Coming and Going: Socks, Cups, and Belts

In these high-tech days of "electronic mail," "instant massages," and "telephone calls," going to your physical mailing box can be an experience fraught with stress and anxiety. Sure, an email can contain a nasty virus or a Nigerian scam, but at least you don't have to actually touch or smell anything. On the other hand, your analog mailbox can contain pretty much anything. It could be an unexpected financial windfall, or it could be a notice from a collection agency, or it could just be a note that says "Eff you blog boy" that's been lovingly seasoned with anthrax.

Fortunately, yesterday was a "best case scenario" for me down at the old mailin' hole. In addition to the small packet of "Wednesday weed" that I had mailed myself from Amsterdam, it also contained a pair of socks. And these weren't pre-worn, funky, unlaundered socks from strangers like I usually receive, either. They were brand-spunking-new collectable foot sockings still in the original packaging!

The socks, as you may have figured out by now, were from the excellent Cycling Inquisition blog, and you can get some here along with other body part coverings. Best of all, they have the blog's URL right on the foot part!

That's so when you're chatting on the group ride and you want to tell someone about that awesome blog you read, and they ask for the URL, but you can't remember, all you have to do is just whip off a Sidi and stick your foot in their face.

Also, as far as I know, they're fully compatible with the new All Hail the Black Market kits:

So be sure to promote one or both of these great blogs on your next ride. (As for this blog, it's far from great. Anyway, as you can tell from my new bikes I'm officially going "full douche" now, so I'm no longer calling this a blog. Instead, I now refer to it as a "cycling-themed electronic prose manifestation.")

Or you can just stick with the Primal Wear, whatever works for you.

But wait, there's more! In addition to the socks, there was something else in my mailbox. Something special. Something imbued with feminine mystique. Something that came in a small pouch labeled "Diva," which you can see here in the clutches of my helper monkey, Vito:

I opened the pouch and gently removed the object inside with trembling fingers, and the music of Juliana Hatfield began to play as if from nowhere. Then, Vito grabbed it from me and put it on his head like a hat:

Still, I was at a loss. Was it a collapsible silicone shot glass? Was it something you'd use to perform a hydraulic disc brake overhaul? I then thought about the process of bleeding brakes, and that's when it hit me:

It was a menstrual cup!

You may recall that some time ago, I mentioned a blog called "Sustainable Cycles," chronicling the adventures of two women who had embarked upon a project to "Bicycle Down the West Coast, Meet Women, Talk about Menstrual Cups, and Live on $4 a Day:"

Well, not only did they appreciate the mention, but the also asked me if they could show their gratitude by sending me my very own menstrual cup.

Um, fuck yeah!

At this point you may be wondering, "What use could you possibly have for a menstrual cup?" Well, firstly, there's this. Secondly, there's the big, big savings:

Over a lifetime, the average woman spends about 2000 dollars on single use pads and tampons, creating an enormous truck-load of trash. Menstrual cups are made of non-absorbent latex or silicon and last for up to 10 years: quite a deal for $35 dollars!

And there's your custom bicycle frame.

In all seriousness, it makes me feel all tingly inside that two people are not only touring by bicycle in order to promote something they believe in, but that they're doing so with good cheer and in good humor. Then again, that inner tingling could just be a sign that it's menstrual cup time. Either way, it's a refreshing alternative to the usual touring logs in which people boast about their mileage, document the minutiae of their bicycle set-ups, and generally suffer from the delusion that their cycling vacations are on par with the exploits of the great explorers.

By the way, the menstrual cup they sent me is made in Canada, which I guess means that not only is American manufacturing truly dead, but that we also technically can't refer to the United States as "Canada's menstrual cup."

Speaking of monthly cycles, it would appear that my one month testing period for the Avenging Disco Belt-Drive Bike is now at an end, which means it's time to pack it up and send it back to these guys:

The bike, as you may recall if you didn't bother to click on the above link, is the Base Urban something-or-other, and the month I had with it passed too quickly--not because I loved the bike (frankly I did not), but because I spent like half that time in Europe. I did use it last night to transport myself to a social engagement, and here's what it looks like with a "filth prophylactic" on the seatpost:

From a commuting standpoint, the cleanliness of the drivetrain is undeniably attractive. (By the way, the belt is now mostly quiet, except on inclines, when it makes a sound pretty much exactly like derailleur rub.) Other than that, the bike was a bit like a roommate you go out of your way to avoid. It's shaped like a road bike but doesn't perform like one, so for recreation you'd naturally opt for a road bike. At the same time, it's shaped too much like a road bike to be comfortable or practical for commuting, which meant it was a struggle not to simply reach for my trusty Scattante. Then there's the frame. I mentioned the untenable eyelets, and I also noticed that, due to all the wacky stuff going on in rear dropout land, I experienced repeated heel strike:

In fairness to the bike, I am highly duckfooted, but I've never experienced that before on a bike without panniers:

By the way, in case you're wondering, yes, those are rubber slip-on shoes shaped like Vans with no laces. The father of 17 children, I have given up on fashion long ago. And yes, I'm also wearing a rubber shirt shaped like an unbuttoned Oxford.

In any case, I'd like to thank the belt drive people for lending me the bike, as well as the Gates people for helping me sort out the initial noise issues. And once the bike is on its way home, that means I will have one less bike to juggle, though juggling bikes is a lot easier than juggling fire and knives on rollers, as in this video:

This man may be the world's deadliest Fred:

Though he really should upgrade those blades to crabon. He could always use the "spokes" from an old set of Spinergys.

Who Am I? In the Market

("Holy shit, the British are coming?!?")

"What bike should I get?" It's a question as old as the bicycle itself. Actually, that's not entirely true, since back in the "olden days" if you wanted to ride you got a pennyfarthing and that was that. Maybe--maybe--the LBS gave you the option to upgrade to one of those newfangled "saddles" instead of keeping the stock iron spike that people used to sit on before the bicycle seat was invented, but otherwise it was p-far or nothing.

Now, though, there is a bewildering array of bicycles out there, and as we saw from the comments on yesterday's post, which one you choose and why is one of the most contentious debates in all of cycling. In fact, it's right up there with the "helment debate," the "tubular vs. clincher debate," and of course the "saddle vs. iron spike debate." (I've been a saddle man ever since my surgery, but as they say on the Internet, "YMMV"--as will the diameter of the hole in your perineum and the time it takes it to heal.)

In any case, every so often "new bike time" rolls along. For some "new bike time" comes once a year, for others once a decade, and for still others once in a lifetime. Regardless of the interval though, "new bike time" is a lot like having a gaping hole in your perineum, since after a certain point you can't ignore it and the problem simply must be addressed. As it happens, it was recently "new bike time" for me, though unfortunately by the time I saw this "Tweet" from Bicycling magazine I already had my new bikes and it was too late for me to heed its expert advice:

Nevertheless, I clicked on the link anyway to see if I had made the right choice:

The article began with a simple exercise:

Sketch yourself. Grab a pencil, paper and some brutal honesty. Now make two lists. The first is an inventory of your current status as a cyclist or, for first-timers, your fitness level: how competitive you are, how much time you spend riding (or working out) each week, your highest achievements on a bike. The second is your ultimate vision of yourself as a cyclist: completing multiple charity rides each year, kicking butt on the local race circuit, riding to work every day, and so on.

Oooh, fun! I grabbed a pencil and I grabbed some paper, but I didn't have any brutal honesty so instead I grabbed my "pants yabbies." Then, with my free hand, I got to work. However, instead of simply making lists I thought a graphical representation might be more helpful, and here's what I came up with:

(Click to enlarge, unless horrible drawings make you nauseous.)

As you can see, the cyclist that I am is a fairly unfit rider who sucks. The cyclist I wish to be, however, is Philippe Gilbert with the head of Justin Bieber. This is because I think it would be fun to win a Classic and then get mobbed at the finish line by a bunch of screaming teenagers. However, if hybrids are off the fantasy cycling table, then I would of course opt to be the time-traveling t-shirt-wearing-retro-Fred from the planet Tridork Bret:

No Bieber head necessary--Bret is cycling perfection incarnate.

Once I had my picture in hand, I moved on to the next step:

Then, imagine a rider who fits between the two—the bike that's right for that middle-ground you is the minimum you should purchase.

Ah-ha! So I did get the wrong bike! According to this, my new "middle ground" bike should have been the rear end of my Scattante grafted onto the front end of my Ritte:

(Who I am, and who I wish to be.)

At least that's how I interpret it. Therefore, immediately following this post, I plan to get to work with a hacksaw and some S&S couplers. Once I'm done, I'll report back with a lengthy post on BikeForums.

Most importantly though, your bike should give you "room to grow:"

Buy below that level, and you won't have enough room to grow.

I'm not sure what this means, but I suspect it's warning you of that moment in every Fred's life when you look at your bike and say this:

"I'm really sorry. It's not you, it's me. I'm just in a different place right now, and that place requires that I ride crabon instead of aluminum."

At which point the poor spurned bicycle must make way for a gleaming new Cervélo with Zipp wheels and over 15 centimeters of headset spacers and a glamorous new life of "kicking butt" and completing "multiple charity rides each year."

Speaking of new bikes, this past weekend a panel of judges at the Oregon Manifest selected the "ultimate utility bicycle," and it was Tony Pereira's this thing:

(This thing. It has a box.)

Of course, if you ask a hundred Portlanders what the ideal utility bike is, you'll not only get a thousand answers, but you'll also get about a million unsolicited lists of all the stuff they carried by bike that day, since "portaging" is their primary means of self-expression. This is precisely why the comments section on the Bike Portland coverage of the event is so entertaining (as was brought to my attention to a reader):

Here's one reader who was not impressed by the box, or really by any of the contestants:

If I designed the field test criteria for the show based on the needs of my family then a bike would have to carry our every day needs which are:

1. 15 month old baby
2. 10 pound dog
3. 2 bags of groceries
4. Diaper bag
5. rain cover or rain clothes for rider/baby
6. tools, spares, pump
7. water, travel mug
8. lights, lock

Fortunately there were a few bikes there that met that test. As more of the Constructors find themselves parents I am sure that these capabilities will enter into their bike designs. It would be fun to see a year in which the bikes would have to carry all of the above. Obviously you would have to substitute weighted dummies for the baby/dog due to obvious reasons on the Saturday test day.

What, no kitchen sink? Must be a minimalist. Also, you might be tempted to suggest that it's no big deal to leave the dog at home for a few hours, but in Portland leaving your dog unattended for longer than five minutes can get you arrested for animal cruelty. (Feeding it non-organic food is merely a misdemeanor.) Therefore, in Portland, no dog-portaging ability = dealbreaker. By the way, by next year's Oregon Manifest you can be sure someone in Portland will have started a business making artisanal hand-crafted weighted dummies that look like babies and dogs, and by the Manifest after that there will be a spin-off weighted dummy show and Sacha White will have a 15-year wait list for his take on those clown-shaped punching bags:

Of course, some of the Manifest bikes are more practical than others, but practicality is also subjective, and it differs from city to city rider to rider. For example, pretty much all of these bikes are wildly impractical in New York City, where they'd be stolen in seconds. The important part is the ideas each builder implemented. Sure, some of these ideas were more interesting or useful than others, but as far as I can tell none of them were remotely as useless as this one, which was forwarded to me by another reader:



Yes, it's a sensor that tells you when you get too close to stuff on your bike. If you have 900 years to spare you can also watch the video, which features a stupid skit in which someone with a marshmallow on her head pretends she just got "doored:"

And then Stellan Skarsgård's cousin who works at Radio Shack makes her a device that lights up when something gets three feet from her:

That's just brilliant, because a tiny red light is a lot easier to see than a car door. Also, everybody knows that car doors open very slowly, which is why you've got plenty of time to monitor a device, then spot the car door, and then take evasive action. I'm not sure what his next project will be, but maybe he can come up with something that lights up when you're lying underneath a truck.

Not that it matters, mind you, since yet another reader tells me we should all stop riding because it's bad for our lungs:

Logically then we should all drive to work while eating Big Macs. The health benefits are debatable, but our lungs will be as pink as that Tony Pereira bike. It's time to get off the Black Lung Express.

The Indignity of Commuting by Bicycle in a Corrupt and Oppressive Capitalist System Driven by Greed: Protests

Further to yesterday's post, in which I mentioned my new mountaining bicycle which I'm beaming at right now with one eye as I type this (which should explain all the typosepaoieh[aiwn), a commenter commented the following comment:

billy said...

Wow, nice bike. Frames start at $2K? Hard to listen to someone complain after beginning their post with, "oh btw... check out my super expensive bike I just took delivery of...fuck hipsters". No, Fuck you, dude.

September 27, 2011 12:10 AM

Wow. Firstly, Billy, I still love you, even though you were mean to me. Secondly, to be honest, I actually do have some regrets about this bicycle. Granted, these regrets are mostly along the lines of "I really should have gotten a second one exactly like it so I could ride it while my helper monkey is cleaning the first one," and "I wish I'd gotten the words 'Wildcat Rock Machine' spelled out in diamonds on the top tube," but they're regrets nonetheless. Ultimately, though, the truth is that I've earned this bike, since before my semi-retirement from racing I was the 183rd best single-speed mountain biker in the entire world:

Sure, I was one of the few people there who was still sober enough to stand (let alone ride an actual bicycle), but if I have to cheat my way to sub-mediocrity at an ironic World Championships by drinking far less than everybody else then so be it.

Anyway, by way of atoning for my consumerist sin of owning a nice bicycle that I will ride and enjoy for many years to come, yesterday I decided to visit the Wall Street protests. I did this with some trepidation, too, since not only have they been arresting people down there, but Police Commissioner Ray Kelly recently announced that the NYPD now has the means to shoot down a plane:

("Yeah, we got a plane guy now.")

If they can shoot a plane right out of the sky, then there's no telling what they could do to a slovenly bike blogger on a Big Dummy.*

*[Cue more lavish bike insults from Billy.]

Upon my arrival, I immediately found lots of protestors being watched by people with backpacks:

As well as at least one person wearing a retro-retro-retro-chic tricorne hat:

(Fall 2011 is all about tricorne hats and Crocs, I read it in GQ.)

And even a man who looked not completely unlike a young Burt Reynolds:

("Hey, hot stuff. Hate Wall Street? Me too.")

In search of someone who could articulate the protester's ideology and goals to me, I sought out this dog, who went on and on and on about Ben Bernanke until I politely backed away:


In fact, I almost backed into this gentleman, who I immediately identified as someone in charge:

Not only was he actually in the act of rabble-rousing, but he was also dressed kind of like Brad Pitt in "Fight Club," albeit sans shirt (and, I'm reasonably certain, sans underpants). Here he is engaged in the more mundane administrative task of approving signage:

After some deliberation, he finally signed off on the crudely-drawn skull:

Meanwhile, the police kept watch on the periphery:

I was much too frightened to get close to them, but I happen to read lips:

Indeed, there was actually toplessness:

Though fortunately I did not witness any skull-busting. However, I did witness one officer sternly admonishing this particularly outspoken girder:

Basically, he told it that it better put a shirt on or else it was going to jail.

Unsurprisingly, the local news media was also out in force, complete with TV cameras:

As well as world-weary reporters and/or producers who have not only seen it all:

But also heard it all:

Of course, protesting isn't just about voicing your opinion and making a change. It's also a great opportunity to dress in those timeless countercultural fashions. This look is what's known as "Countercultural Black Tie," and is inspired the "Yippie" style of the "Chicago Seven:"


Sadly there's only three of them and not seven:

This means they need four more people dressed like members of Creedence Clearwater Revival before they have a "Hippie Minyan."

Here is somebody who was uncertain as to whether this was a protest or a casting call for American Apparel models, and who wisely opted to dress for both:

Not everybody knows how to dress for a protest, though. Take, for example, this duder:

I'd bet my flared trousers, my pointy boots, and my white man's Afro that he's a Narc. I mean, look at those sunglasses! For shame. John Lennon is rolling in his grave, and Tupac would be too if he were actually dead.

Thankfully, the protesters aren't falling for it, as you can see from this sign that reads, "NYPD We Are Watching You Too:"

As for these people, I'm not sure if they're discussing the injustice of our financial system, or if an NYU professor simply decided to hold her "Womyn's Studies" class outside yesterday due to the fair weather:

Most likely, both scenarios are correct.

Speaking of our financial system, it could take days or even weeks of displaying cardboard signs to bring it to its knees, so you might as well get comfortable:

Yes, these protestors are in it for the long haul:

By the way, while this protest might appear similar to those of the 1960s and 1970s, these savvy 21st century revolutionaries aren't going to make the same mistakes their forbearers did. For example, back then, the revolution would not be televised. Now, not only will it be televised, but there will also be product placement:


There's also what appears to be sort of a "new media" pit:

Where slovenly bike bloggers with smartphones take pictures of other slovenly people using smartphones. There's also an old-fashioned fax machine:

At least three former messengers old enough to remember how this antiquated form of technology once stole their livelihoods had to be forcibly restrained.

Here, I ordered a Venti Iced Peppermint White Chocolate Mocha™, and was disgusted when they refused to make me one:

And here are conga drums:

Because it's just not a protest without a conga line--or without somebody wearing suspenders and carrying a clarinet:


This is a gigantic analog Twitter feed:

And this is a woman analog-Tweeting:

But make no mistake--this protest is as much about the evils of office furniture as it is about Wall Street:

When I got home, I burned my swivel chair.

To be honest, though, as a New Yorker I was strangely inspired by the sight of lots of people in varying states of needing a shower expressing themselves while loitering. It reminded me a bit of the Tompkins Square Park riot of the 1980s, which I took part in by listening to a "Squat or Rot" record in my bedroom and not doing my homework. At the very least, it's more interesting than an artisanal mayo shop.

On the way home, I headed over the Brooklyn Bridge, where I had a total Amsterdam flashback:

Once I recovered, I looked around and saw that the DOT were handing out bells to cyclists. Here's one DOT staffer explaining to a cyclist how a bell works:

And here's the cyclist pretending not to get it so she'll get closer to him:

Here's another DOT staffer explaining to somebody that the reason he's having so much trouble is that he's actually closed his pants around his stem:

That can happen if you don't dismount before urinating.

In addition to bells, the DOT was giving out pamphlets:

And they even had signs and "Pedestrian Safety" officers directing people, which was surprisingly effective and made for perhaps the least chaotic rush-hour Brooklyn Bridge crossing I've ever experienced.

I of course already had a bell, but if you want to schnorr one for yourself I believe they'll be out there again today. Then you can take it down to Wall Street and ring it from the end of the conga line.