This Just In: You're On Vacation From Me!

(That's why they're morbidly obese.)

Well Canada Day is behind us but now it's time for the petulant sibling with behavioral issues to demand his own birthday party, only with BIGGER EXPLOSIONS and JUICIER GRILLED MEAT and BIG BIG SAVINGS ON NEW CARS AND TRUCKS!!!

(That's a shitty pun even by car dealership standards.)

Likewise, in the spirit of petulance, I'll be adjourning this blog as of today until Monday, July 13th, at which point I will resume regular updates...just in time for Bastille Day:

(A typical, non-stereotypical Frenchman.)

Meanwhile, with Independence Day upon us, it's inspiring to see our nation's leadership coming together--over guacamole:

Good for them.  As for me, I don't give a fuck what people put in their guacamole.  Furthermore I think it's highly disingenuous for either of them to criticize, given that America is the country that now makes burritos out of chili cheese fries:

Pass some legislation against that and then you can start picking peas out of people's guacamole.

(Pro tip: In a pinch, guacamole makes a great chamois cream.)

Incredibly, despite our world-renowned cuisine, a reader informs me that 35% of us would consider leaving Canada's grease trap:

Though most of us don't because we're too lazy:

Note that almost 60% of Americans live here for the same reason you still have the pie plate on your bike: "I dunno, that's just the way it is.  I didn't even realize you could do anything about it."

Note also that 5% of Americans stay here because of something called "weath," which I'm assuming is either "wealth" or "wheat"--and which means it's probably not a coincidence that absolutely nobody cited "educational system" as a reason for staying.

Still, this chart is surprising, because I would have expected it to look more like this:

Americans are as good at math as they are at spealing.

Moreover, fully 55% of "millennials" would split if given the opportunity (or, as we call it in America, "oppertunatee"):

This percentage greatly increases for those age 18 to 34. More than half of millennials, a whopping 55 percent, said that they would consider leaving the U.S. for foreign shores. Among them, 43 percent of men and 38 percent of women noted that a higher salary would be a factor in their relocation decision.

So is this because millennials are fickle and spoiled by life in the Land of the Free, or is it because America's really not all it's cracked up to be?

I suspect the answer to this question is "Yes."

Indeed, sometimes it seems like nobody's happy in America.  Take the Supreme Court's recent decision on marriage equality.  You'd think that in the wake of a landmark civil rights victory only the religious nutjobs would be complaining, but when it comes to relentless dissatisfaction you should never discount bitter single people:

Firstly, this is something of a cultural watershed, for it marks the day the fixed-gear bicycle replaced the cat as the official symbol for "single person:"

Secondly, the writer is upset because he thinks our culture is prejudiced against single people:

Isn’t it enough to be denied the “constellation of benefits that the States have linked to marriage”? A constellation my coupled queer sisters and brethren now can hold dearly if they just make it official? Once again, being single is the dreary, awful, mournful alternative to marriage. A condition to be pitied, and quickly corrected by a sprint to City Hall.

This is exactly wrong.  Indeed, the only reason nobody talks about the "constellation of benefits" to being single as because it's so completely obvious as to not warrant mentioning.  (Hint: it's called "Doing Whatever The Fuck You Want.")  This is why you get emails like this from your single cycling friends:

"We're heading out around 11am tomorrow to do 6 or 7 hours.  May stop for beers afterwards.  Let us know if you want to join."

Of course they know you can't join, they just do it to taunt you.

Still, he feels that the Supreme Court's decision has only marginalized single people further:

And so old questions remain: Why can’t I put a good friend on my health care plan? Why can’t my neighbor and I file our taxes together so we could save some money, as my parents do? If I failed to make a will, why is it unlikely a dear friend would inherit my estate?

The answers to all these questions are the same: It’s because I’m not having sex with those people. 

Uh, no, that's not the answer.  Sex has absolutely nothing to do with it.  Plenty of married people don't have sex with each other.

Though if all of this was about sex then filing your taxes would sure be a lot more interesting.

And here's his conclusion:

What Justice Kennedy, and everyone else too, needs to remember is that simply being yourself — your single self — is already the fundamental form of dignity. Founding your dignity on something as flimsy and volatile as a sexual connection insures dignity’s precariousness as it enshrines your inherent unworthiness as a single individual.

I'm not even sure what that means.  It sounds like Lennard Zinn explaining aerodynamic gains, which is something I've been ruminating for the past week.  Here's that Zinn passage again, by the way:

Think of time savings as water pouring into a bucket. Sagan, since his power savings are so much higher with the new equipment than yours are, turns the faucet up high, but he pulls the bucket away sooner because he’s done with his 40km sooner; that limits the total water collected in the bucket. Because our power savings would be lower for the same change in equipment, we would have the faucet on a lower flow rate. But since we’re out there longer, our bucket stays under the faucet longer and ends up with a similar amount of water in it as Sagan’s does.

I think what he's saying is that with a Venge-Schmenge we're just as good as Peter Sagan, even if he too has a Venge-Schmenge--which, coincidentally, is exactly what Specialized wants you to believe.

Funny how that works out.

Of course, we all know it's the rider and not the bike, which this action-packed video proves:


The astute viewer will note certain clues that this rider is not a roadie.  First, there's the low saddle height:

Then there's the unusual handlebar position:

But most telling, he's smiling:

No roadie in the history of the velocipede has ever smiled.

Anyway, what's harder than riding down a hill backwards on your front wheel?

Riding down a hill backwards on your front wheel while inviting the world to kiss your scranus:

Alas, if only road bikes could always be this entertaining...  Instead, we get the Tour de France, which is why they're trying to replace all that soporific castle porn with GoPro footage:

"By mounting cameras to the fastest cyclists in the world as they take on the 21-stage race, GoPro will be capturing immersive, never-before-seen content, bringing cycling fans inside the peloton," GoPro said.

Yes, content like this:

And this:

And even this:

I can hardly wait.

And with that this blog is on hiatus starting...NOW!

See you all back here on Monday, July 13th.

Thanks for reading, ride safe, and happy everything,

--Wildcat Rock Machine