Hand-Folding: It's Not Just For Laundry Anymore

When you think of folding bikes, no doubt you think of tiny-wheeled circus affairs straddled by people in blazers and DayGlo pant cuff retainers.  What you probably don't think of is actual folding, like what you do with your underpants after you wash them.  (Assuming you wear underpants, and assuming you wash them.)  However, you will soon--at least if Ronin Bicycle Works gets its way:

Finally, it's a frame made out of folded sheet metal, and the inventors only want $100,000 to mass-produce a bicycle that employs the same groundbreaking technology used to make origami and marijuana cigarettes:



This folded bicycle frame is held together by "rivets and glue," and it boasts the elegance and clean lines of a light switch box--which I'm fairly sure is what they used for the headtubebox:

You can keep your fancy tubing and your hand-carved lugs--give me a bike that's made from baking sheets and shelf brackets:

Every handmade bicycle tells the story of its builder, and often merely looking at one tells you everything you need to know about what he or she was thinking at the time.  This bike is no exception, and I'm fairly certain that what the builder was thinking here was, "I can't believe they let me work in the prison metal shop.  Should I build something to bust out of here, or should I build a bike?  Ah, fuck it, I'll build a bike."

But that doesn't mean the Ronin bike doesn't boast meticulous attention to detail.  For example, the underside of the downtubesheet is creased for uncomfortable "portaging:"

Though they really should have equipped it with a more appropriate saddle:

So help these guys reach their goal, and if you give enough then you too could own a bike with all the elegance of one of those tin foil leftover-"portaging" swans they give you at restaurants:

Because really, it's just an uglier and less practical version of a bike share bike:

The above image, by the way, is from the NYC Bike Share website, and I can't wait until the program launches this summer.  Here's another image of a woman pretending to use the bike share system at the intersection of Atlantic and Flatbush Avenues, which is probably the least bike-friendly intersection in all of Brooklyn:

In all sincerity though I am an avid bike share enthusiast--so much so that I'm considering going to work for them:

I particularly like the sound of the "Ambassador" position, though apart from having "prior exposure to the local market" I meet none of the qualifications:

All Candidates Must Have:


• A fun and upbeat personality that reflects the NYC Bicycle Share brand and spirit
• Experience interacting with very large groups of consumers ranging from kids to adults
• Knowledge of Bicycling in NYC and prior exposure to the local market
• Ability to take direction well
• Excellent attention to detail, organization and communication skills


My personality is dour and morose, I do my very best to avoid large groups of consumers, I refuse to take direction, and I'm so disorganized I don't even fold my underwear.  Still, that's not going to stop me from submitting my résumé:

I admit I padded it a bit, but I really do like soup.

Speaking of innovation and cycling, a reader informs me that a Tucson man has invented an arm-and-leg-powered recumbent:

I strongly recommend watching the video that accompanies the story above, but I'm not embedding it because it seems to be one of those videos that plays automatically when the page loads, and the last thing you want is to get caught watching recumbent videos at work.  In fact, getting caught watching recumbent videos is pretty much the only time you'd actually toggle over to a porn site in order to save face, so follow the link at your own risk.  Or, if you're too much of a "woosie," here's the gist of it:

"If you're a cyclist, you know that a long ride will leave your leg muscles feeling fatigued. But have you ever wished you could get an arm workout at the same time? One local rider had a similar thought, and has now patented his arm and leg powered recumbent bike."


Here's what he wound up with:

I can think of another way to engage your arms in a repetitive back-and-forth motion while riding a recumbent that doesn't require a proprietary bike.  Instead, just get a Shake Weight and use it while you ride:



Or, even simpler, simply omit the Shake Weight and ride around while "foffing off."  Actually, it's a great way to squeeze in an arm workout at any time of day--even when you're just sitting around on the couch.

Meanwhile, in other suggestive recumbent innovation news, another reader has just alerted me to the revolutionary "Ball 'Bent:"

I bet it offers a smooth ride, but unfortunately it's a total ripoff of those Uniball Unicycles:

At the very least he could have equipped it with a folded metal frame.

Must-Haves: 'Bents and Button-Shifting

Every so often, a reader raises a point in the comments that I feel warrants further discussion. After all, we are cyclists, and unlike users of other forms of transportation we are constantly looking inward in order to better understand ourselves. This is because, unlike, say, the bus passenger or the roller-skier, we know that the unexamined life is not worth living. Also, we're profoundly smug and self-absorbed, and we all operate under the delusion that what we're doing is special. There's a fine line between introspection and masturbation, and we cross it with every pedal stroke.

Anyway, the comment I felt warranted further discussion was this one:

Anonymous said...

why is the cycling community so resistant to recumbent frames? They’ve been around for almost 100 years now! Safer (you can put STRONG brakes on them w/o risking headers); faster (one won Paris-Brest-Paris in 1933, causing them to be outlawed for “bicycle” racing!); much more comfortable (no penis paralysis, neck strain, etc.). I’d love to have some of the innovations on this wish list added to my Easy Racers Gold Rush Replica, on which I’ve been putting thousands of miles a year on for some time now.

November 7, 2011 10:19 PM

First of all, I'd like to preface this by saying that I for one have nothing whatsoever against recumbents and that I embrace recumbent riders as I do all of my fellow cyclists. (And by "embrace" I mean I air-hug them and then retreat to the restroom where I sanitize myself compulsively with Purell hand sanitizer and Action Wipes.) Moreover, I feel strongly that people should ride in whatever orientation they so choose, be it horizontally, vertically, or in some kind of gravity-defying gyroscoping manner. Do I find recumbents frightening? Sure I do. Is it because as they approach it looks like the rider may kick me in the face? It is. Does this discrimination make me a bad cyclist? It does not--being really slow and falling down a lot is what makes me a bad cyclist. Being afraid of recumbents just makes me a bad person, and there's a difference.

What I do object to, though, is when recumbent riders (or indeed any type of riders) try to proselytize. I don't mean the "Try it, you may like it" kind; I mean the "How dare you fools not adopt my inherently superior machine?" kind.

For this reason, there is much to address in this comment, but I might as well start with the supposed issue of "penis paralysis." Of course, as we all know, the supposed "impotency epidemic" among upright cyclists is a massive conspiracy engineered by the automotive industry (in order to discourage bicycle commuting) and by the bicycle saddle industry (in order to sell so-called "anatomic" saddles with weird shapes and creepy cutouts). Sure, it's possible to set up your bike in such a way that it will cause "penis paralysis," but it's also possible to set up your office chair this way too, and I don't hear anybody saying that we should all be working in La-Z-Boys.

Most importantly, what about the great many cyclists who don't even have penises in the first place? That's right, mister recumbent apologist, I'm talking about people with vaginas--you know, those things that look like anatomical saddle cut-outs. What's the matter, women can't ride bikes? I would then put it to you that you are a sexist, or what at Bard they might call a "Euro-phallocentric womyn-hating genderizationalist." Now sit in the corner and stare at a Georgia O'Keefe painting until you've learned something.

As far as the thing about a recumbent winning Paris-Brest-Paris in 1933 and then being outlawed, this would appear to allude to "The Recumbent's Darkest Day," which is when recumbents were banned from UCI racing. I'm not sure why this applies, since if your goal is to ride the fastest form of two-wheel transit you might as well ride a motorcycle. Moreover, the upright bikes most of us ride to work aren't UCI legal either anyway. And as for being banned for their "superiority" for racing, then how come it's more than 70 years later and recumbent riders still haven't banded together and created a race more compelling and dramatic than the Tour de France? It wouldn't even be all that hard--with all the doping scandals and allegations of UCI corruption, professional cycling is pretty much just propped up on toothpicks at this point anyway. Mainstream approval and legitimacy is there for the taking, and griping about a ban this old is like having an oblong ball and, instead of playing football, just complaining that they won't let you play baseball with it.

But really, there's one simple reason for the cycling world's "resistance" (as the commenter calls it) to the recumbent, and it is perfectly expressed in this film about revered San Francisco messenger Dogpaw, which I have featured on this blog before and which is undoubtedly the greatest messenger-themed documentary of all time as well as a poignant homage to the upright bicycle:

You see, upright bicycles are much easier to carry up steps:

(Yes, that's an upright bicycle hidden in Dogpaw's hair.)

And that's pretty much it. See, simple? The upright position and lofty vantage point is just a bonus:

As is the conduciveness to giving and receiving "high fives:"

So let us all, recumbent, non-recumbent, and even people who ride both (these people are called "bi-cumbent") ride together in mutual respect for our chosen orientation, and even give each other high-fives as conditions warrant--though I suppose an upright rider technically has to "low-five" a recumbent rider.

Speaking of technology, did you know that Campagnolo are still in business? Well, they are. Not only that, but they've finally introduced their own electronic groupset:

(Isn't that cute? Electronic shifting, just like Shimano.)

The Campagnolo system is called "EPS," which stands for "Electronic Power Shift." It was originally called "Electronic Precision Power Shift," but they had to omit the second "P" for two reasons: 1) It wasn't very precise; and 2) they received a cease-and-desist letter from actor Omar Epps:

("Not on my Rolex watch, Campy.")

Of course, the big difference between Shimano and Campagnolo is in their "corporate culture." At Shimano they use "research and development," whereas at Campagnolo they use the "freak occurrence" method:

Perhaps the most revelatory: In 2005 the group was ready to be put into production but a freak occurrence stopped everything. Cars with team bikes were driving home from the Giro d'Italia and encountered a powerful rainstorm. The combination of the sheer volume of water and the 150kph speed the cars were traveling at was enough to drive water into the electronics. The systems quit. And even though the systems began working again a day or so later, Campy decided it needed to rework the sealing.

So basically, the only thing that kept Campagnolo from trying to sell this crap to you in 2005 was a rainstorm. Wow. You'd think they might have accounted for the fact that it might get wet beforehand. Sure, bikes never get wet, but did it not even occur to anybody at any point to give it a little spritz before rolling it out? This is not expensive testing we're talking about--all you need is a garden hose and an adjustable nozzle. We're talking like $40 bucks at the Home Depot, tops. And how bad were these seals that it took them another six years to make them work?

Still, it was only a matter of time, since as soon as people touch electronic shifting they simply must have it:

The market is still dominated by mechanical shifting, but people have heard of electronic shifting. They may have touched it, or one of their buddies has it. Maybe they know it took all three spots on the Tour de France podium this year.

Some people may find Tour de France results impressive, but not me. I mean, Schleck genitals took two of three spots on the Tour de France podium this year, and a lot of people may have touched that too, but it doesn't mean I want it on my bike:

(No, thanks.)

Of course, if you're a Campagnolo fan, you'll want to know that this group retains their trademark Italian "passion" and "soul," and inasmuch as both of these words are cycling euphemisms for "quirky" it certainly does. For instance, instead of just popping the battery out and putting it on a charger, you actually have to wheel the the whole bike to an outlet:

The battery is not removable from the bike: To charge the system, you must run a lead to the bicycle.

Brilliant. Now you'll either have to store your bike near an outlet or else run extension cords all over your house. But at least there's a snazzy "EPS Interface:"

A quick push of one of the mode buttons and the EPS Interface (which can be attached to the stem, or to the brake housing) indicates battery charge with a green/yellow/red system. When 6% charge remains, there is an additional acoustic warning.

Presumably, it's Campagnolo's answer to "Siri:"

("My pocket watch says it's time for a charge.")

The cease-and-desist letter for that feature is still pending.

Modern-Day Apostles: Spreading the Word

Are you an American, or just someone who wishes you were an American? Do you love freedom, and hamburgers, and dungarees, and sickening excess, and access to anything you want provided you're willing to assume debt beyond your wildest dreams? Well, if so you might be experiencing anxiety now, since the economy is currently shakier than a cyclocross bike with a bad case of fork chatter:

("I am sooo fucked.")

Yes, these are scary times. Uncertain times. The kind of times that compel you to sob in the shower while fully clothed. So what's the solution? What do we do? Frankly, I don't know. I'm more than willing to abandon the social construct of "money" and form a new society based on trust and sharing and the bartering of artisanal handicrafts, but that doesn't work unless everybody else is willing too. So, until that day when we all go, "OK, so no more money starting...now!," all we can do is keep both hands on the bars and try not to crash. Also, we can buoy our spirits by remembering happier times; more bountiful times; the sort of times when some quasi-intellectuals could get a bunch of money to travel around the country playing a handlebar flute:

(Two-man handlebar flutes are the new "rusty trombones.")

So when was this idyllic period? Well, apparently it was the golden era of prosperity known as "mid-June:"


Yes, apparently back in mid-June Americans were so flush with cash that they could underwrite road trips on which people traveled around blowing on bike parts in order to "spread the gospel of the bicycle"--albeit these travels were undertaken by car:



But lest you dismiss this as yet another "All You Strangers Fund My Self-Indulgence" scheme, you should know that the artists have more than paid their dues. In fact, one of them has a degree in talking clouds:

The Kjalvötn script was invented by Bob as an ancillary to his senior thesis - which was about clouds (yes, as in weather) speaking Old Norse. I bet you are curious. I bet you want something sealed with sealing wax.

This should serve to silence anybody whose ever said that studying a subject like Old Norse was a waste of time in that the language has no practical applications in modern-day America. Uh, yeah, it does--making up conversations between clouds. Like, what else would a cloud speak? French!?! And could anything be a better metaphor for liberal arts graduates than clouds that speak Old Norse? They're both white, fluffy, and insubstantial, and they communicate in a manner that's completely incomprehensible to the rest of the world. If that's what he was in fact going for, I hope he got an A+. (Or, if he went to one of those schools that uses an alternative grading system, I hope he got a "delighted chipmunk" or whatever the A+ equivalent would be. I understand some of these schools are using spirit animals as grades now.)

But such is the complex interplay between culture and the economy. In times of great wealth an artist can find patrons, and the culture too grows rich with creativity, ideas, and entertainment. But in times of great poverty we cinch our purse strings like a schlub tightening his sweatpants, and our culture becomes stagnant and reactionary. We seem to be entering into just such a period now--and it's not limited to Canada South, either. As we saw yesterday, up in Canada Proper, there's a growing anti-pennyfarthing movement, and a reader in Germany now tells me that p-fars are not welcome there either:

I don't understand German, but I'm pretty sure that says that pennyfarthing riders are not allowed to get rad. This is a backwards attitude--almost as backwards as the fork on this in-store display spotted by a reader in an Austin, TX wine shop:

That bike must handle like a p-far.

But there are glimmers of hope and forward-mindedness. Sure, it's considerably tougher to fund your handlebar flute tour now, but if your message is sustainability and cost-savings you can still find funding for your "epic" bicycle tour--especially if you want to "Bicycle Down the West Coast, Meet Women, Talk about Menstrual Cups, and Live on $4 a Day:"

A reader brought this to my attention, and I can't help wondering how many lascivious and wanderlust-smitten "duders" must have been taken in by the ride description. "Bicycle down the west coast? Yes! Meet women? Yes!!! Talk about...menstrual cups? Whoa." Personally though I applaud these menstrual cup apostles for promoting something they believe in, and when you consider that a single menstrual cup costs $35 and will last you for ten years then you begin to understand why they're the Chris King headset of feminine hygiene. Plus, I can't think of a better title for a folk song than "Talkin' 'Bout Menstrual Cups."

In fact, I may very well take to the road and preach the menstrual cup gospel myself, and if I did I'd almost certainly do so in this elegant recumbent that was forwarded to me by a reader:

Yes, they sure knew how to build recumbents in those days:

("Hey, wanna talk about menstrual cups?")

You can even play the handlebar flute together while you ride.

Investment Opportunities: All You Haters Fund My Venture

Here in the United States of America (also known as Canada's gratuitous undercoating), today is Presidents Day. On this day, many Americans are free not to attend work so that we may instead take advantage of big, big savings on designer clothing, flat-screen TVs, new automobiles (make sure you get that undercoating!), and other costly items we might otherwise have had the sense to forego had we simply headed into the office. Most importantly, though, we celebrate the lives, work, and of course hair of Presidents Andrew Jackson, Martin Van Buren, and William Henry Harrison:

The administrations of these three Presidents spanned the years 1829 to 1841, a period which historians universally agree is the "Golden Age of Presidential Hair." From Jackson's powerful pompadour, to Van Buren's inspiring sideburn aurora, to Harrison's pointy forelock that prefigured the coiffure of Glenn Danzig by something like 140 years, this was an exciting time during which Presidents still understood the sense of authority that can only be conveyed by truly "epic" hair. Sadly, this Golden Age ended with the untimely death of President Harrison on his 32nd day in office due to complications from tetanus (Harrison insisted on being shaved by a rusty razor for purposes of "street cred"), and while there have since been some flashes of Presidential barbatorial brilliance (Abraham Lincoln's "chin strap," Grover Cleveland's walrus-like lip curtain) there has also never been a dynasty to rival the one we celebrate today.

Meanwhile, if you've accessed the Internet at any point this weekend, you may know that the big news in cyclesport is that some track racer guy got a gigantic splinter in his leg, and while I have been known to post affronts to good taste such as this I draw the line at medical "grodiness" and am therefore posting a censored version of the photo using images that convey the nature of his injuries without actually depicting them:

If you'd like to see the original, it is here, though even when obscured by a pizza pie and a body modification enthusiast who will never, ever hold a job you can plainly see that he lies supine like Jesus on the cross just before the Romans hoisted him into a vertical position. (And the Jews did "golf clap," according to the Gospel of Mel Gibson.) The real tragedy of this injury is that all the hipsters who pretend to like track racing are already agog at how "badass" it is, and you can expect them to start inserting slivers of wood through their own calves as the new must-have accessory to complement their "shants:"

"Oh, this old thing? Yeah, it's been there for years, never bothered to take it out."

Speaking of must-have accessories, on Friday I mentioned this seatpost clamp that is the latest in a seemingly endless procession of bicycle components and accessories that can also open beer:

Since them, I've been more vexed than perhaps it's reasonable to be by a small piece of aluminum--mostly because you'd think that if someone were to integrate a little bottle top-popping dingle into a seatpost clamp, they might at least orient it in such a way that you don't have to hold the bottle sideways and spill half your beer in order to use it:

I'd maybe possibly perhaps consider accepting an argument that this seatpost clamp is designed to use while the bicycle is lying down, except for the fact that the promotional video contains shot after shot of the opener being used with the bicycle standing up as beer spills everywhere:

This is the beer-opening equivalent of an iPhone banking "app" that costs you $35 every time you log into your account.

By the way, this brilliantly-executed seatpost clamp comes in two versions. The first one is the "Nectar:"

According to the copy, this is for people who like PBR--a brand of beer most commonly consumed out of a can.

The second version is the "Elixir:"

This one's for the "tweaker"--which, as I always understood it, is a person who is addicted to methamphetamine.

At this point you're probably saying, "So what? This is Canada's gratuitous undercarriage coating, the land of the gratuitous undercarriage coating. Sure, it's nearly impossible to screw up a bottle opener, and somehow these people have succeeded, but if some designers want to manufacture a little anodized dingle with a poorly-placed dongle on it then that's their Gid-goven right." Of course, I couldn't agree more--except that's not what's going on here. Actually, the dongle-curators want us to give them $15,000 before they'll make us a poorly-designed bottle opener:
Sadly, they're a good $14,000 short, and I'd offer them a bridge loan myself if my money wasn't all tied up in a brake lever-slash-pizza cutter that uses a pinball instead of a circular blade. Still, I'm confident some sort of "angel investor" will step in--perhaps a mystery benefactor who has a vested interest in lots of people riding around on bicycles with sideways bottle openers on them, like an alcoholic recumbent rider:

As you can see from this recumbent rider's-eye view (or, more accurately, recumbent rider's-beard view), a world filled with horizontal seatpost clamp bottle openers would mean that, for the 'bent rider, refreshment would always be just an arm's length away. This in turn would provide yet another source of recumbent rider smugness:

Of course a recumbent commute like this hinges on having access to an uninterrupted and completely car-free bike lane. I'd like to see him try that commute in New York City during rush hour.

Speaking of spurious projects needing funding, a reader recently alerted me to a film called "First Winter," in which a bunch of Brooklyn hipsters traipse around in the country with Golden Age of Presidential Hair-caliber beards and artisanal blunderbusses to the strains of lugubrious accordion music:


They also stare pensively into the horizon:


Apparently, "First Winter" is sort of a "minimalist hipster survival movie," which I'm guessing will be the next hot new "indie" genre:

***
The Premise:

In December 2012, a massive collapse of infrastructure leaves a group of Brooklyn yogis snowed-in at a country farmhouse without electricity, cell phone reception, or running water. With nothing to rely on but their wits, a couple of old books, and each other, they must survive the first winter off the grid.

***
The structural skeleton of First Winter is the procedural aspects of survival: chopping firewood, melting snow for water, hunting for food, etc; but the movie at core is really a spiritual exploration. As the distractions of modern of life are replaced by the routine simplicity of living off the land, the friends gradually evolve out of their neurotic fixations into a more quiet, contemplative state of being (of course, not all of them make it).

Obviously, this film is a metaphor for the hipster's first year in Williamsburg, the Mission District, or Portland after graduating from Bard, Sarah Lawrence, or Wesleyan, and the journey towards independence and self-sufficiency which they all undertake but ultimately never achieve. Also, there's ironic sledding--during which, I assume, somebody dies:

As for the technique being employed by the filmmakers:

The aesthetic approach is rigorously formalist; mirroring the inner journey of the characters, the film gradually evolves from frenetic jumpy handheld close up camera work at the beginning to slower, wider, more composed shots towards as the film progresses.

In other words, as the filmmakers continue to shoot the film they gradually figure out how their equipment is supposed to work.

In any case, I predict "First Winter" will be a huge success. Not only is this a perfect product placement opportunity for companies like Best Made Co. and Base Camp X, but the filmmakers have already exceeded their financial goals. In fact, they've received nearly enough backing to start their own bottle-opening seatpost clamp business:
That's gotta sting the "Swarm" guys.

Lastly, another reader has forwarded me what he claims is the "Greatest Craig's List Post Ever," and while this is debatable there's no doubt it's noteworthy:

old bike - $500 (hyattsville)
Date: 2011-02-17, 1:41PM EST

This is mankind's crowning technological achievement. If you are not someone who can appreciate a 35 pound steel beach cruiser with carbon tubular race wheels on it, don't waste my time. You are not cool enough to even thinking about riding this bike.

Please note that no brakes are provided. All braking power is derived from the user dragging a foot on the ground, or in an emergency, putting an old Silca frame pump into the spokes of the moving front wheel. Nor are the tubulars glued.

If you play bike polo, leave me alone. This bike shits out bike polo players on the daily.

Here is a list of places to ride this bike to: a liquor store, a riot, a hockey game.

A good bike lasts 3-5 years, EVIL NEVA DIES.


Not bad I guess, but it needs more bottle openers.

Strange Days: What Might Have Been

Call me Ishmael. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, and as Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. I enjoy the sleek locomotion of my fixed-gear like I enjoy a smooth, frictionless fuck, but if you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.

Having undoubtedly captured your attention with that artisanal steel-jaw leghold trap of an opening paragraph (inhumane traps are certain to replace axes as the must-have "North American backwoods revival" accessory for 2011), you now have some understanding of how I felt when I read the following gripping email this morning:

I'm writing this with tears in my eyes,my family and I came down here
to Scotland,United Kindom for a short vacation unfortunately we were
mugged at the park of the hotel where we stayed,all cash,credit card
and cell were stolen off us but luckily for us we still have our
passports with us.

We've been to the embassy and the Police here but they're not helping
issues at all and our flight leaves in less than hours from now but
having problems settling the hotel bills and the hotel manager won't
let us leave until we settle the bills,I'm freaked out at the moment.

A less considerate and/or more savvy blogger might have dismissed this as the overture to a scam, but I never shirk my responsibilities when it comes to helping others--even if they're in a faraway land of manskirt-wearing haggis eaters. So, keeping my composure, I replied as follows:

Dear Freaked Out At the Moment,

I'm very sorry to hear about your predicament. I know you're very afraid, but never fear. Help is on the way, for I have summoned the World's Most Agile Scotsman!

Sincerely,

--BSNYC/RTMS

PS: Tell the hotel manager to keep his skirt on.

PPS: You came down to Scotland? Where are you from, the North Pole?

Moments later, Danny MacAskill jumped out of a helicopter on his bike and disarmed and incapacitated the muggers in a blindingly fast series of wheelies, endos, tailwhips, bunny-hops, and other jumpy-spinny-type moves:

It was a lot like this:



Except it was much more graceful, and with bagpipes. I only wish I had been there to see it--and I would have, if only I wasn't such a coward. Anyway, I'm pleased to announce that Freaked Out At The Moment and family did manage to catch their flight--though it turns out they're not only Internet scam artists but also terrorists, so it looks like the World's Most Agile Scotsman is going to have to pull off one of his signature 39,000 foot bunny-hops and give that exploding printer cartridge the old backwheel "Whap!" treatment.

Meanwhile, closer to (my) home, Staten Island is being stripped of bike lanes faster than the World's Most Agile Scotsman divests a mugger of his revolver:

Sure, I know what you're thinking: "Whatever, it's only Staten Island. That will never happen here on the planet Earth." Won't it, though? Remember that "First they came..." poem:

They came first for the "hipsters" in Williamsburg,

and I didn't speak up because I didn't have a muffin top.

Then they came for the smug-mongers of Park Slope,

and I didn't speak up because I wasn't the King of Park Slope.

Then they came for the Lone Wolves of Staten Island,

and I didn't speak up because I didn't ride a Huffy with unhooked V-brakes and an enormous pie plate, and because who even goes to Staten Island anyway?

Then I just said "Fuck it," sold my "fixie" on Craigslist, and moved to Portland.

Soon, however, there will be nobody left to complain when the rest of the bike lanes get the "Whap!"

Incidentally, I should point out that "Whap!" is an innocent reference to the comic book hitting sound, and not a perverse reference to the now-defunct periodical Women Who Administer Punishment:

Though as cyclists, it's hard not to feel as though we're masochists without "a safe word." In fact, you don't even need to get on a bike to feel that way--or even leave the sidewalk, for that matter--since here in New York with simply leaving your house makes you fair game:

Yes, if you've ever longed to run somebody down in your car you'll be pleased to know that here in New York City "brake failure" and other similarly cartoonish mechanical explanations are a sufficient excuse. I once watched a car service driver speed through an intersection in reverse, pass within two feet of me, and finally came to a stop after destroying two parked cars. Naturally I stuck around to watch the aftermath, and I'm pleased to report that the officer accepted his explanation of a sticky accelerator pedal and let him go without so much as a summons. So if you have any arch-nemeses, adversaries, "frenemies," rich relatives who have already written you into their wills, or you simply see someone walking down the street and you don't like their pants, feel free to run them down. Then, when the police come, just tell them you had a sticky accelerator or your brakes didn't work or your satellite radio lost its signal and you were busy trying to fix it. It's the perfect crime--and if your car is made by Toyota (as the above-referenced Lexus is), it's positively iron-clad.

Clearly then, the way to solve the problem of dangerous driving is the same way you solve any municipal problem, and that's by coming at it head-on with a rap PSA sure to galvanize the youth into action:

New Rap, "Drive Safe New York," Targets Speeding on City Streets
November 17, 2010

Hip hop artist and physician, Dr. John Clarke, has composed a rap to promote slower automobile speeds in NYC and will present his recording Friday, at a traffic safety conference at NYU hosted by Transportation Alternatives and NYU's Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service. Clarke produced an award-winning rap about the H1N1 Flu for the U.S. Department of Health & Humans Services last year and has written other rhyming public health messages, including songs aimed at stopping HIV and watching "the gap" on commuter rail platforms.

While hip hop artist and physician Dr. John Clarke doesn't address the problem of speeding on city sidewalks, at least this is a start. By the way, if you can't wait until tomorrow and want to hear the "leak," you can do so here. I particularly enjoy the way Dr. Clarke manages to "flow" while citing statistics, much in the way that the Wu Tang Clan incorporated that Five Percenter math into their songs. It's also worth noting that Dr. Clarke's "Drive Safe New York" has a decidedly harder edge than his previous song, "Gap Rap," which dealt with teaching young people how to enter and exit Long Island Railroad trains safely:

At the time, critics were hard on Dr. Clarke--unfairly so, in my opinion--for failing to either incorporate or come up with suitable rhymes for stations such as "Speonk," "Patchogue," and "Ronkonkoma." Also, subsequent to "Gap Rap," the LIRR was subject to problems with its antiquated switching system that virtually crippled the nation's largest commuter rail and resulted in considerable fan backlash. Still, I think "Gap Rap" is a solid if not seminal work in the rap PSA genre, though to this day nothing rivals the TARC Bike Rack Rap for sheer danceability:



In any case, despite the best efforts of well-meaning people like Dr. Clarke, I think our worst days may be ahead of us--unlike recumbent riders, whose darkest day is well behind them. I was sifting through the comments on that New York Times recumbent article I mentioned on Monday when I found this:

April 1, 1934. Recumbents Banned from all UCI Sanctioned Racing:
Recumbents' Darkest Day.

The history of the recumbent bicycle is filled with intrigue. Only a few people today realize that the current surge in interest and ownership of recumbents is a "renaissance" of what occurred at the end of the previous century and in the early years of this one. The banning of recumbents from bicycle racing in 1934 had the effect of putting the recumbent bicycle design in the closet for fifty years, until it was re-discovered there primarily by MIT professor David Gordon Wilson and his students. To him, I and thousands of other laid-back cyclists will be eternally grateful.

Based on what I could gather from the article and from the comments, recumbent apologists apparently believe that, had it not been for that dark day on which the UCI banned them from competition, recumbents would have gone on to become the predominant form of racing bicycle. This in turn would mean that, today, recumbent riders would in fact be recognized as the "norm" instead of being simultaneously gawked at and feared as the freaks that they are. Presumably then, all recumbent riders are now tortured by this future that should have come to pass but never did, which to me lends them a completely new dimension and makes them all the more interesting, layered, and freakish. Indeed, Cormac McCarthy himself could not have "curated" a more complex and nuanced character than the recumbent rider. They even have their own mythology, centered around a tragic hero, "Francis Faure, brother of the famous cyclist Benoit Faure," otherwise known as the "King of the Nerds:"

At the start this event the other riders laughed at him and said: "Faure, you must be tired and want to go to take a nap on that thing. Why don't you sit up upright and pedal like a man?" They quit laughing when Faure poured his annoyance into the pedals and left them all behind. They couldn't even get close to him. Afterwards they were upset that they couldn't even draft his funny bike. One after the other Francis Faure defeated every first-class track cyclist in Europe, taking advantage of recumbents' clear aerodynamic superiority.. The following year Faure was practically unbeatable in 5000 meter distance events. Even in races against three or four top riders, who would alternate pacing a leader, Faure would leave the Velodrome in the yellow jersey.

This is why April 1st (April 1st being, appropriately enough, a day of mockery for the rest of the world) is observed as a day of mourning among recumbent riders, who gather their low-slung vehicles around a monument to Francis Faure, rend their garments, and fluff their beards in grief. To witness this ritual is to grieve, but even moreso to laugh--but try not to let them hear you, for they will impale you upon their safety flags.

And to think, we could have all been rolling doorstops:

There but for the grace of Lob, and so forth.