the same goddamn thing every year.  So if you want to shut up that annoying co-worker who insists on talking about Teejay Van Garderen's chances or whatever, here's all you have to say:

--"How 'bout those crashes the first week?"
--"Really looked like Cav was going to go without a stage for awhile there, didn't it?"
--"It's all going to be decided in the mountains."
--"Phil Liggett's brain is slipping like a worn clutch."

This should work at least until Phil Liggett retires, or else is fetched by representatives of his home planet.

And yes, let's hope an American doesn't ever win the Tour de France again (which we don't really have to worry about), because we're singlehandedly responsible for ruining it in the first place.  First we had this guy:



"But Greg LeMond is the voice of truth and justice in cycling!"--Typical Fred.

Oh, save it.  LeMond is an American, and once Americans start rubbing their dicks all over something it's ruined forever.  Here are just a few ways in which LeMond ruined the Tour:

--He introduced aerobars
--He negotiated the first million-dollar contract
--Did I mention he introduced aerobars?!?
--He pioneered the "miraculous" recovery narrative

See, there was always doping in cycling.  However, there wasn't any of the above, all of which is far worse.  Before LeMond, the Tour was romantic.  If you wanted to go faster, you jabbed a needle full of strychnyne into your thigh and you put your head down over your non-aerodynamic bars.   If you won a race, they gave you a goat or a wheel of the local cheese, or maybe the local official married his daughter off to you.  Most importantly, nobody recovered miraculously from anything.  When you got malaria, you just died.

Simple.  Noble.  Beautiful.

But then here comes LeMond, with his big contracts and his equipment weenie-ism, so it only makes sense that before long we'd get a harder, faster, and douchier version:



Did they get the same actor to dub all the voices or what?

Then you get some Federal prosecutor who's like, "Wow, this sport looks easy to fuck with," and then he starts teabagging it, and before you know it the whole thing reeks of America's scranus.

And that's why your local recreational path is besieged by middle-aged Freds on time trial bikes.

Speaking of America, while I was gone we had our birthday, and as usual people made a great big racket and left an even bigger mess for their fellow Americans to clean up.  This means that if you head out for a ride on the morning of July 5th you ride through a lot of this:

Ah, yes.  What better way to celebrate the spirit of our "glorious independence" than detonating a case of explosives and not disposing of it?

Well, you can always augment the simultaneous thrills of pyrotechnics and littering by exercising your freedom of expression:

If you only followed the news you'd think the south had a monopoly on racism.

However, I was inspired to see how many people ride their bicycle to the beach now:

New York City's beaches are experiencing something of a renaissance, thanks largely to the fact that people are realizing just how easy and enjoyable it is to get to them by bicycle, and I reflected fondly on this as I drove home in THE CAR THE BANK OWNS UNTIL I FINISH PAYING THEM BACK with the air conditioner blasting in my face.

Good for them though.

Citi Bike also seems to be flourishing, and over the holiday weekend you could see entire families salmoning on 5th Avenue:

I wanted to stop them and say something like, "Hey, I don't come to your town and flout your stupid laws," but that's completely untrue.  Obviously as a New Yorker I don't take any other place in America or its silly laws even remotely seriously.  However, this itself is a form of politeness, because I'm sure you'd be secretly disappointed if a visiting New Yorker didn't confirm all your stereotypes by being arrogant and condescending--just like we're always dismayed when people from Texas don't say "Howdy, Pardner!" and wear cowboy boots and 10-gallon hats:

("Can y'all tell a feller how to get to HYYYEEEWSTON Street?")

By the way, not only was Jon Voight from Yonkers, but he also drove an '89 LeBaron.

So there you go.

Indeed, Citi Bike is the bike share you love to hate.  Not only do the riders salmon, but the maintenance workers park right in the crosswalk:

It's sights like this that cause "livable streets" advocates to experience a crippling sense of emotional confusion.  On one hand, the driver is helping the bike share.  On the other hand, they're also forcing pedestrians into traffic.  It's like when a staunchly heterosexual man is confronted by a beautiful woman with a penis: he doesn't know whether to wank or cry...so eventually he just does both simultaneously.

And this is only going to get worse now that the Citi Bike workers have joined TWU Local 100:

The workers will receive substantial raises under the agreement announced on Thursday between the union, Transport Workers Union Local 100, and NYC Bike Share, the company that operates Citi Bike. The union represents about 200 bike mechanics, call center agents and other employees of Citi Bike.

You may remember TWU Local 100 as the union bravely fighting for the right to run you over with buses:

So presumably we'll soon be able to add Citi Bike vans to the list.

You know you've made it in New York City when you've got a license to kill.