Happy Wednesday! We're All Doomed.

Further to yesterday's post about the Omerta or the Onomatopoeia or the whatever-it's-called fake analog cycling computer, holy crap I had no idea it's gonna cost almost $600!

Post-Kickstarter, the OMATA One is expected on sale for a retail price of $599. 

Well fork me.

And why are people so taken with the aesthetics of this thing?  Sure, gauges look great on vehicles with combustion engines, but to me having a great big dial on the front of your bike looks silly:

It looks like it should be attached to a propane tank, or like something the doctor's forcing you to ride with so you can monitor your blood pressure at all times.

Speaking of which, have you seen my sweet new tool roll?

(#whatbloodpressureyourunning)

Really, as far as looks are concerned, you might as well replace your top cap with a meat thermometer:

(This turkey's cooked.)

Or at least save yourself some money and go with a vintage unit like this one.  It's a relative bargain at $249.95:

Hirsute disembodied hand not included.

Meanwhile, in more mundane news, I picked up a shitload of absorbency on my Smugness Flotilla Mark II this morning:

Indeed, between the diapers and the paper towels I could easily drain a hectare of swampland.  Granted, the disposable diapers more than wipe out any smugness points I may have earned by riding to the store instead of driving, but I have confidence in the next generation, and they at least deserve to be dry and comfortable until they grow up and are forced to solve all the problems we're passing onto them.

What kind of problems?  Well, deferred infrastructure maintenance for one thing:

Mayor Bill de Blasio has postponed work to finish New York’s third water tunnel, a project that for more than half a century has been regarded as essential to the survival of the city if either of the two existing, and now aged, tunnels should fail.

That's not good.

The new tunnel has already been completed and is carrying water into Manhattan and the Bronx. But segments that would supply Brooklyn and Queens, home to five million people, though also virtually finished, still await the building of two deep shafts.

Heh heh.  They said "deep shafts."

If calamity or age forced the shutdown of City Water Tunnel No. 2, which is 80 years old, the primary water supply to much of Brooklyn and Queens would be lost for at least three months, city engineers said, the time it would take for an emergency activation of the sections of Tunnel No. 3 in Brooklyn and Queens that have already been finished.

That's really not good.

But it's okay, because instead Brooklyn and Queens are getting...a waterfront streetcar, in an area where it's extremely expensive to live and there's already subways, buses, bike share, and bike lanes:

This will come in handy when residents are desperately searching for a deli that's not yet sold out of Poland Spring, though by that time the waterfront will be underwater so hopefully that streetcar will have sub-aquatic capabilities.

Oh, and the streetcar will potentially encroach on the bike lane:

BROOKLYN — Mayor de Blasio's streetcar could interfere with a waterfront bike route that's been in the works for more than a decade, DNAinfo New York has learned.

The mayor's much-touted streetcar line is likely to travel a similar path to the partly completed Brooklyn Waterfront Greenway — a bike lane that will cover 14 miles of Brooklyn's waterfront from Greenpoint to Bay Ridge once it's completed.

A spokesman for the mayor confirmed the city can't guarantee that the streetcar won't interfere with the greenway project.

We're so screwed.

Anyway, this story resonated with me because my favorite cycling route just happens to be along the very first water tunnel the city ever built, like 175 years ago:

This aqueduct also comprises a part of the BSNYC Gran Fondon't route, and I can now announce with something approaching confidence that I will very probably but not 100% definitely lead another Fondon't in May:

So be sure to mark your calendars.

Where exactly should you mark them?  Well I can't tell you exactly, so better to just pencil in a question mark on every day of the month.

And as for what this Fondon't will entail, expect it to start at a location convenient to ME and to end someplace where there's beer.  (You can rest assured I'm doing plenty of hands-on beer venue reconnaissance in the meantime.)

I'll keep you posted.

By the way, in addition to undermining my own smugness by buying disposable diapers, I also purchased them at one of those big-box stores that are killing all the independent businesses.  You know, independent businesses like bike shops, one of which (a reader informs me) Specialized inadvertently offended recently:

The bicycle giant Specialized apologized today after G&O Family Cyclery tweeted photos of a street advertising campaign pasted on the wreckage of their former Greenwood shop that says, “BETTER BIKES COME FROM BETTER BIKE SHOPS.”

G&O was severely damaged in a major gas explosion a month ago, prompting a big community effort to raise money to help the shop find a new location and keep its expert staff (including a fundraiser organized by this blog, Peddler Brewing and Familybike Seattle). G&O recently announced a new temporary location a block north on Greenwood Ave.

Oops!

In their defense, Specialized feels bad about it, and they blamed the whole thing on their indiscriminate wheatpasting subcontractor:

Marcheschi said the company contracts with street advertising companies in several cities including Seattle. Specialized provides the artwork for the ads, but the contracted companies (in this case Poster Giant) finds and chooses the locations.

“They’re looking to opportunities where there are plywood surfaces they can put these wheatpastings on,” said Marcheschi. “It’s really unfortunate that this was one of those surfaces.”

He has contacted Poster Giant to have them remove the ads as soon as possible.

In other words, this form of "guerilla" advertising is the analog equivalent of when you're reading an online article about a motorist running down a pedestrian and you keep getting pop-up ads for your local Hyundai dealership.