Sustainably Curated, Farm-To-Table Wednesday!

Happy "Back To The Future" Day!

One product you will not see however, is the hoverboard. Despite recent advances, Kickstarter prototypes and oddly popular “hover boards” that have wheels, the movie version remains stubbornly out of reach.

Regarding the aforementioned "oddly popular 'hover boards' that have wheels," yesterday afternoon I almost collided with somebody who was riding one of these things.  In fact, he was "hover-salmoning" in the bike lane while engrossed in his cellphone.  I was tempted to rap him over the head with my knuckles while imploring him to "Think, McFly, think!" but I ultimately deemed it imprudent.

I also passed the aftermath of what I can only assume was some sort of pedicab-on-pedicab collision in Central Park:

(#pedicrashnotpediaccident)

I'm also assuming pedicabs are designed to go vertical in the event of a collision so that the passengers can crawl to safety.

Either that, or else the passengers were exceptionally hefty Midwestern tourists, and when the driver dismounted for a moment to speak to a fellow driver the thing just flipped up like an unweighted see-saw.

Anyway, further to yesterday's commute into Manhattan, today I did the "reverse commute" away from it instead, and I gotta say it was just a little bit more pleasant:

Not only is the foliage really starting to pop, but I'm also adding to my already swollen inventory of secret climbs:

I can now cram about a thousand feet of climbing into a meager 10-mile jaunt.

Yet I still suck at going up hills.

Go figure.

Some of these climbs are even gravel:

Don't worry, when I ordered my bike from the Milwaukee Bicycle Co. I paid an extra $500 for the optional "gravel package:"

Don't ever, ever, EVER attempt to ride a non-gravel-rated bicycle upon a gravel surface.

Speaking of the Milwaukee, I have been extremely pleased with this bicycle, so much so that I vibe hella and it's my classic peep during Art History.  Indeed, if you'd like an actual magazine-quality review, simply print out the following phrases in a large font, cut them up, put them in a brown paper bag, and then pull them out one by one and paste them onto some construction paper:

--GOES WHERE YOU POINT IT
--THE REAR TRIANGLE DUTIFULLY FOLLOWS THE FRONT
--CORNERS LIKE IT'S ON RAILS
--LEAPS OUT OF TURNS LIKE A CAT OUT OF A BATHTUB
--DESCENDS WITH CONFIDENCE
--RESPONDS TO RIDER INPUT
--FLEX FOR COMPLIANCE AND STIFFNESS FOR POWER TRANSFER
--REMAINS PLANTED IN CORNERS
--HAS TAME MANNERS YET LEAPS TO ATTENTION WHEN YOU PUT THE HAMMER DOWN

Did I do that right?

Unfortunately it has primitive rim brakes an it's not compatible with Boost 148, which makes it both easy to maintain and compatible with pretty much everything, so sadly I'm going to have to throw it in the trash.

Also somewhat relevant to yesterday's commute, I'm glad I wasn't anywhere nearby when this horrible thing happened:

One witness told the police that he had just had his bicycle stolen by a man at gunpoint. A call went out: Be on the lookout for a suspect, possibly armed, on a bicycle, riding along the promenade by the river.

All else aside, this is why whenever I read one of those "cyclist takes stolen bike back" stories I cringe.

It's also why if I ever see someone riding around on your stolen bike, I give you my word that I'm not gonna do a goddamn thing about it.  I'm not even gonna call the cops, because I don't want them getting hurt either.

I will inflate your tires on command though.

Because I'm that much of a wimp.

But let's move away from urban blight and worry about something that doesn't matter, like the fact that it's hard to be a pro cyclocross racer:

“Selling bikes is a business,” Trebon says. “Racing bikes is a business. USAC is a business. Why can’t race promoting be a business? The USGP was good at production. That’s where you could bring sponsors and show them, and they’d see how good it is. Now it’s like, ‘Is this in someone’s backyard?’”

But the two — a pro series and the nation’s thriving “backyard” races — aren’t mutually exclusive. The latter are both a cause and effect of the boom in domestic cyclocross. But for the long-term viability of pro racing, USAC needs to trim its Pro CX calendar or find a series promoter than can fill the big shoes left empty by the USGP.

Oh, I wouldn't expect any of this to change anytime soon.  Seems to me that from a sponsorship perspective they've got cyclocross right where they want it, what with $5,000 bikes now considered a "decent bargain" and fields, parks and backyards all over America crawling with over-equipped Cat 4s who have learned cyclocross from watching YouTube videos.  Why put a bunch of effort into cultivating the elite reaches of the sport when the new breed of Cyclo-Fred is perhaps the most spendthrifty Fred ever created?  These people are buying two bikes at a time for chrissakes, you'd be crazy to mess with that!  I mean come on, if they were serious about making cyclocross a real sport they'd limit it to New England and the Mid-Atlantic where all the real racing is.

It's just common sense.