Sticker Me Nonplussed: Saving Us From Ourselves

This morning, or yesterday evening, or whenever it was, the world of professional cycling was rocked by a shocking piece of news: 2006 Tour de France winner-for-awhile Floyd Landis is retiring from the sport. Not only that, but he also boldly declared that cycling "cannot be fixed," and that even if it could "that's not my job." This deftly noncomittal shirking of any responsibility indicates that he may already have obtained a lucrative job with an airline, medical insurer, or government agency:

However, Landis will not abandon cycling altogether, though he did lay out specific guidelines for any future participation:

"I'll always ride my bike. But I'll never start on a line on a road and try to get to another line on a road faster than another guy. That's over."

Not only would this rule out any sort of road racing, but it would also implicitly prohibit him from partaking in the increasingly popular discipline of "Cat 6" commuter racing. Still, it does leave the door tantalizingly open for a return to mountain bike racing, as well as trackstanding contests, fixed-gear skidding competitions, bicycle-themed hipster party games that participants hilariously refer to as "sports" such as fixed-gear freestyling and bike polo, and of course an attempt at Sam Whittingham's 82.33mph HPV land speed record:

I should point out that "HPV" in this case stands for "Human Powered Vehicle" and not "Human Papillomavirus."

That would be one fast genital wart.

Speaking of land speed records, Whittingham's falls just shy of 88mph, which, as everybody knows, is the magical speed at which time travel becomes possible--provided of course your vehicle is equipped with a Flux capacitor. This would explain how the time-traveling t-shirt-wearing retro-Fred from the planet Tridork has been flitting about so readily, and in fact yesterday a commenter named "Chris" discovered his temporal portal:

Note that the above image affords us the opportunity to observe him clad in full tights and assuming an untenable position that suggests either a soul patch-ruffling high-speed descent, or else an extremely aero trackstand.

Clearly we are going to be seeing a lot more of this "young man riding a bicycle," and in fact here's yet another perspective from an ad for the London to Paris Cycle Challenge which was forwarded to me by a reader:

This is a highly significant find, for it's the first time we've been able to get a good look at his bike setup, complete with pre-UCI rule change TT geometry:

I'm not sure what that "mystery dingle" is, but I'm guessing it's the Flux capacitor.

But not all dingles are mysterious--sometimes they can take berry form. And without a doubt the Dingleberry of the Moment has to be Eric Ulrich, the New York City Councilman behind the latest mandatory bike registration proposal:

("I used to tell on people in elementary school.")

Ulrich wants city cyclists to pay a small fee for a mandatory registration sticker that they would affix to their bicycles. His proposal first gained citywide attention when he declared that cyclists don't carry identification because "they're in Spandex and whatnot," and that they "scare the hell out of" the senior citizens in his district, who apparently prefer the swift death that accompanies being run down by a motor vehicle. Since then, he's clarified his position by confirming beyond doubt that he has absolutely no idea what he's talking about:

I have never, never seen a cop car pull over a bicyclist for running through a red light. I wish they would, because those are the ones who are creating problems every day in the city. If these people are not obeying traffic laws, they should be held accountable...

First of all, what problems? Second of all, even when they're not in the midst of a "crackdown," police pull over cyclists and give them tickets all the time, as I'm sorry to say I know all too well. Just because you've never seen something doesn't mean it's not happening--I've never seen rats have sex either, yet somehow they manage to reproduce in staggering numbers and even ride the subway. Maybe if we institute mandatory rat registration then all the vermin will start behaving themselves.

The most irritating thing about the bike registration idea is that it's completely gratuitous, since cyclists are already totally accountable for their actions. If you break a traffic law on your bicycle in New York City, the police pull you over and give you a ticket, just like they do if you're driving a car--complete with the same schedule of fines--and if you don't pay it bad things happen to you. In fact, you're even more accountable on a bicycle than you are in a car, since if you have a driver's license and you fail to pay the ticket you got while cycling then they'll suspend your driver's license and you won't be able to drive. Meanwhile, if you run a light in your car nobody's going to try to keep you from cycling--though maybe that's where this whole bike registration thing is going, in which case all those people who get caught driving drunk aren't going to be able to ride old crappy 10-speeds with "bum bars" anymore, and are instead going to have to get around on Rollerblades.

Worst of all, mandatory citywide bicycle registration will have no impact on the worst cycling scofflaws anyway. Take the brakeless hipsters, for example. I'd wager that 80% of Williamsburg hipsters have an out-of-state driver's license with their parents' address on it, which means that when they get pulled over for running a light and the cop asks to see their bicycle registration all they have to do is show their California ID and explain that they're just in town for Monstertrack. Plus, electric bicycles are already illegal in New York state, yet that's not stopping food delivery people from riding them 20mph on the sidewalk. The whole thing evokes the whole "nametag fiasco" from "Seinfeld," and Ulrich's chief advisor must be Lloyd Braun.

All of this is enough to make you want to move to Portland--until you consider that a lawmaker in Oregon (that's the state where they have Portland) is actually trying to ban child "portaging," as I recently learned from a reader:

(Portlanders upon hearing the news: "This calls for immediate discussion!")

I'd gladly take putting a registration sticker on my bike over not having the right to carry my own child on it, and should this law pass it would undermine Portland's smugness irrevocably. Artisanal framebuilders and cycling soup vendors are all pretty good sources of self-satisfaction, but there is no more smug cycling act than throwing a bunch of towheaded children with last names for first names into a "bakfiets," and if Portlanders are unable to do that they might as well just turn their compost heaps into tire fires and start drinking Sanka instead of Stumptown. At the same time, there's no cheaper argument than invoking children's lives, which is what Mitch Greenlick is doing:

"If it's true that it's unsafe, we have an obligation to protect people. If I thought a law would save one child's life, I would step in and do it. Wouldn't you?"

Absolutely--which is why I'm sure he also wants to ban children under six from cars and airplanes. In fact, I think we should take this even further and pass a federal law that makes it illegal to let children outside until they're 21 years old, after which, until they're 35, they can only leave the house if they're accompanied by a parent and legal guardian and are wearing a helmet. Williamsburg would then look like a great big Pop Warner football game--which, thanks to the advent of hipster kickball, is pretty much what it looks like already.

So where can you go if you're willing to take a little responsibility for yourself and you don't mind playing somewhat "fast and loose" with the safety of your offspring? Well, if you look fabulous enough, maybe you can move to Copenhagen and become "Cycle Chic:"

Actually, since that Oregon law would only prohibit you from carrying your child on the bike or in a trailer, this might technically be legal.