A Comprehensive Article About How To Remove And Install Your Valve Caps

Good morning!

Many years ago, where my mansion now stands, there were streams that ran through the once verdant hills and dales.  These streams have long since been buried by the civil engineers, yet they still run, and indeed when it is quiet I can hear one of them trickling along beneath the pavement and underneath my manse.  The stream, I have begun to suspect, is teeming with river sprites, and I think they may be visiting me in my sleep, because I have lots of weird dreams about naked canoeing, and when I wake up my bed is full of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups wrappers.

I'll keep you posted.

Speaking of hallucinations, this is not one:

 
The reader who spotted this did so at the so-called "Orchard Cross at Applecrest Farm," and you'll be pleased to know that representatives of PETA were waiting at the finish line, where they lovingly tranquilized the great beast with an organic sedative, loaded it into a giant crate, and returned it to its natural habitat.

By the way, the neck on that giraffe isn't UCI legal, as the rule book clearly states that the neck of an ungulate may be no longer than 1.8 meters.

Meanwhile, even stranger than river sprites and cyclocrossing giraffes was Assos's announcement that they were releasing a $500 bib short which featured a sort of "cock pouch" called the "KuKu Penthouse" which allows you to hang your junk out in the wind while you ride:

Many speculated that the proprietary Assos "dick bag" was a practical joke, but indeed it is all too real, and a reader has actually forwarded me video of someone from the company presenting the "schlong satchel" with a straight face:

  

Not only that, but he's flanked by internationally famous supermodel Assos Bib Shorts Guy:

(Yin Fred)

Arch-nemesis of the preternaturally vexed Nonplussed Bib Shorts Guy from Wikipedia:

(Yang Fred)

Actually, I'm not sure the guy in the video is the same guy from the Assos website, but it really doesn't matter, for once you've been spraypainted orange and donned the Bono glasses the Curse of the Flying Doucheman passes to you until you manage to foist it onto someone else.

In other news, they say that into each life some rain must fall, and so it goes in Portland, where the entire community has been rent asunder by the theft of a clown bike:

Last Thursday (October 24th), Portlander Aaron Brown tweeted his interaction with the suspected thief: "sketch dude just tried to sell me this freak bike for $20. When I asked him about it, he freaked + jumped on the bus." Brown snapped a photo of the guy just before he climbed onto the #4 bus headed east on SE Division at 35th. That tweet and the bike in the photo caught the eye of Matthew Rogers, who recognized the bike from a photo I took that was featured here on the front page earlier this month.

And now I'd like to introduce a new feature here on this blog called "Great Warnings of History:"

April 18th, 1775: Paul Revere rides to Lexington shouting, "The British are coming, the British are coming!"

December 4th, 1941: A memo from the Office of Naval Intelligence warns, "In anticipation of possible open conflict with this country, Japan is vigorously utilizing every available agency to secure military, naval and commercial information, paying particular attention to the West Coast, the Panama Canal and the Territory of Hawaii."

October 24th, 2013: Portlander Aaron Brown tweets, "Sketch dude just tried to sell me this freak bike for $20."

By the way, they really have their own language out there, because I had to read "sketch dude just tried to sell me this freak bike" about five times before I knew what it meant.  I mean, come on.  "Sketch dude?"  Who is that, superhero Portrait Man's sidekick?

I think comic books are stupid, but I would read the fuck out of one called The Adventures of Portrait Man.

Anyway, the people of Portland, using the same detective skills that once led them to declare some guy a NARC because he was Asian, quickly deduced that the "freak bike" in question had once appeared in a photo of some guy called Dingo Dizmal, a.k.a. Dingo the Clown:

In that photo, the same bike that appears in the photo with the alleged thief is being ridden by well-known local entertainer Dingo Dizmal (a.k.a. Dingo the Clown)...

Holy crap!  Check out the Dionysian fruit pants on Dingo!  Is that guy a satyr?

Nope.  But he is friends with the bike's owner, Olive Rootbeer, with whom he frightens the shit out of entertains children at parties:

As it turns out, the bike belongs to Dingo's friend and partner Olive Rootbeer (both of whom appear in the latest Streetfilm video about Portland's 100th bike corral). Dingo and Olive make their living by telling stories to children's groups and going balloons at events like Sunday Parkways (here they are in action in 2011).

Sorry, but that is fucking horrifying.  The only reason the kid isn't screaming is that she hasn't turned around yet.  What is "going balloons?" anyway?  There is no way I'd scare the shit out of my kid by having Dingo and Olive Rootbeer "going balloons" at his next party.  I'll just stick with paying Banksy $1.5 million to do a kid-friendly art installation for us again, like we did last year:

(Gothamist)

The other kids all cried, but mine deemed it "a hilarious yet thought-provoking comment on corporate America."

Anyway, hopefully Fruit Pants and Olive Garden get their freak bike back so they can get back to fucking with kids' heads.

Lastly, speaking of the Dionysian, here's an old Cycles Gladiator ad sent to me by another reader:

Baby got Bacchus.