Would That I Could...

Hello, and welcome to the BSNYC Tech Beat, where we give you the low-down on all the hot new cutting-edge components:

Firstly, if you're among the legions of people awaiting a report on the Jones H-Bar:

Which I received last week:

I have some good news, and I have some bad news.

The good news is that I finally carved some time out from my busy schedule this morning in order to install them on my Marin.  

The bad news is that my hydrolic dick break cables aren't long enough for them, nor do I have all the necessary hoses and fittings to lengthen them, which means I could not complete the installation.

Of course any sensible person would have just high-tailed it to the nearest bike shop and let them do it, but I am not a sensible person, and most likely what I'll end up doing is putting some mechanical dick breaks on the Marin for the time being.  This will allow me to experiment with positioning, etc. without having to deal with messy fluids and all the rest of it.  Then once everything's where I want it I can revert back to the hydrolic breaks--or not, maybe I won't even feel like it. 

Either way, with any luck by next week I'll have the Marin transformed into an adventure machine.

Oh, you'll also be relieved to know that after spending the night in the stairwell the cat is safe and sound:

She must have slipped out last night when we took out the trash, and I found her this morning by the door to the building roof, crouched in the defensive position she'd probably been maintaining for the past twelve hours.  

I explained to her she's free to leave us at any time, but that if she does at least we'd like some closure in the form of a note, because open-ended disappearances are just creepy:

Last time she pulled a stunt like this we found a "Lost Cat" poster in the elevator before we even realized she was gone.

And in other tech news, the Renovo Aerowood testing continues apace:

Indeed, after a preternaturally warm spell it's finally getting chilly here, and yesterday as I prepared to head out for a brief jaunt on Ol' Woodrow I remembered I had just the gloves:

These are of course the work of Barry Wicks:

And I'll be darned if they weren't just the thing for gripping the unwrapped tops of those crabon bars:

Why do people like that, anyway?  There should be tape anyplace your hands go, end of story.  And with regard to the gloves, I admit that when I first got them I was like, "Yeah, right," but now that I've worn them I'm kinda into them.

As for the bike, with a mere 60-ish miles on it I'll refrain from making any pronouncements, but I'll most likely share my first impressions sometime next week.  I will add however that it turns out the shrieking of the crabon rims is not totally gone after all (it's now an intermittent shriek rather than a sustained one), though the situation is certainly far better than it was on that first ride.

One promising aspect of the Renovo is that its frame provides ample hiding space for a motor:

And the Fred-verse is ablaze with ex-pro Phil Gaimon's accusation that Fabian Cancellara was indeed a motördoper:

In his book, Gaimon wrote: “I dismissed it until I heard his former teammates talk about certain events where Cancellara had his own mechanic, his bike was kept separate from everyone else's, and he rode away from a ‘who's who’ of dopers.

“When you watch the footage, his accelerations don't look natural at all, like he's having trouble staying on the top of the pedals.

“That fucker probably did have a motor,” he added.

Hey, you don't have to convince me:

Come on, Cancellara passed him like he just drank a bottle of MiraLAX and Boonen was a kernel of corn.