A short post almost entirely about me.

It's Bike Month, everybody!


That means it's time for Bike Expo New York!

Which in turn means it's time for me to hang around at the Walz booth pushin' caps!

Not only is Bike Expo New York free, but it's also your opportunity to hoard like a year's worth of free energy food samples (mmmm, can you say "Chia Squeeze?").  Just make sure you take a break from glomming and schnorring and swing by the Walz booth between 10am and 12pm on Saturday, May 6th, which is when I'll be there.

In other news of me, I graciously offered a piece of my jenious to Outside magazine recently:

While CDOT’s judges deliberate, we went ahead and asked 11 of the brightest minds in the bike industry what they would do to make U.S. cities better, safer, and smarter for the two-wheeled crowd. Here’s what they had to say.

Yeah, that's right.  I'm one of the bike industry's "sharpest minds:"

This according to the same publication that said you should "throw your rim brakes in the trash."

By the way, I feel I should offer a little backstory on that photo.  You may be wondering why I'm sitting on top of a picnic table in full Fred gear next to a rather incongruous retrogrouch sleigh.  Well, back in 2009 I visited Portland in order to pen this Pulitzer-worthy article for the very same publication:

The editor who commissioned the piece was a Portland denizen, and during my stay we went for a ride together.  When you're riding with people for the first time it's always interesting to see how people turn up, and in this case I showed up in full Fred gear astride the versatile yet aesthetically-challenged Ironic Orange Julius Bike, which served dual duty during my stay as urban runabout and irreverent SSCXWC chariot.  My editor, on the other hand, showed up in the sort of wool ensemble you'd expect to find atop a classy sport-touring/randonneuring/whatever-you-call-it bicycle complete with canvas handlebar bag like the one above.

Anyway, together we made for Forest Park, and at one point we switched bikes for a bit, which is when the above photo was taken.

All of this is a long way of saying I may be a sartorial disgrace, but even I would not have chosen that outfit to ride that bicycle.

Oh, he also took a picture of me playing bike polo in the interest of research:

I'm gonna go ahead and lie and say I curated that facial hair so I could go undercover in Portland and that it's not how I usually looked at the time.

Speaking of bike polo, have you ever wondered who invented it?  No?  Me neither.  Nevertheless I found out by accident and wrote about it in the Bike Forecast.

So there you go.