This Wednesday Shaves Over 200 Grams Off Last Week's Model While Delivering Increased Vertical Compliance And Lateral Rigidity

It was a beautiful day yesterday:

(The view from my breakfast.)

And I had to go to the Brooklyn:

(Brooklyn, Portland, whatever, same diff.)

This was not a day to squander on a crowded subway train, or to fritter away hunched over the admonishing cockpit of a Citi Bike, generously sponsored by Citibank®, click here to browse their wide range of financial instruments and personal banking tools:

(The admonishing cockpit of a Citi Bike, generously sponsored by Citibank®, click here to browse their wide range of financial instruments and personal banking tools.)

No, it was a day to mount my own personal bicycle cycle cycling bicycle and enjoy a ride through the greatest city in America:



I've been to Cleveland, and I can assure you it's all that and less.

Wait, what was I talking about?

Oh, right.

Sorry, I always have to have a good cry after remembering Cleveland.

So yeah, I'm riding my bike to Brooklyn, and it's nice out, and the drivers are being their usual shitty selves but not doing anything extremely shitty, and so I'm in a good mood.  "How can life get any better?," I ask myself--and then I get to Central Park, where, incredibly, life does get better.  Is there anyplace more pleasant to be than Central Park on a bicycle on a sunny weekday?  Yes, of course there is.  There are like a million places.  Still, it's pretty good.  The cars are banished.  Most of the schmucks are at work.  It's just you, a few tourists, some stroller-pushers, and the odd Cervélotard in half-shorts trying to out-Strava himself.

I was savoring all of this, when suddenly storm clouds massed overhead.  The sky became black.  Somewhere, a wolf howled, or possibly a Bichon Frisé.  Then, over my shoulder, I heard the crackle of static electricity, my back hair stood on end, and then he appeared:

At first, all I saw was an apparition in black, but then my eyes began to make sense of the darkness.  The full tights.  The disc brakes.  The aero bars.  The pie plate:

And of course the teardrop aero helment, atop which was perched a crow, its midnight wings spreading from Inwood to the Battery as if to take flight:

Here's a closer look:

(Crow helment.)

I also think I heard this song playing faintly in the distance, but I can't be sure.

Anyway, I tried to follow him, but I lost him when the crow actually carried him into the air and he eventually disappeared behind the Chrysler Building.

Then I got to where I was going, leaned my bike against what was once known as a "loading dock" and is now known as a "boutique," and I ordered myself a gyro from a cart:

It was good.

However, after the encounter, something began to bother me.  Had it indeed been a crow?  Or had it been a raven?  So I watched like 45 seconds of this video:



I dunno, it all looks like the same shit to me.

Speaking of the same shit, OH MY GOD THIS IS A HUGE DEAL YOU CAN GET POWER METER PEDALS NOW!

Finally, a pair of pedals that costs less than $2,000:

The Garmin Vector system will retail for $1,699 in the US and Australia and £1,349 in the UK. For that you will get the pedals, pods and cleats but no head unit. Our UK test set weighed 428g including cleats and bolts.

Sorry, Exustar pedals that cost less than $2,000:

With eight piezoresistive strain gauges in both spindles of the Exustar (Look compatible) pedals, the Garmin Vector power meter offers a wealth of data using the ANT+ wireless protocol.

Here's how they work:

Garmin are claiming the system is "essentially two power meters in one", as both pedals measure power, with each pod attachment able to transmit data. The left operates as a slave, delivering data via ANT+ to the right, which assimilates the information and sends it to any ANT+ head unit, Garmin or otherwise.

If you're new to cycling this may sound like a bunch of technical mumbo-jumbo, so allow me to explain it to you:  You suck.  Your left pedal senses that you suck, and then it tells your right pedal that you suck, and then together they calculate the exact level of your suckitude and in turn inform you that you suck via the suckage-monitoring device of your choice:

So why do you need to know that you suck?  Well, by carefully monitoring how badly you suck, you can suck more effectively in amateur bike races against other shitty bike riders.  Also, if it bothers you that you're competing against shitty bike riders whose bikes cost $2,000 more than yours did, you can simply bolt on these pedals instead of buying a new bicycle in order to attain Fredness parity.

Still, I'm not buying these until they come out with a gravel version.  At only $4,000 each (you'll need two, of course), the gravel-specific power pedal system will feature an integrated pebble analysis tool that compensates for loss of wattage due to gravel surface dissipation, as well as gravel deflector to shield the unit from projectiles--though of course you'll need to input the GPI (or "gravel per inch") of the surface you're riding on, and you'll also have to tether it to your tire pressure app in order to get a truly accurate readout.

But while we may be able to measure precisely how badly we suck, apparently we still don't know how bicycles work in the first place, as a reader informs me:

The publication plunged bicycle dynamics back into chaos. It turns out that taking into account the angles of the headset and the forks, the distribution of weight and the handlebar turn, the gyroscopic effects are not enough to keep a bike upright after all. What does? We simply don’t know. Forget mysterious dark matter and the inexplicable accelerating expansion of the universe; the bicycle represents a far more embarrassing hole in the accomplishments of physics.

So basically, we're being kept upright by mysterious forces.

All the more reason you need a dedicated gravel bike.