Regular Movements: Ordinary is the New Revolutionary

When we talk about a social movement, we generally mean (as Merriam-Webster defines it) "a series of organized activities working toward an objective." Consider for example the American Civil Rights Movement, or the Women's Movement, or the American Labor Movement. These were the plate tectonics that shifted our cultural landscape and transformed us into a more enlightened and egalitarian society.

Of course, now that (some) workers can collect a fair wage, and women can wear pants, and black people and white people can urinate side-by-side in perfect harmony in public restrooms all over America, it's only natural that we should enter into a period of "movement depreciation." This is because all the big battles have all been fought, and so now we're down to little skirmishes. Consequently, just like matching your grips to your saddle now qualifies as "curating," pretty much anything that's more than one person is doing at the same time now counts as a "movement." This includes riding a bicycle in regular clothes, as you can see in this article about the "Slow Bike Movement" which was forwarded to me by a reader:

Apparently, the Slow Bike Movement consists of "those who eschew speed and spandex in favor of sitting upright and slowly making their way through town in whatever they happen to be wearing that day." In other words, they're people with no agenda whatsoever doing nothing that's even remotely remarkable.

That's all great, but how is it a "movement?" The Freedom Riders of the 1960s were part of a movement, and I suppose the Klansmen were also part of a movement (albeit a twisted and reprehensible one), but the average schmuck who just sat on his couch watching "Mister Ed" and didn't really care one way or the other was not. Today, however, he'd be part of the rapidly-growing "Indifference Movement," and would be the subject of fawning feature articles about these brave preservationists with the courage to maintain the status quo by doing fuck-all and not giving a shit.

It's "passive resistance," only without the resistance.

Of course, like any modern movement, the Slow Bikes Movement is not so much an actual movement as it is a marketing demographic, which is why its spokespeople are bike company owners:

"When I think about the Slow Bike Movement, I think of bikes that allow people to sit upright, see your surroundings, be more visible to your environment that you're riding," says Public Bikes' Dan Nguyen-Tan. "As a company, we're in the middle of this wave of growing numbers of people incorporating a bike into their daily lives."

This is great news, since it turns out that I'm not just a regular schlub when I'm going to the store to pick up bagels. I'm actually a member of the Slow Bike Movement, and this makes me feel vastly better about myself. I guess I'm also a member of the Slow Running Movement by default, since sometimes when I go to get bagels I don't even bother with the bike. Slow runners are those who eschew high-tech shoes and Lycra running shorts in favor of slowly making their way through town in whatever they happen to be wearing that day. This is also sometimes called "walking." When I think about the Slow Running Movement, I think of shoes that allow people to stand upright, see their surroundings, and, most importantly, feel really good about themselves for no reason whatsoever. It's a wave of growing numbers of people incorporating footwear into their daily lives.

And finally, when I eat the bagels, I'm a member of the Slow Eating Movement. Slow eaters are those who eschew speed and special headbands in favor of sitting upright and consuming their sustenance in whatever they happen to be wearing that day:

Though I will occasionally "Cat 6" someone at Subway by trying to eat my sandwich faster than them.

I suppose the "movement" appellation isn't totally unwarranted, though, since it's true the average sub-Canadian has trouble understanding the bicycle when it's not being used as a piece of sporting equipment. In this sense, riding a bicycle in whatever you happen to be wearing actually is something of a countercultural act, which is a sad commentary on Americo-Canadian society. If only we could all move to Vilnius in Lithuania, where the mayor crushes bike lane-blocking cars with tanks, then maybe we'd finally get some respect:


Here's video of the crushing, which transcends "publicity stunt" and goes all the way to "smugness porn:"



“I wanted to send a message” Mr Zuokas told the media. “I want to point out that if you have a car and more money it doesn’t mean that you can park it everywhere. Recently there’s been an increase in this type of parking violations, and it shows a lack of respect for others”.

This is a fascinating concept, though it goes against everything I've been taught as a sub-Canadian. "Respect," as I've always understood it, is something you only use in lieu of money, like food stamps. Then, once you actually have money, you're supposed to use that instead of respect. I didn't think it was legal or even possible to pay people both money and respect. Isn't that a conflict of interest? Once you can afford it, I thought it was your responsibility to treat people poorly and to buy expensive stuff with logos on it. Those logos are basically de facto permits, and they allow you to do stuff like this:

Where's the mayor of Vilnius when you need him? I'd even settle for Mayor Bloomburg on a Big Wheel.

Meanwhile, in Australia, a reader informs me that cyclists are now being punished for getting in the way of people's car doors:


“We have seen a number of incidents recently, particularly in the St Kilda Road area, where cyclists have collided with opening car doors," Senior Sergeant Huntington said.

Naturally, then, the police are cracking down--on the cyclists. This seems akin to punishing a shooting victim for getting in the way of a bullet, but perhaps it's a southern hemisphere thing. Anyway, this is for the cyclists' own protection, since when you have an accident on your bike there's "no second chance:"

"There's no second chance for a bike rider. When involved in an accident it's always going to be a serious incident."

Right, because it's completely impossible to have a non-serious accident on a bicycle:



Laugh if you will, but he died of his injuries only hours later.

Yes, it's essential to keep up the illusion that cycling is a suicidal endeavor, for it allows your local authorities to discourage it altogether and then punish you for your own protection if you have the temerity to do it anyway. The truth is I'd much rather be involved in a boneheaded bicycle crash while I'm on a Slow Bike Movement-style bagel run than a car crash on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, but that's only because I tend to forget it's impossible to get hurt in a car but riding a bicycle is certain death.

Speaking of doorings, I wonder if you're likely to fare better against a car door if you're riding an "incumbent bicycle:"

The above image was forwarded to me by a reader, and while I don't know about the dooring scenario it does turn out that these so-called "incumbent bicycles" do raise visibility issues:

Incumbent Bicycle Car Crash In Oregon And Washington

Having handled many bike crashes (involving cars) in Oregon these last 17 years I know bikers get the bad rap. Often in bike versus car crash and this applies equally well to incumbent bike car crashes. Incumbent bikes are designed to ride lower to the ground making visibility often a recurring issue in bike car cases whether involving settlement or litigation of the injury case.

Biking laws in Oregon and Washington do not differentiate between incumbent bike law and non incumbent bike law so the regular rules of the road apply. I have seen more serious injuries involving incumbent bikes versus non incumbent but I have also seen a much higher knowledge of bike rules and biker expertise of those who ride incumbent bikes.

I still don't know what an "incumbent bicycle" is, though the Peterson Law Office's use of the term does make me doubt their expertise. Perhaps this (forwarded by a reader) is an "incumbent bicycle:"


Or maybe the builder just wanted to know what it would feel like to be a pair of "pants yabbies."

In The Zeitgeist Tonight: Don't Be a Pie Biter

As you may know, not too long ago I wrote a book. Naturally, like any author, I hoped it would be well received. At the same time, though, I of course realized that as a first-time author I should temper my expectations. So you can imagine my surprise when that book, "The Da Vinci Code," became a worldwide bestseller and went on to sell over 80 million copies and was adapted into a movie starring Tom Hanks.

Sadly, my follow-up book, the self-titled "Bike Snob," did not sell quite as well, and Tom Hanks also declined to star in the film version, citing a prior commitment to do "Turner and Hooch II." ("Bike Snob" the movie will instead star lesser known Baldwin brother Chico--at least he says he's a Baldwin brother.) However, "Bike Snob" has been something of a success in its own right, having appeared under a dead turtle in the West Elm furniture catalog, and now, as a number of people inform me, being barely visible inside a bag sold by the Timbuk2 bagular conglomerate:

The bag is called the Zeitgeist, which means "the spirit of the times," and if there are two things that are emblematic of our age they are certainly books and croquet. As far as I knew, croquet breathed its last gasp in 1989 with the movie "Heathers:"

And as for books, the only thing keeping them around is that people need decorative pedestals for their dead turtles. In fact, even bags themselves are totally out of style, having given way once and for all to the "fanny pack," as the Wall Street Gerbil reports:

Unfortunately, the article omits the driving force behind the fanny pack resurgence, which as everybody knows is the urban "fixie" scene. Hipster cyclists love all those "waist bags" and "utility belts" and "u-lock holsters," and it is this irresistible compulsion to transform themselves into elaborately tattooed marsupials that has catapulted the "fanny pack" out of the faux dive bars of Brooklyn and the Mission District and onto the runways. The article did have one bit of useful information though, which is that not everybody calls them fanny packs because in some countries the word "fanny" is really dirty:

Some international designers have a cultural reason to back away from the word "fanny." Innocuous slang for the gluteus maximus in the U.S., the word is an obscenity in the U.K. and Australia, where it refers to female genitalia. In those countries, fanny packs are typically known as a "bum bags." The French call the style "le sac banane," a mocking reference to the banana shape of the pouch.

In other words, fanny means this--though that's not stopping at least one company from embracing the gynecologic connotations of the accessory:

Yes, it's called the "Cling," and nothing clings to your waist like a capacious Vag-X--though given the fact it employs a zipper I might have gone with the name "Vag-X Dentata" instead. Incidentally, the article also points out that the French call the fanny pack "le sac banane," which seems like it would mean "banana bag," and which in turn sounds suspiciously similar to what many English speakers call a "banana hammock:"

I wonder how many bananas you can "portage" in a Vag-X, and the 'Hof looks like he can't wait to find out.

Speaking of idiotic things to put on your waist, if you still have room next to your Vag-X and your u-lock holster and your fanny pack and your utility pouch and you don't mind the fact that you're unable to go to the bathroom without sending 60lbs of loose change, combination 15mm wrench-and-bottle-openers, and "Wednesday weed"-smoking paraphernalia crashing to the sticky restroom floor, you might want to wedge one of these things in there too:

"Turn any ride into Critical Mass," suggests the copy, and I'm sure the police will be delighted by the strains of the neutered warbling "indie" rock leitmotif that follows you everywhere as they impound your bicycle and pack you off to jail.

Of course, if you're only a waist and legs then a fanny pack may be your only choice, and that's certainly the case with the model in this eBay auction that was forwarded to me by a reader:

Featuring two disembodied hands as well as a disembodied pelvis, this photograph sets the new standard by which all future eBay photographs will be measured:

If only there were some clue as to what sort of magic the seller employed to achieve this effect, for the way in which the upper body seamlessly disappears into that sponge-painted wall is nothing short of beguiling. In fact, it was so amazing that I almost considered placing a bid, except I've now decided to hold off on any road bike purchases until the new BERU f1sytems Factor001 SuperDouche 9000 Ubercycle is available at my LBS:

Yes, this stunning engineering marvel costs £25,000 (or something like US$9 billion in my country's pretend money) and it can tell the moneyed Fred how just how badly he sucks at riding a bike in something like 17 different ways:

BERU f1systems have brought together virtually every available measurement of rider performance to create a professional training tool leaps ahead of anything the cycling world has even envisaged.

I'm not sure if this bicycle will end amateur road racing once and for all by finally providing participants with incontrovertible evidence of how pathetic they are, or if it will cause it to grow tenfold by amplifying the Quixotic nature of "training" scientifically for your local club race or group ride. It could go either way, but I suspect it will be the latter. Unfortunately, the makers of this ridiculous machine couldn't manage to incorporate the "breath gas analysis," but they did equip it with "core-temperature sensing:"

Was there a technology that you weren’t able to incorporate into the 001?

We looked long and hard at physiological metrics and the only useful one we wanted that wasn’t possible to provide was breath gas analysis. We were told people wanted to see real-time oxygen consumption figures but that was a step too far even for us. We're proud to offer riders core-temperature sensing from an encapsulated sensor which is swallowed by the rider and then transmits data to the head unit. Performance in the heat has received a lot of attention from pro teams so we think that's a great addition.

This will be a very welcome feature for the Fred who's so captivated by his meager wattage output that he doesn't realize it's time to take off his neon green windbreaker. I'm also sure this bicycle will appeal to Charles Manantan of PezCycling News (author of the ultimate dentist bike review), who a commenter recently mentioned actually wrote the following:

A bike part’s relative importance is, as ever, directly related to the proximity and effect on genitalia (as is literally everything else in life).

Given this, he should really enjoy the core temperature sensor on that BERU bike, since it's probably a repurposed rectal thermometer that nestles itself delightfully close to the prostate.

Meanwhile, while Manantan is enthralled by anything that comes into contact with his taint, the mainstream media remains fascinated by people who ride bicycles, and a reader has forwarded me a (non-embeddable, so click the link) Weather.com report about some guy who rides a snow bike to work:

One of my favorite aspects of any bicycling-themed news report is always the reporter's total incredulity that someone actually rides a bicycle. Note her inflection when she says the following at 44 seconds:

His bikes have more miles than his car!

I love how she says it as though that's the epitome of insanity, in exactly the same way she'd say something like: "He keeps an incredibly rare Fahaka puffer fish in his toilet!"

Now, sure, those are some pretty nasty conditions, and even a rider as hardy as Charles Manantan would probably leave the bike at home on a day like that, but is riding your bike in the winter really that crazy? I don't ski, but as far as I know people ski in the winter pretty much exclusively, but I never see stories about those quirky people who slide down snowy mountains in February. "His skis have more miles than his Rollerblades!"

Similarly, a number of people have alerted me to a student who's delivering pies by bicycle in Seattle, and the local news seems to find this concept similarly unfathomable:

Here he is at work:

Don't get me wrong--I admire "Piecycle" guy's entrepreneurship and can-do sub-Canadian spirit, but why is everybody in the story so amazed? Maybe it's because I live in New York, where I can't even walk outside without getting mowed down by some food delivery guy riding an electric bike at 30mph on the sidewalk, but is bringing pie from one place to another on a bicycle really that big a deal? Apparently it is--so much so that he even has "groupies:"

"When I heard that he was delivering pie by bicycle, it was a short stop to me falling in love."

This satisfied customer was similarly blown away by the unthinkable notion that someone could actually bake a pie, put it in a bicycle basket, and miraculously transport that very same pie to him for consumption:

"We were like, 'Hey, guy's delivering pie on a bicycle so we had to do it.'"

Of course, this is exactly the sort of thing that boggles the mind of the marijuana enthusiast, so I guess their amazement makes sense. "Dude, how awesome would it be if some guy showed up on a bike with a big fucking pie right now?" So I'm sure when it actually happens it seems like magic.

Needless to say, pie porteur bikes are almost certainly to be all the rage at this year's NAHBS, which means that whittled stick cockpits like this one spotted in Portland by a reader will soon be totally out of style:

Though I suppose the rider could use them to roast marshmallows and become a cycling roasted marshmallow vendor. "We were like, 'Hey, guy's roasting marshmallows on his own handlebars and delivering them, so we had to do it.'" Just wait until those S'mores "drop"--the pie will go the way of the designer cupcake.

Impending Doom: Even Helments Can't Save Us

(Via a reader, the Lobster God takes automotive form to punish nonbelievers and poor drivers.)

This morning started out like any other. After bathing in Fruity Pebbles and enjoying an invigorating bowl of lukewarm bath water, I set about tending to the myriad responsibilities of a non-minimalist. I wrote checks and sent them to my creditors via carrier pigeon, I washed and buffed my stable of 46 nearly identical handmade bicycles, I made sure my various registrations, licenses, permits, and insurance policies were up to date, I double-checked the expiration dates of ever single food item in my fridge, and I generally tested and tightened every one of the steel cables that hold me in thrall to "the system." Then I realized I had just wasted the entire morning, since an asteroid is heading right towards us and we're all going to die:

"Well that sucks," I thought to myself as I threw out eighteen boxes of Jimmy Dean Pancakes and Sausage on a Stick that had tragically fallen victim to premature freezer burn. The world is going to end in 2036, and just last week I'd put my entire fortune into an investment account that would not mature until 2040. How, then, was I supposed to fund completion of my "bucket list" before we all perish in this cosmic holocaust? It's quite a formidable list, too, and without access to that $76 million I just put away I don't see how I'm going to manage it:

Sure, I know some of these are a bit far-fetched, but I'm willing to compromise on some of them--for example, on numbers three and four I'd be perfectly willing to switch the Pope with the Dalai Lama and vice versa. However, without that money I doubt I'll be able to get anywhere near either of them. I'm not the only one who's getting short-changed by this whole end-of-the-world thing, either. For example, if you're currently on the wait list for a Vanilla, you won't take delivery of your bike until five years after asteroid hits, and even if you manage survive there probably won't be anyplace decent to ride it or anybody else to drool all over your exquisite lugwork. Then again, maybe it's for the best we'll only be around for another 25 years, since if bottom brackets keep expanding at their current rate then by 2030 they'll be roughly three times the size of the rest of the bicycle and we'll all be riding around like this.

In any case, given that we're all doomed, it seems almost comical to be worried about trivial matters such as "personal safety." This is why I expect that bicycle helmet sales will drop precipitously now that an asteroid is hurtling towards us. I mean, why bother, right? However, I'd still hate to get a ticket during these remaining days, and as I mentioned in yesterday's post, while it's legal to ride in New York without a helmet it is illegal to ride without a helment, and as soon as I learned this I resolved to purchase one. The only problem was that I had no idea what a helment was--though commenter "streepo" pointed out that you can get a headset for one:

Still, there were two problems:

1) I couldn't use a headset with something I didn't have;

2) Even if I had a helment to use it with, I couldn't, because it's illegal to ride a bicycle in New York City while wearing a pair of headphones.

Either way, I still needed a helment, and so I consulted a popular search engine and finally found what I was looking for:

Now that's some serious on-the-bike protection:

Not only that, but "The clear faceshield allows for...the inspection of newly-completed welds," which means that you can revel in the exquisite beauty of your Moots or similar bicycle as you ride. However, I ride a lowly Scattante, and as such I avoid looking at my welds at all costs since their lumpy irregularity only depresses me. Therefore, I wondered if there was a helment out there with a non-faceshield option, and after a little more searching I found this:

Obviously it was perfect, but sadly it was out of stock, and and the only other helment I could find was this one:

It was at this point that I elected to abandon the search and risk the ticket, and if any police officers stop me and ask me for my helment I really, really hope I'm able to talk my way out of it.

Speaking of helmets (the helment's mud-free cousin), you may possibly but probably don't recall that many, many years ago (almost one and a half of them) I mentioned a documentary about an Australian woman named Sue Abbott who stood in solitary poodle-haired opposition to her nation's draconian and marsupial mandatory helmet laws:



Well, I was visiting Bikeportland yesterday and was pleased to find a link to the following article:

Yes, Sue Abbott has finally emerged triumphant over this kangaroo court (in Australia, hearings are presided over by actual kangaroos) and her coiffure shall remain forever unmolested. One wonders if this will go down as a landmark decision and serve as the beginning of the end of Australia's helmet law, or if they will continue to cling to mandatory helmet use like a koala clings to a eucalyptus branch (until its skull is pierced by the arrow of Ted Nugent). Of course it really doesn't matter since we're all going to be dead in 2036 anyway, but while we're still here we might as well go through the motions and pretend. So let's raise a glass to Sue Abbott and toast her in traditional Australian fashion: "Here's mud on your helment."

Meanwhile, in most other parts of the world helmet use while cycling remains more or less a personal choice, though you should certainly check with your local municipal government regarding their policy on riding a recumbent while naked, as in this photo which was forwared to me by a reader:

Yes, it's just that sort of "hop on and go" sensibility that makes cycling an attractive alternative in an urban environment, as this video forwarded to me by a reader shows:



I couldn't understand a word of what the guy in the purple shirt was saying due to his Vegemite-thick Australian accent, but I believe what he was implying was that cars suck because they result in make-up accidents:

Whereas bikes are awesome because you can just toss a "Sheila" on your top tube and go:

Though how this is more conducive to the application of lipstick is beyond me. In any case, while the video is ostensibly amusing, it only managed to depress me since almost everything purple shirt guy does in this video would result in his being stopped and ticketed by the NYPD and would also be regarded as dangerous and insane pretty much everywhere in America. Sadly, this sort of idyllic cycling will probably never be possible here in Canada's surgically-enhanced cleavage (or in Canada for that matter), since our approach to everyday cycling is closer to this:

--Spend $2,000-$6,000 on an "appropriate" bicycle;

--Spend another thousand dollars on an appropriate wardrobe and accessories;

--Strap on your helmet, throw yourself to the cars, and hold on for dear life;

--Abandon the whole endeavor when your bike gets stolen or you get hit by a car, whichever comes first.

It's certainly a sad situation, but oddly consumers and local governments seem to be in near total agreement on it--at least that's the case here in New York. There is an upside though, which is that if you do all this on a fixed-gear and manage to survive for more than a year, that qualifies you for "OG" status and you get to upload videos of yourself and your friends and sell t-shirts. I'd like to see some grandmother in Copenhagen try that.

Ironically, even bizarre cycling disciplines like cyclocross seem to be gaining more traction in America than the simple act of hopping on a bike, throwing your best gal on your top tube, and pedaling to the store. (Unless you're the King of Park Slope, that is. He can do whatever he wants.) Don't get me wrong, I love few things more than sucking at the cyclocross, but it can also be frustrating that most people only seem comfortable with bicycles if they're used for racing and exercising. We're already experiencing a bike commuting backlash, yet cyclocross has grown so much that Jonathan Page's sponsor is considering opening a cyclocross camp:

Bob owns land outside Madison and is thinking of buying a little more to make a cyclo-cross training centre in order to run those camps out of the Madison area," he added. "I would be running the program, doing technique work and talking about training. We will bring in some trainers, sport scientists and mechanics to help run the cyclo-cross camp."

I hope he will also bring in some Portlanders to teach heckling, costume curation, and flesh hook administration. Bike portaging is totally going to be the new arts and crafts.

Smugliest Catch: Decking the Hauls

Everybody wants to be happy (except for goths and roadies, of course). However, in today's fast-paced, fatuous, and often malodorous world, finding contentment can be difficult. To that end, all sorts of people will come forward claiming to hold the secret to happiness. Various religions insist you'll be happy if you pray to their gods and follow their arbitrary rules concerning diet and masturbation. Minimalists claim you'll be happy if you get rid of all your stuff and buy every single product designed and sold by Apple Inc. And Dr. Drew from "Celebrity Rehab" says you'll be happy if only you'd put down that crack pipe and stop driving your car through crowded shopping malls.

I prefer to take a simpler approach, since none of the above philosophies changes the fact that, like it or not, we've all got to get crap done. Not only does getting crap done comprise most of our day, but it's largely the stress and irritation that goes along with getting crap done that makes us so unhappy. Therefore, it would stand to reason that, if you can render getting crap done into fun, you can turn drudgery into delight. It's sort of the alchemy of the mundane.

Like many people, I find a good way to do this is to run errands by bike, and as a non-minimalist I often have stuff that needs to go from one place to another. Furthermore, as it happens, yesterday I also had a bunch of packages waiting for me at my off-site mailing box, and on top of that we had had another snowstorm. Certainly one approach to moving lots of stuff on a snowy day would be to dig out your car, lose your parking space, sit in a bunch of traffic, hunt for another parking space when you get home, and so forth. Another one would be to wrestle your payload onto and off of the subway somehow, or else pay some fragrant lunatic in a dilapidated Town Car an absurd amount of money to chauffeur you for a couple of hours. Or, you could load up your smugness flotilla and revel in unabashed bike dorkitude.

I had been off frightening cows during our last snowstorm, which left the city in chaos. Streets, were unplowed, neighbor turned upon neighbor, dogs devoured housecats, and tent cities formed in the regional airports that remain to this day and have their own ZIP codes. Therefore, I didn't know what to expect this time around. Fortunately though, everything was fine, and even the bike lanes were kindasorta plowed:

This alleviated one of my concerns, but the other concern I had was this whole "New York City bike scofflaw crackdown" thing. People have been talking about this for months, and every time I get on my bike now I expect to be arrested for some arcane offense like not having "lawyer lips" on my fork, or using a bar/stem combo from two different manufacturers. Of course, we do have a modicum of control over whether or not we get pulled over, and one good way to keep this from happening is to stop at red lights, which I've been doing fairly diligently:

Traditionally, New York City cyclists don't stop at red lights, so for some people the idea of doing so is nearly unthinkable--like a celebrity putting down the crack pipe and no longer driving through shopping malls. I, however, have made my peace with it, mostly by using the same "alchemy of the mundane" technique. Instead of waiting impatiently, I try to enjoy my red light-induced respite. In the warmer months, there's of course the people watching for which New York City is famous, as well as the inadvertent displays of idiocy put on by other cyclists. However, on snowy, blustery days, these displays are at best far less "flambullient," and at worst nonexistent, and so I turn to one of my favorite winter hobbies, which is "carcake spotting." This involves admiring the snow formations on top of people's cars, an in fact I'm proud to say I recently discovered that the term "carcake" is now in the Urban Dictionary, complete with proper attribution:

I know it's a pathetic hobby, but really, it's all I have, and it beats getting a ticket.

Anyway, yesterday's weather conditions did make for some fairly decent carcake spotting. For example, I always enjoy a nice hastily-cleared "wild and woolly" economy car, and I was pleased to spot a nice example:


I also saw a very clean Brazilian wax-style "landing strip:"

Very subtle, but definitely there:

Also, carcakes don't need to be limited to a vehicle's roof. There's also the bald-head-with-goatee carcake, like this one:

Think Anthrax's Scott Ian, only without the bushy eyebrows:

As practical, everyday urban transporation, there's not much to recommend the SUV, but the fact that their owners can't reach all the way across the roof makes for a carcake spotter's delight, since it invariably results in the "Euro-hawk:"


As worn by the "Little Prince Who's Not So Little Anymore Now That He's Pushing 30," Damiano Cunego:

("Really, I need a new nickname, 'Little Prince' is just creepy now.")

But really, nothing beats the good old "pan of brownies," ready to fly off in a single piece as soon as the vehicle hits the expressway:

Watching a carcake lift itself off a roof and soar brilliantly through the air before breaking apart on either the highway surface or else, more commonly, the windshield of the vehicle behind it is one of the most spectacular moments a carcake watcher can hope to experience--though since it's mostly limited to highways you've generally got to be in a car yourself.

Of course, the carcake spotting was incidental, and the far more enjoyable part was the actual ride. Once I got to where I was going, I strapped a bunch of stuff to my bike, and it looked like this:

Not only does a long wheelbase help keep your child's face out of your ass, but it also makes for very stable handling in messy weather, and if anything the bike handled even better in the snow with all that crap on it since the weight helped the wheel dig in more deeply. (It's sort of hard to place your body weight over your rear wheel when it's all the way back there in a different county.)

Sure, as cyclists we'd all love to embark upon evocative Rapha-esque "epics" at a moment's notice, ascending monumental climbs with exquisitely hand-crafted artisanal race bikes rocking back and forth between our legs like pendulous testis as our faces broadcast expressions of pain and sensual insouciance, but the simple fact is most of us need to get crap done, and hauling boxes through the snow on a Taiwanese smugness toboggan is good enough for me. As the old saying goes, when life gives you lemons, throw those lemons at strangers from behind parked cars and laugh at their confusion.

Best of all, I was not apprehended and beaten by police on trumped-up charges such as failing to signal before making a crotchal adjustment--and not only that, but the controversial Prospect Park West bike lane was also completely clear:

I'm sort of surprised the angry locals didn't fill it with nonplussed snowmen protesters holding teddy bears.

By the way, if you're wondering what was in those boxes, that's my business (my business being illegal drugs, off-brand AA batteries, and black market baby carrots that I sell from a cart on the subway), but I will say that one of the packages contained this:

As I opened it, my excitement mounted. Was it a saddle? Was it a bag? Was it Etc.? Well, it turns out it was just a tiny wrench, though it did come with a "bonus saddle:"

That bonus saddle being nothing less than the handiwork of Eric "The Chamferer" Murray:

I've never owned a Brooks saddle before, so I am eagerly looking forward to finding out if they do in fact conform to my contours as eagerly as a hipster conforms to the latest trends, or if it will merely be like riding with a rawhide doggie treat stuffed down my pants. I'm also wondering what I've done to deserve Brooks's munificence, though I also make a practice of never looking a gift horse in the mouth (especially if that gift horse is about to be slaughtered and turned over to Eric "The Chamferer" Murray). I will say though that the saddle is quite hard to the touch--so much so that the owner of that disembodied hand is crying unconsolably even now. But it does promise on the card that this particular saddle is "aged" and that it will give me "comfort from day 1," so I will withhold any judgement until I've actually mounted and ridden the thing.

One thing's for sure, though--if I'm going to "rock" a saddle like this I'm going to have to "upgrade" my cockpit to match, and I may go with a setup like this one, spotted by a reader in London:

The rider must be a bartender, so going from this bike to the beer taps is an easy transition.