Ready, set, Wednesday!

Admittedly I haven't been following the Touring of France very closely, but I got very excited when I saw there had been a slapping incident--until I saw footage of said slapping:

BREAKING: @BouhanniNacer has been penalized 1 minute in G.C. standings & fined an undisclosed amount for his actions in Stage 10 #TDF2017 pic.twitter.com/3UdGAkXnKW

— NBCSN Cycling (@NBCSNCycling) July 11, 2017

Oh please.  That's a slap like Michelob Ultra is a beer.  In fact, between this and the outrage over Fabio Aru not waiting for Chris Froome, it's tempting to say cycling's getting too soft.

Wait!  Are we critiquing Tour de France riders for being too soft?!?

Cue an outraged old guy in five...four...three...

(Greg LeMond demonstrating the purported size of his testicles.)

"If the race is on, it does not matter what happens to the yellow jersey, he's got a team and that's what a team is for," added the American, who won the Tour in 1986, 1989 and 1990.

...

"The riders have lost their ability to race," said LeMond.

And with that, LeMond took a bong rip the size of a team bus:


Of course, if you really want context for the Tour de France, you've got to dig deep into the race's history.  Here's a New York Times article on the race from 1926:

[PDF]

28 Days!  And check out who was racing:

Many internationally known cyclists will compete in this event, the twentieth of its kind—last year’s champion, Bottesvia from Itall, Belgian’s Buysse brothers, Huysse, Beniot, Frantz, the Frenchmen Bellenger, Aymot, Huot, Sellier and many others, including Swiss, Hollanders, &c.

In those days they left off the first name for weight savings.

Of course, the basic idea was the same, but the wardrobe was a slightly different:

The man with the least number of accumulated hours will wear the coveted yellow sweater which often changes hands during the circuit.  

I couldn't help plugging the delightful phrase "coveted yellow sweater" into a popular search engine, and here's what I came up with:

(Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's sweater.)

But perhaps the best thing about the old-timey Tour was that amateur Freds could jump in too:

The professional cyclists operate in squads representing various bicycle manufacturing firms and lend each other a hand in case of punctures.  The amateurs operate alone, and while they cannot expect to win, they have a lively competition with each other for amateur prizes.  All along the route towns and villages offer prizes for spurts, &c., and the native sons always get a wild reception, whatever their standings in the race may be.

It's true, the native son always did get a wild reception, but once he arrived in the next town and was no longer the native son he was beaten mercilessly about the head and torso with a stale baguette.

In other news, I received a press release by email yesterday, and imagine my surprise when it was 50% about me:

As the NYC Bike Snob, the snarky and elusive Weiss became a guide for cyclists all over the world, with posts ranging from bike part information to bike lane etiquette -- never afraid of criticizing the big names in the competitive sport. 

The above paragraph continues thusly:

"Interest in the Bike Snob eventually faded until Outside found him behind a taqueria scrounging for discarded burrito stubs.  Taking mercy on him, they engaged him as a columnist ."

Anyway, being a "top influencer, " you can imagine I get lots of great marketing emails, such as this one:

Breaking the wind with Wood...Aerowood

Never one to resist a fart pun, I read on:

In today's carbon rich bicycle environment, it’s difficult to stand out from the crowd and introduce something truly unique and different. The new Renovo Aerowood is a genuine head turner and a great conversation piece.  Please share this with your followers and if interested, please ask about Review Bikes that are readily available.

Wait a second:



Did they say review bikes are available?!?

I may have to try one of these things:

The new Aerowood combines wood with carbon to produce Renovo’s FFSVD© (full frame shock and vibration damping) engineering technology which creates an incredibly fast and smooth ride. In addition, the hollow wood frame is a unique departure from mainstream bicycles that Renovo has found to absorb vibration better than other frame materials and has been expertly engineering since 2007.  Completing the package the Aerowood sports a shrouded rear wheel, aero downtube and seat mast fairing to reduce wind resistance.

Not only will that give me at least two weeks' worth of wood puns, but I'll finally have an appropriate bike for my $45 wooden bidon:

Not to mention my wooden combination bottle opener/tire lever:

Not only is the shape highly ergonomic, but if you're using a tubeless system it can also be used as a sealant injector.

Best of all, I understand Best Made Co. has a travel bike conversion kit available specifically for wooden frames.  It consists of one of their axes:

And a set of hose clamps:

They're like S&S couplers, only more artisanal.

Still, being a top influencer comes with a lot of pressure.  For example, I'm woefully behind on all the different road bike categories, and I need to get caught up.  To that end, I recently browsed the VeloNews Buyers' Guide, where I was stunned to find that ther eare now "All-Around Road" bikes:

And "Aero Road" bikes:

And "Endurance Road" bikes:

And of course "Gravel" bikes;

Even more confusingly, the top Aero road bike was a track bike:

And in case you're wondering, the last place Gravel bike was a Cannondale Slate:

Cannondale’s Tim Johnson calls the Slate “the Swiss Army Knife of road bikes.” Do you really want to dress a deer with a folding knife? Isn’t that can-opener a nuisance? That’s not to say the Slate isn’t a fun, versatile bike. It just seems like a complicated design that tries to do too much for a very specific person. But maybe you’re that person.

Oh snap.

Anyway, I don't know much, but it seems to me that maybe one day they can come up with a bike that's just kind of a regular road bike you can use to do pretty much anything:

Nah, it'll never catch on.