These Are the Dog Days

Well here's the biggest story in cycling at the moment, to which I was first alerted by Esteemed Commenter Daddo One:

A man on a bicycle was spotted in the middle of one of Boston’s busiest interstates during rush hour Wednesday evening. He wore shorts, flip-flops, and headphones, but decided against a helmet.

Yeah, of course he did!  Who wears a helme(n)t with shorts, flip-flops, and headphones?  That's like wearing a tuxedo jacket over a tank top.

The biker seemed calm, Toomey said. He merged from Storrow Drive onto I-93 North before crossing over the lanes with ease in the end-of-day traffic while drivers tried to give him some space.

Okay, now this is just getting ridiculous.  Why wouldn't he be calm?  He's wearing flip-flops and shorts and groovin' to some tunes--probably Jimmy Buffet.  There's no better way to unwind than cruising down the highway under clear summer skies on a Wednesday afternoon, your flip-flopped feet carrying you effortlessly to Margaritaville.

Biking on the highway isn’t smart. You could argue taking a picture while driving isn’t either. For Toomey, it was too good of a photo-op to pass up.

“It was rush hour,” she explained. “We were moving, but we weren’t going 70 mph in traffic.”

Not like I wouldn't have taken the photo too, but that's a real Möbius strip of a phrase.  If you're going 70 mph you're not in traffic, and if it's rush hour yet you're moving that's exactly when you need to be paying full attention.

Instead of tying herself up in logistical knots, she should have just said, "Screw you, it's an awesome photo, so what I was steering with my knees for a few seconds, don't be such a woosie."

Speaking of cyclist/driver relations, here's the latest hot steaming pile of praise for the Specialized Venge-Schmenge, and it contains perhaps the most audaciously spurious anecdote yet written in a bicycle review:

We hit a red light in town and wait in the left turn lane. Two cars stop next to us, and we are treated to something rare on this road. Rather than berating us, both drivers exclaim about how fast we were going, praising our speed and handling. As we pull away, we laugh. Specialized claims this new Venge, when used with the full complement of gear developed alongside it, can save more than five minutes over a 40 km time trial. That's tough to measure. But even your average driver on the road can tell that this bike goes faster than most.

Yep, that's right.  If you ride a $12,000 Venge-Schmenge, RANDOM DRIVERS WILL PRAISE YOU FOR YOUR AWESOME BIKE-HANDLING!

Sorry, that's not how it works.  Sure, if you drive an expensive car you'll be forgiven for your shitty driving, but if you ride an expensive bike you will not be praised for your awesome bike-handling.  Don't be fooled--when a driver runs you over you'll still be forced to pay for the scratches on his Maserati.

This is why cyclists increasingly ride with video cameras, and here's a new one that was inspired by just such an occurrence:

The premise behind the company’s product is simple: GoPros and other action cameras capture stunning footage from life’s most exciting moments, but people still have to upload it to their computers and edit it to make into something interesting. Graava requires no connection to a computer. Drop the camera onto a wireless charging mat, and it automatically syncs the raw video to the cloud, where Graava cuts out the boring bits.

So how does it do that?

He said the Graava camera has a G.P.S. chip and an accelerometer, sensors that detect location and acceleration force during any video recording. Graava’s software makes assumptions that moments when you’re speeding up sharply or slowing down are probably more exciting, and therefore worth keeping in the final cut.

"Bullshit!," say these people:


Anyway, here's the 2012 video of the incident that inspired the creation of the Graava:



And which I now suspect was completely staged in order to help market this product.

He's working the long con.

(By the way, they're riding pretty expensive bikes, yet notice nobody stopped to praise them for their bike-handling skills.  Instead they got hit by a car worth less than their wheelsets.)

Of course, pro cycling is the longest con of all, and Jonathan Vaughters is getting a lot of heat subsequent to Tom Danielson's positive doping test:

Though some of the people administering that heat are maybe not in a moral position to do so:

Armstrong was once drunk with power.  Now he's just drunk.

As for Vaughters, here's what the article has to say:

Vaughters isn’t perfect. He can come off as prickly, imperious, and condescending. We know he doped during his racing career; he told us (though he took way too long to admit it). My guess is there are riders on the team who would rather be riding for someone else. But he’s still an important force for change from within the sport. He has also, by force of personality, managed to keep a U.S.-registered team funded at the WorldTour level. I know I couldn’t pull that off. So even if Vaughters has to go back on his word to stay with the team, cycling is probably better off with him than without him.

Maybe so, but at this point I don't know why people are still talking about who should or shouldn't be in cycling.  Instead, it makes more sense to be be talking about who should be following cycling--and the answer to that is "nobody."

Moving on to more municipal matters, the Bronx Borough President is very upset that Citi Bike came to New Jersey before the Bronx:

"It is deplorable that Citi Bike is expanding to New Jersey before the rest of the city," said Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. "My borough deserves better, as do the parts of Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island that are not currently served by our city’s official bike share program."

Apparently a meeting has now been set, during which a Citi Bike representative will explain that they don't move into any neighborhood until real estate prices exceed $1,000 per square foot.

Lastly, here's a video that explores the bond between a man, and his dog:



Note the dog is not wearing a helme(n)t.