How, then, are we supposed to mint the cyclists of tomorrow? Are they supposed to leap fully formed from the head of Zeus? Are they supposed to ride up and down the sidewalk in front of their building until they hit puberty? How does a child learn that cycling is a healthy and normal form of transportation when actually doing it with their parents is nearly impossible?
Of course there are those who would argue that cycling is not a healthy and normal form of transportation and that we should all do things the American way instead:
This certainly seems to be what people who follow Outside magazine on Facebook think, because on Friday they published this:
And as I predicted, the Facebook commentary was head-splittingly stupid. For example, did you know that cyclists never have the right of way over a driver?
Of course there are those who would argue that cycling is not a healthy and normal form of transportation and that we should all do things the American way instead:
This certainly seems to be what people who follow Outside magazine on Facebook think, because on Friday they published this:
And as I predicted, the Facebook commentary was head-splittingly stupid. For example, did you know that cyclists never have the right of way over a driver?
Then there's one of my favorite forms of Internet commentary, which is when some doofus tries to reduce you to a stereotype and fumbles it completely:
Wrong, dipshit. I'll be making steak for dinner tonight, and I've often considered buying parakeets from Petco and using them as cat toys. But sure, anyone who thinks differently from you is a "vegan," which is something you use as a pejorative because you lead a depressingly provincial existence.
That's not to say I'm not above stereotyping people myself. For example, I bet Nicholas White is a guy who uses too much hair product and repairs vinyl seats for a living:
Hey, I was right!
Have a cracked dash or seat from the heat I can fix it, contact me for a quote - Blanco Interiors LLC
Not that there's anything wrong with that, because it sounds like good, honest work. In fact I feel sort of bad for him now, since I realize he's merely being protective of his livelihood. But he needn't worry, because in a car-free future he can easily transition into bicycle saddle repair.
Hey, I'd hire him to repair my car seats, but unfortunately they're made out of cloth. Nevertheless, if he'd like to suck the farts out of them for me I've got a sawbuck with his name on it.
Hey, I'd hire him to repair my car seats, but unfortunately they're made out of cloth. Nevertheless, if he'd like to suck the farts out of them for me I've got a sawbuck with his name on it.
Oh, and speaking of Outside columns, while I'm sick of the subject of suspension to the point of nausea I did spot this bike yesterday during a family outing to the Botanical Garden:
And while it's always a treat to spot a rolling time capsule I was particularly taken with the fork:
My knowledge of '90s suspension is fairly cursory since I was deep in the throes of Fredness at the time, but the Twitterati were kind enough to inform me that it's an AMP Research fork.
Alas, AMP research are now focussed on truck running boards and the like, so there you go:
Alas, AMP research are now focussed on truck running boards and the like, so there you go:
Finally, just another reminder to join me for some beer and bloviation in Brooklyn on Wednesday:
Join us for a fast-paced hour of ideas, entrepreneurs and bikes, capturing the exciting things happening in the bike industry at DRAFT: NYC in Brooklyn.
Directions:
61 Greenpoint Ave., Greenpoint, Brooklyn
The nearest train is G. Stop at Greenpoint Avenue and proceed to Brooklyn Bicycle Co. We're in suite 638 - buzz 970 and walk around the corner to the elevator and head up to the 6th floor!
Program:
6:30 - 7:00 pm: Beer and banter
7:00 - 8:00 pm: Program + Speakers
8:00 - 9:00 pm: More beer and banter
Speaker Lineup:
- Paul Steely White, Transportation Alternatives
- Eben Weiss, Bike Snob NYC
- Courtney Williams, The Brown Bike Girl
As a father of seventeen (17) children I don't get out too much these days, so expect me to drink way too much free beer and pass out a good 20 minutes before I'm supposed to speak.
Should be fun.
Join us for a fast-paced hour of ideas, entrepreneurs and bikes, capturing the exciting things happening in the bike industry at DRAFT: NYC in Brooklyn.
Directions:
61 Greenpoint Ave., Greenpoint, Brooklyn
The nearest train is G. Stop at Greenpoint Avenue and proceed to Brooklyn Bicycle Co. We're in suite 638 - buzz 970 and walk around the corner to the elevator and head up to the 6th floor!
Program:
6:30 - 7:00 pm: Beer and banter
7:00 - 8:00 pm: Program + Speakers
8:00 - 9:00 pm: More beer and banter
Speaker Lineup:
- Paul Steely White, Transportation Alternatives
- Eben Weiss, Bike Snob NYC
- Courtney Williams, The Brown Bike Girl
As a father of seventeen (17) children I don't get out too much these days, so expect me to drink way too much free beer and pass out a good 20 minutes before I'm supposed to speak.
Should be fun.
vinyl podium!
ReplyDeleteI think the next Fondont should end at the Lakehouse in VC park
ReplyDeleteAMP Research fork is many levels of rad.
ReplyDeleteI'm torn between attempting a podium and figuring out something clever to say about the similarities between the AMP research fork and the fork on a Vincent Black Shadow. All I can come up with is Vincent never implemented the snazzy purple anodizing, so there's that.
ReplyDeletePodium?
ReplyDeletePodio? Scranus!
ReplyDeleteSchrodinger's vegan cat podium?
ReplyDelete"the percentage of kids walking or riding bikes to school has gone from 48 percent in 1969 to around 13 percent today."
ReplyDeleteThe funny thing about this statistic is that I was a kid walking/biking to school back in '69, actually from '61-'73, and it seemed pretty close to 100%. Seriously my parents never drove me to school, not once even in the bad weather of WI, and i didn't see any drop off zone either. I reluctantly took the lame bus occasionally in high school. Maybe that is the difference, maybe a whole lot of kids in big cities were being bussed to school. But parents driving their kids to school: wasn't a thing at all.
Drunken banter about bikes. What could go wrong?
ReplyDeleteFREE BEER
ReplyDeleteMy dog asked me to point out that Mr. White's seat fixing business model is flawed.
ReplyDeleteAlthough it's true all seats have cracks, not every seat owner wants theirs heat treated.
He assures me this can lead to a "sick burn."
Honestly, I had no idea burns could fall ill.
I would have written off Mr. White as an ass crack head and left it at that.
I could've been a contender, Johny!
ReplyDeleteI could've been a contender, but now I'm just a bum
ReplyDeletePodium?
ReplyDelete...probably topus tenus?
ReplyDeletePodium?
ReplyDeleteRead the TransAlt entry, read the Facebook comments (ugh), and yet I'm on the podium.
ReplyDeleteI eat meat too.
ReplyDeleteWhat .!!!! First loser?! I did it, I really did it!!!!!
ReplyDeleteI'm somebody!!! First loser!!!!
ReplyDeletevsk said ...
ReplyDeleteMade it.
Have no idea what number.
It's all for The Children !!
vsk
Hey, BikeSnob!
ReplyDeleteYour Outside magazine piece on hating cars was excellent.
Also, admit it: your cat is a fucking vegan. (Go ahead, admit it. You'll feel better about yourself, and your cat).
Secondus
ReplyDeleteFun fact: Vinyl repair products make great hair gel!
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteje suis le deuxième
ReplyDeleteje suis le deuxième
je suis le deuxième
ReplyDeletehail satan
ReplyDeleteYesterday during Tour de Bronx, I used the bike path that goes along the Hutchinson River Parkway. This crazy path has a bunch of places where you have to cross a merging ramp. They helpfully put a "Stop" sign on the bike path, and some crosswalk paint, but nothing else. By now, the crosswalk paint has all worn off.
ReplyDeleteSo... there I was trying to cross a merging ramp. I started pushing my bike out into the crosswalk ahead of me; I'll play chicken with my bike, but not my own neck. Three cars swerved, honked and yelled insults --- anything except stop as required by law. Finally, the fourth car stopped and I made my way safely across.
Dipshit Linchuk needs to understand that in some cases, the automobile CAN lose without endangering the biker's life. Putting a large object in the car's path at driver's eye level can be frighteningly effective.
OTOH, maybe car drivers are more responsible than bikers. The object-at-eye-level trick has worked for me every time with cars. But once it didn't work with a biker, who was blowing full-speed through a crosswalk on the red, while I was crossing on foot. Rather than stopping, he hit my bag and took a spill. I was uninjured.
scranus
ReplyDeleteI've biked with 2 of the 3 speakers at the draft thing. I'm a regular Forrest Gump on 2 wheels.
ReplyDeleteAlso, the reaction of Outside's readers does not surprise me. Not to poo poo on the magazine which publishes some truly gripping reading, but there is this divide between where adventure happens which is remote and where people live. So it would be odd that we want to ride bikes in places that aren't reached via Subaru Outback after hours of driving. I mean, they have articles about gym workouts, but they're very much into isolated wilderness. Hence all the Darwin porn (i.e. articles about oxygen deprived people freezing to death on mountains). But maybe I'm wrong, I've never been a subscriber.
Also, I got a fitbit and want to brag. Who's got a Dutch bike and a resting pulse of 45? This gal!
Po Po Podium???
ReplyDeletePodio
ReplyDeletePodio dio.....Or Moderation lag??
ReplyDeleteFunny stuff,Mr.Wildcat,funny stuff.
ReplyDeleteDuuuude...
ReplyDeleteIn the future I can imagine myself at a stoplight. I look behind me and the 1st car at the stoplight is a driverless car. The light turns green and I just sit there. Unlike a driverfull car, the driverless car also just sits there instead of going full rage. As the light just turns red, I zip ahead thru the intersection. Sure the line of cars behind the driverless car are totally pisssed off (ONE WHOLE STOPLIGHT CYCLE OF DELAY!!!). Hahahaha, fuck-em! I would love that car.
ReplyDeleteTruck accessories!
ReplyDeleteYup, AMP Research. I think that fork might be the B3 or B4 model (I think from'93 or '94). You might be more familiar with the Mongoose Amplifier full suspension bike. While they are horrifically skimpy by today's standards, they were well ahead of their time. I think they used a four bar linkage system (Horst link?) that later became the gold standard for suspension.
ReplyDeleteTo prove your point about suspension, my brother picked up two mongoose amp frames at the 1996 Jim Thorpe MTB Fest. I think one was missing some shock bits, and eventually got thrown out. The other quickly broke and was replaced with a fancy new AMP frame and fork. However, by the time the frame arrived, it was already outdated (at least for riders who weighed more then 100lbs. So it sits now in the Basement of Broken Dreams, next to the half a dozen other high end suspension frames that have a cracked this, blown that, or are just not worth even trying to sell anymore.
On the other hand, I have been riding a rigid steel 1992 Stumpjumper (deore DX!) for the last 15 years, with zero issues, and zero fucks. Yeah, I love my full suspension mtb, and my rigid singlespeed, and my P-far, but in terms of getting use out of it, the old rigid mtbs from the 1990's blow away everything else.
Also, Tour de Bronx was great yesterday. Amazing to see the talent of the guys wheelieing these days! Phenomenal talent!
It's not immediately apparent from from his FB profile, but it is there if you're willing to dig for it: Nicholas White of Blanco Interiors LLC is still breast feeding from his mother. A lot of people think it's weird that a middle-aged man with a hair products addiction (primarily gel and curl enhancer) is still suckling at his mother's breast, but that's the way the do in Nick's family.
ReplyDeleteI thought they meant Amal sex.
ReplyDeleteDo you prefer moboblocks or concentrics? I like a concentric with a nice number 3 cutaway on the slide and big 'ol 220 main. Sexy!
DeleteQuestion for Nicolas White: If someone is vegan vs. meat-eater, are there more or less entrapped farts to suck from the seat foam? And does flatulence degrade vinyl from the vibration, the heat, or both? Does anyone still drive a car with vinyl seats in 2017?
ReplyDeletedidn't you know that vegans are communist, god-hating pussies? Being an ignorant dipshit who eats two kinds of meat at every meal is proof that you are a god-fearing, manly man who loves your country. You die early from heart disease, but can you think of a more heroic and manly way to expire? Get with the program dude.
ReplyDeleteCursed moderator delay stymied my sprint for the finish! Its worse than rubbing wheels...
ReplyDeleteSorry Snobby but cycling is not a healthy and normal form of transportation, It is a way to repair the damage caused by using the automobile as the normal form of transportation. As for "The car always wins". Sorry, but I managed to work getting knocked down with a few cuts and scratches into a $10,000 pay out. (I'm not a nice person)....PS. It wasn't even a Hyundai.
ReplyDeletenice you got to use sawbuck in a phrase before inflation kills it for good.
ReplyDeletenext try to use "mobylette" in an article.
Also, I wore my clip-on passive camera to the Tour de Bronx yesterday. For those who weren't at the Fondon't, it's about the size of a matchbook, has no viewfinder and just captures an image once every 30 seconds. Here are links to the full unedited sets (in the months since the Fondon't I stopped caring enough to sort through them myself). I wore it on my helmet strap since I've also learned that having the clip face the side rather than the front or back makes for more interesting pictures, though there are a lot of pics of parked cars.
ReplyDeletehttp://narrativeapp.com/shared/moments/e1b28da3681542a2b51e930c9fa3dfcd/
http://narrativeapp.com/shared/moments/f62bdcaafcd1463e9f3370cfaeed28ef/
What the scranus??? I'm just a loser.....
ReplyDeleteNYCHighwheeler, I’m with you. I have a Bridgestone MB-3 (Suntour, Biopace, Ritchey) that gets me around almost as well as it did in 1991. It doesn’t bunny-hop over fallen trees anymore, but that’s just because I prefer to minimize my time at the orthopaedics clinic.
ReplyDeleteDon't miss your chance to help the overprivileged
ReplyDeletehttp://redkiteprayer.com/2017/10/a-request/
It's sad that kids have to ride bikes in front of their buildings. It sounds terribly parochial.
ReplyDeleteWe provincials, however, freely enjoy broad horizons. It's not terribly depressing.
@ NYCHighwheeler, sadly I'll show my mtbfredlieness....the B3/B4 are the full Amp bikse...the forks were the F series (F1, 2, 3 &, F4). I had an F4. It was actually a really great fork...the parallelogram design from Horst was (is) the ticket...the wheel actually moves nearly straight up/down instead of at an angle towards the rider like standard forks. The advantage is that as you brake it nearly eliminates fork dive (which is bad as it changes the steering angle AND uses up some of your travel due to the dive, so is less effective on bumps while braking). I had mine mounted on a Trek 9800 carbon hardtail...and served me well for MANY years. Only took it off to sell the bike, as a good friend's bikes burned up in a fire (he had earlier Amp forks and lost them in the fire). I heard the only real problem was the smallish carbon tubes on the later models (not the one in the pic, which has aluim tubes) would break, usually catastrophically for the rider as you can imagine. Maybe they should have had a weight limit...I tend towards the lighter side and never had a problem, well, except for rebuilding those 2 tiny 'shocks' all the time...they leaked oil pretty consistently. But I believe it was/is the lightest 4" travel fork on the market (the F3 was 3" travel).
ReplyDeleteYep...total mtb fred here. I can't remember what I did yesterday, so how on earth can I possibly remember all this useless stuff? Gettin' old sucks.
Also, as to the Vegan vs meat eater thing...I once cropdusted a group of co-workers...everybody immedietly was blaming one of my friends (who happened to be a vegan). He quickly pointed out "THAT was a meat fart...veggie farts don't smell like that" (and he was right..it WAS a meat fart!) Meat farts ARE INDEED much juicer than veggie farts. Who knew?
ReplyDeleteOh crap...I have to correct myself (not on the fart thing, that's right). Just looked it up...the F3XC only had 2.25" travel, the F4BLT had 3.25" travel..and mine was the F3XC (only 2.4lbs). Sheesh...all those years I thought it was 4"...guess that explains some things (honey, honestly I think this is 6").
ReplyDeleteMeat and vegetables, I.e. Corned beef and cabbage, are needed to achieve maximum dispersion and "hang time".
ReplyDeleteHuh? What?
ReplyDeleteGrump-
ReplyDeleteI took a short cut on the sidewalk, T-boned a cab, flew over the hood, dinged my shoulder & settled for 15k. (I gave 5k to my lawyer, so we're even)
I hate cars too. Not the one I drive, 'cause it's pretty cool to drive, when I drive it, which is about three or four days a week. But it's other people's cars and the sense of privilege their owners get when they drive them.
ReplyDeleteBeer Bloviation Brooklyn?
ReplyDeleteAle Alliteration Alexandria?
Weed Wheels Wisconsin?
Cars Crack City?
outside magazine is just an outlet for selling bike crap, this s the text of my response to their article about electronic shimano crap...
ReplyDeleteshilling for the overpriced and needless bike component cabal...
6:31 PM (4 hours ago)
to letters
the article pushing the shimano/garmin electronic shit storm deserves a response worthy of the level of shilling evident...
the riding experience has been reduced to just another corporate cash cow by endless complication of more gears and now electronic
interference between the buttons... get a clue, this is going nowhere sane... too bright headlights and other yuppie nonsense is dooming our so called sport to a death by financial immersion...
you are not helping...
yada yada yada, m
here in robot hq we just go for it...
My 9 yr old son said "Woo hoo hoo" this weekend while riding single-track! First time at our local spot! We even rode the 7.5 miles there! It was the best! No suspension but the air in our tires! Speaking of which; I was a big fan of those Avocet Cross K tires on the bike with the AMP fork when I had them on a bike when I was about 12.
ReplyDeleteI just want to vent away from prying eyes. In my cycling Facebook group (I know, but it's a good place to hear about upcoming local rides), one of the main helmet nannies/hater of e-bikes ("they've almost killed me multiple times") just put out a warning on the dangers of wet metal, which were unknown to her heretofore. I know that only losers set themselves up as gate-keepers, but MAN! She wiped out and I feel bad, but jeez Louise. Do you remember that guy on here? In one of the "discussions" about helmets, he told us about how he had been riding and his hat blew off and he "naturally" lunged for it and woke up in the hospital and now always wears a helmet. I think about him all the time. Where do these people come from? (Full disclosure: I wore a helmet today because wet roads aint news to me.)
ReplyDeleteThe comment about monoblocks vs concentrics was in reply to George Clooney. Just in case anyone was confused.
ReplyDeleteSnobby, I like the Article in/on Reclaim and you're right Teaching kids to ride is daunting. My son has ridden around town with me a couple times and arrives home just to announce how glad he is to still be alive! Jeez, It weren't THAT bad, but maybe I've become desensitized? Maybe constantly fighting for my life sharpens the senses to the point that I don't realize I'm really walking the tightrope between life & death? I do actually play it pretty safe, generally not putting myself anywhere close to a place where I can be hit, assuming of course that the automobiles confine themselves to the roadway which is not always a guarantee, BUT at some point one has to cross a street!
ReplyDeleteI really do love cars (own several), but "horses for the courses" as they say and we've really gone too far with the whole cars thing. Yes, it's a distorted reality and I like what you're saying here and some people probably think you're going too far, but I disagree; Maybe you're not going far enough? I mean you've already excepted the reality that there has to be a street in front of your domicile!!!??? Really? Maybe if communities had shared driveways and the path that leads from your front door didn't necessarily need to accommodate a car????
Here's a thought; The internet is going to kill the car, just like it's killed so many other peoples livelihoods (while creating others)! Just as you, a Semi-professional Blogger can work from home, or the coffee shop or wherever. So too might a large cadre' of people in the near future! My co-workers are one by one "working from home"; even though my company doesn't encourage it, it's catching on like a slow moving virus. At some point management is going to get tired of looking at a sea of empty cubicles and say "WTF!?" My Co-workers and I wonder aloud if we aren't the dumbest fucks in the world for coming to the office everyday!?? Of course my fear has always been that the worker you never see is the one you can live without! I still have co-workers who are borderline worthless, work from home & retain their jobs; so why shouldn't I join their ranks!?? a populace that no longer has to RUSH to work, that can travel in a more convivial fashion can choose a more elegant form of conveyance like a Skateboard, E-bike, Leased Hyundai or YES! A Bicycle! - masmojo
jeaninedm:
ReplyDeleteWhat is the brand & model of your "clip-on passive camera"? Or is it a custom job?
It's called the Narrative Clip 2. The company has since gone out of business. The Google Clips sound pretty similar, though instead of using a timer, it uses AI to choose when to take a photo.
ReplyDeletevsk said ...
ReplyDeleteMy unasked for 2c...
A nice camera is a Mobius Action Camera. Many uses and also have the periodic shutter release.
Can be used as a dashboard camera, they have a sensor with will automatically take a picture or video. Self powered or USB powered. I used them on the remote controlled planes and drones for a while. Took a few hard impacts. Record on an SD card.
That one and RunCam are another option. Really cool.
vsk
I wouldn't worry to much about passing out before public speaking. Every time I hear Trump speak I think he's mumbling in his sleep..."my Renoir is the real Renoir..."
ReplyDelete@Matt
ReplyDeleteWow! Your are correct Matt! The fork is the F3 BLT! And taking another look at that frame - holy crap that thing is minimal. The part of the frame that the seatpost goes into looks like sheet metal, and the places where the different linkages meet are like 1/8 inch aluminum.
Thanks for your comments about old bikes! I was really into that stuff back in the 90's and thought it was as good as they made it sound in the magazines.
PS I checked out your blog and saw the pictures and stuff of your dog. Sorry for your lose. It looks like she was a great dog, and you were a great caretaker.