Bhutan Tenovo?

Like most Americans I live in a state of ignorance, and as such I had no idea Bhutan is apparently a cycling paradise:

Dragon Kings who ride bikes?  Epic Himalayan trails?  Sideburns???

A fervent bicycle culture has seen rapid development in Bhutan. Its northern border with Tibet runs along a treacherous seam of the Eastern Himalayan mountain range, which has historically protected the Switzerland-size country from outside influence and fortified it as one of the only nations in the world to never be colonized. This geographic and political isolation has long delayed Bhutan’s modernization. The cycling culture has grown thanks to the bike-crazy former Druk Gyalpo, or Dragon King, who spends his days cruising trail networks throughout the mountains. Bhutanese citizens idolize the royal family, often wearing lapel pins with the current king’s handsome sideburned portrait.

Suck on that, Portland.

Also, when was the last time anyone--adult or child--shouted something positive at you while you were riding your bike?

The road banked into a left turn, and I slowly coasted through, gazing down at the pavement. Just then, I was hit with an eruption of cheers coming from 100 schoolchildren posted on the side of the road. Spectators across the entire country had lined the course to cheer for the riders while handing us bananas and chocolate. It was the largest crowd of “cheering team” volunteers I’d yet to encounter, and their energy was colossal. In a sea of white khata scarves, the fanatic children chanted “Do your best! Do your best!” while running alongside me, clapping and screaming as if I were locked in a dead sprint.

Generally when I'm riding, kids latch on to some aspect of my appearance and use it as inspiration for ridicule.

Then on top of it all they have a "Gross National Happiness" index?!?

The term Gross National Happiness was coined in 1972 during an interview by a British journalist for the Financial Times at Bombay airport when the then king of Bhutan, Jigme Singye Wangchuck, said "Gross National Happiness is more important than Gross National Product."

Meanwhile, here in Canada's Underpants we have yet to discover the inverse relationship between cars and guns and staying alive.

Granted, in my old age I may be getting soft and wistful, but I admit to finding everything about the above article beguiling--apart from one glaring omission:

WHAT PRESSURE WAS HE RUNNING?!?!?

Also...altitude?  Believe it or not I did visit the Himalayas many years ago (I went here), and while it was stunningly beautiful I also felt dizzy and headachy the whole time due to the elevation.  (Probably because I flew there instead of getting acclimatized by riding there on a yak or something.)   I certainly didn't do any bicycle-cycling, but I did see people arriving by bike, which made me feel like a total "woosie:"

(Those were the days...)

That note of course came from my 2009 review of the Scattante Empire State Courier, about which two things are noteworthy:

1) False modesty aside it is arguably the greatest bike review ever written;
2) It may have taken 10 years, but now that Performance has gone bankrupt I'm getting that much closer to a perfect record of putting bike companies out of business.

Anyway, I'm totally gonna ride my fixie to Ladakh one day for some Himalayan hillbombing.

In the meantime however my rides are anything but adventurous.  For example, this past weekend I rode the Ironic Orange Julius Bike all the way from Queens to Brooklyn...and back again!

Yes, the Ironic Orange Julius Bike has worn many caps over the years.  When I had an actual job, it was my commuting bike.  When I went to Portland it was the bike I used to infiltrate the "bike culture."  And of course I've even cyclocrossed on it:

Incredibly I still managed to reproduce after that.

As for its current incarnation, the IOJB is now my velo-à-terre and lives in the bike room of my mother's building in Queens, because of course I must have unfettered access to a bicycle anyplace I regularly spend more than an hour at a time.  Plus, over the years, gentrification has unfurled such that my mother's abode is now just off the Great Hipster Silk Route.  So every so often when I'm there I like to hop on a bike and reconnect with the gentriverse, which is what I did the other day.  Here is the IOJB as it is now:

I'm not sure what happened last time I rode it, but this is was the state of the drivetrain when I headed out:

I'm relatively certain I've never changed the chain since building the bike up from a bare frame well over a decade ago.

Another quirk is that the rear brake arm is now sticking (I seem to have a problem with that, despite always liberally applying grease when installing stuff), which means every so often I've got to reach back and kind of flick it free.  Also, whenever I last changed the brake levers I forgot to put those little rubber donuts on the cable:

The upshot of this is that when the brake arm sticks there's tons of slack in it and it jingles against the top tube like a line on a flagpole in the wind.

Fortunately as you travel the Great Hipster Silk Route there's now a bike shop roughly every nine feet, and so I stopped in one for some lube which I applied liberally to the bicycle in various places.  But at this point I should probably just ditch the brakes altogether, since they are for "woosies" after all.  I certainly see no issue trusting my life to that rusty chain.

Hey, it's lasted this long.