Little Ado About Nothing

It's been a whirlwind week of kids-not-having-school-ness, capped off by an early bicycle cycling race on Sunday, which I'm proud to say I passed:

There's something to be said for riding plastic bikes in circles really fast.

I mean I'm not sure what it is, but it's definitely something.

Anyway, as much as I love the Fredding about I'm long overdue for a slow "jorts" ride on a metal bike with fat tires, so that's what I'm about to do.  (Between the Fredding and the rain it's been far too long since I've been on the Jones.)  Rest assured the publication of the Eroica California Outside story is imminent.  Also, I expect to take delivery of a new-to-me "forever bike" by week's end, and I will tell you all about it.  But not now.

In the meantime, I invite you to check out the Bike Forecast for the latest in the sublime shit-show that is New York City cycling.

Yours in Jorts,


--Tan Tenovo

New Outside Column!

I'll let you know just as soon as the Eroica California story is up, but in the meantime here's a new Outside column about my latest Fredly relapse:

And I have owned a used Saab so I know what I'm talking about.

It was pretty much exactly this one:

I'll never get any of that time or money back.

With the Thule roof rack I did have a whole Scandinavian thing going on though, and on the infrequent occasions it was working properly it had a lot going for it.

Well, okay, it had some things going for it.

And yes, I realize this is ostensibly a bicycle-themed blog, and that a fair amount of my output is on the subject of how cars are destroying humanity, but as a human born in America who likes stuff with wheels I have had my share of vehicles with internal combustion engines over the years.  In fact ,at my peak I had one (1) car, two (2) motorcycles, and one (1) two-stroke Vespa clone that my wife used to ride.  However, this was A) before I had kids; and 2) when we lived in Red Hook, Brooklyn, in the pre-Sandy, pre-Ikea, pre-Fairway days when you could do that sort of thing because there was an oversupply of free parking.  Hey, there's something to be said for coming home from a bike race in the morning and then spending the rest of the day attempting to work on your motorcycle on the sidewalk as the occasional gawker saunters by and then launches into the "You know, I used to ride..." schpiel that makes you want to hit them with a wrench.  Of course, now I'm the "I used to ride..." guy, though in my defense I know how to keep my mouth shut, and when I pass people working on their bikes I don't say anything.  (Though I realize I'm saying something now, but this is a blog whose sole purpose is to serve as the repository for my bloviating, musings, and other self-indulgences, and in that sense it's you who's sauntered over, not me.)

Anyway, there's a lot less space on the streets of Brooklyn nowadays to tinker with the crappy gas-powered conveyances you bought on Craigslist, though this guy I happened upon in Greenpoint a few weeks ago still seems to manage:

Sort of amazing that people in Brooklyn have even managed to make fixing your car in the street pretentious.

At least he's not in the bike lane.

Heavy Is The Fred That Wears The Crown

Schools here in New York City are out this week, which means I've got my parenting helmet on pretty much full time:

(By 2021 we'll all be wearing connected helmets for everyday life, just you wait and see.)

This means if you're looking for me and I'm not here, you'll be able to find me over at the Bike Forecast, where you can also get a good sense of what we're dealing with here in this town.  Specifically, you can read about our dolt of a mayor, who regularly says things that reveal the only walking he ever does is from the SUV to the entrance of whatever building he's visiting:

"You don't see cars drive on the sidewalk a whole lot." -- Bill de Blasio pic.twitter.com/Qsfel7xjnI

— Bike Snob NYC (@bikesnobnyc) April 19, 2019

The above mayoral quote was by way of explaining his continued crackdown on delivery people riding ebikes.

And speaking of crackdowns:

NYPD Seizes Bikes Without Bells, Arrests Cyclist Leading Group Ride #bikenyc #VisionZero https://t.co/CbkULD2GYl pic.twitter.com/Xs0HrCohjU

— Gothamist (@Gothamist) April 22, 2019

So basically that's the current state of affairs here in the fairest big city in America.

As for me, I entered a bicycle racing competition this past Sunday, which I'm pleased to report I passed.  In fact, not only did I pass, but I also got a Strava KOM!

This absolutely has to be a mistake, because firstly there's no freaking way I was 23 seconds faster than the next-fastest person:

Secondly, I was clinging desperately to the back of the race the whole time.  So while I suppose it's possible I happened to be moving from the very back to the middle back of the group during that segment and had the benefit of a tailwind on top of it, it's far more likely that my GPS or Strava or both are both wildly inaccurate.

Nevertheless, I'm choosing to file all of the above under "redacted" and wear the crown anyway.  It's the American way.

And finally, speaking of a lack of moral fiber, I've derided both plastic bicycles and cars extensively on this blog (as well as Strava, come to think of it)--and yet I can't speak highly enough of both my plastic bicycle and my Saris SuperClamp EX hitch rack, which I also used in tandem this past weekend:

I don't really drive my bikes places all that much, and for that reason the SuperClamp has proven more or less ideal.  Previously I'd been using a roof rack, and while it does go on and off pretty easily without tools, in practice I'd just been leaving it on there, which seemed like a waste given how infrequently I was using it--and on top of that I couldn't use it to carry a bike like my Jones without resorting to adapters.

The Saris on the other hand is overall less of a hassle to install when needed and then remove when not in use--all you do is unscrew the pin, slide the rack out of the hitch receiver, and you're done.  Plus it carries every one of my bikes, even when they're of wildly disparate sizes:

And while it's not even remotely hard to remove a front wheel and lift a sub-20lb racing bike onto the roof of a car, it's even less hard to put it on a hitch rack without removing anything at all.  And really, isn't being incredibly lazy what driving to the ride is all about?

Of course it is.

Yet at the same time it's also anti-lazy, since I can't just say "Fuck it" and leave it on there, because if I did the extra foot it adds to the length of the vehicle would insure I could never find a parking space ever again.  So I'm diligent about taking it off and returning it to the basement after every excursion.

So I guess what I'm saying is don't get a car, because that way you won't have to worry about this sort of thing in the first place.

You're welcome.

New Outside Column!

Happy Friday, and Happy Good Friday!

(Aren't they all?)

Here's a new Outside column, and it's all about how much we love parking and how much we hate children and bikes:

We really should just change the name of this country to The Land of Guns and Parking already...

The Way We Were

So this morning my phone did that weird "Black Mirror"-type thing where it tells you that you have a "memory" and then sends you down a Proustian nostalgia hole by showing you a bunch of photos it has somehow figured out are significant--and as it happens the photos that my phone chose were from a Gran Fondon't some two years back:

A look back into my archives (if it weren't for my phone and my blog I'd remember absolutely nothing) reveals that I billed this particular ride as the "BSNYC BOOMB!* Pre-Fondon't Ride," "BOOMB" being an acronym for "Beers on Old Man Brooks," because we all got beers at the Bronx Alehouse afterwards and I stuck Brooks with the bill.

I then did an extensive write-up for the Brooks Blog, which didn't appear until October, and when it did finally appear they deleted almost all the photos because, as it was explained to me, "the brand have been pushing for using high quality images within our blog articles and the website in general" and "a lot of the pics were not quite up to the new 'standard' as it were."

Of course asking me to blog for you and expecting good pictures is like buying a pet badger and thinking your couch is going to stay intact, but the fact is that there was some staff turnover at Brooks between the time I started blogging for them and the time I got that email, and I suspect the new people didn't really "get" me.  (Or, more likely, they got me perfectly well and realized my shitty sense of aesthetics was fucking up their blog.)

Also, now that I think of it, if I recall correctly a precondition of the ride was that everyone had to take pictures along the way and give them to me to use in the Brooks Blog, so I don't even think it was my shitty photography.  (Not that it matters--though I thought that was a fun element, and it's too bad Brooks didn't appreciate it.)

None of this is to say that I have any hard feelings.  Sure, they really did fuck up what had been a pretty good blog post, but you don't last as a semi-professional curator of words if you're precious about what you write.  And of course Brooks and I did continue to work together.  In fact, since they weren't into my shitty photos, they went so far as to have my next post professionally illustrated:

Still, my stock-in-trade is rambling ride narratives illustrated by shitty photography (whether by me or others), and they wanted me to blog on specific themes that they suggested, so it never really came together.

I still love Brooks and Brooks saddles, and I'm sure they still love me too, because who doesn't?

All of this is to say that the derailleur failures:

And token gravel sections:

And forced dismounts:

And fixie riders feeling justifiably pleased with themselves for braving the OCA on skinny tires:

And of course beer:

Has, until now, been lost in the mists of time.

In fact, it's all enough to make me consider curating another Fondon't, just for old time's sake.

I'll keep you posted.

New Outside Column!

My latest Outside column is all about how I'm an "avid driver:"

Seems to me that driving a car and hating cyclists instead of other drivers is like taking a crap in a burning house and complaining about which way someone hung the toilet paper.

By the way, some people like the toilet paper over, others like it under, but everybody knows the proper orientation is sideways--or else you just get a bidet, which is the Rohloff hub of posterior hygiene.

Oops, I guess I just gave away the subject of my next column.  Oh well, just pretend to be surprised.

Life Is A Slow Leak

It's all springy out!

If you're unfamiliar with spring, here's how it works: one minute it's warm and sunny, then the next it's cold and rainy.  Also, there are beautiful explosions of color as the flora blooms, which you can't enjoy due to seasonal allergies.

Spring also means the Classics are in full swing.  However, I completely missed any and all Paris-Roubaix coverage, because owing to various time constraints and the vicissitudes of life in general I basically have two choices: ride the bikes, or watch other people ride the bikes.  Therefore, I chose the former, and just as the sun began peeking over the horizon on Sunday morning I was lined up in Prospect Park, Brooklyn among a bunch of other 40+ Freds for a bicycle race.

Things started out well enough; thanks to all those sumptuous Eroica California miles I was feeling pretty good, and you can even see photographic evidence of my participation here.  (I'm the Fred in black on the Specialized.)  However, on about the 4th time up the hill I felt a softening in my front tire, and by the time we passed by the start/finish my rim was bottoming out.  So I stopped, repaired he flat, and jumped back on the next time the group came around.  Of course, being a lap down, I stayed all the way at the back of the field and out of everyone's way, even though it's not only against the series rules but also grounds for suspension:

If this offends you and you'd like to rat me out and rob you of my much-needed-for-both-mind-and-body physical activity I'm rider #108, as pictured here.  However, in my defense I'd paid $40 and come all he way from the Bronx, and so what was I supposed to do?  Ride solo laps around Prospect Park while getting passed repeatedly by three (3) separate race fields?

I don't think so.

(Also, in my defense, I never even noticed that rule until today, so I figured what I was doing was fine.  But yes, ignorance is never an excuse, even though I possess it in liberal quantities.  I've only been racing in the parks for like 20 years.  Why would I bother to learn the rules in that time?)

Speaking of Eroica California, Juliet Elliott posted a video about it:



Not only does it give you a good sense of how stunningly beautiful the route is and how perfect the weather was, but also that stunning beauty is marred for one fleeting moment by your's truley struggling up a hill:

For that, and for being a rule-breaking 40-plus Fred, I am truley sorry.