I’ve now reviewed the protection from Sea Otter from a wide range of media retailers and have come to the conclusion that gravel bikes are mind-numbingly boring:
This one’s purple! This one’s titanium! This one has a freaking Bilco door within the downtube!
And sure, I needed to conduct an Web seek for “basement door outdoors title” to provide you with “Bilco door:”
I suppose Bilco is the Dumpster of…outdoors basement door thingies, I nonetheless don’t know what the generic title is.
However wait, this simply in, right here’s one painted like a Bridgestone,!
A reader was type sufficient to remind me of this, and it’s a part of an extended and boring custom of portray new gravel bikes like previous bikes:
Although as a retrogrouch I’m deeply offended when bikes with disc brakes and suspension and carbon are painted like traditional bikes. It’s cultural appropriation!
Shifting on, even the New York Occasions has observed that Bentonville has turn into Bike City USA:
I’m sufficiently old to recollect when that distinction belonged to Portland:
However now when folks consider Portland they principally consider riots and vagrants, and so Bentonville has taken over kind of utterly:
There’s a lesson there someplace, and it seems to be that, no less than in relation to biking, progressive governance simply can’t compete with a household that has gazillions of {dollars} and actually likes bikes. The identical was briefly true of New York Metropolis, which made its largest strides in direction of turning into a bona-fide bike city beneath the administration of gazillionaire mayor Michael Bloomberg:
Not that Bloomberg favored driving bikes, however he did just like the thought of bikes, or no less than the concept of different folks driving bikes who weren’t him–although perhaps if he had really favored driving bikes perhaps it will be enjoyable like it’s in Bentonville, whereas right here it principally looks like individuals who don’t really trip are continuously experimenting with bizarre bike lane configurations, like an condominium dweller with an infinite price range who’s continuously ordering stuff from Wayfair:
There are most likely hundreds of acres of overgrown trash-strewn parkland in New York Metropolis that would simply be remodeled into bike trails and dozens of locations to construct new velodromes for Star Monitor, if solely we had an ultra-rich autocratic mayor who was additionally a bicycle owner and decided to remodel the town into his personal private playground.
However hey, we’re getting new bike lane site visitors indicators:
These will probably be at eye degree so folks will not must search for to be able to ignore them.
I can’t think about how lengthy that photographer will need to have stood there to be able to get a shot of somebody stopping for a type of lights.
Talking of being vigilant, maintain an eye fixed out for “Whiteboy,’ who stole a bunch of porn after which rode away on a bicycle:
Ah, the irony of utilizing a getaway car in your smut heist that doesn’t require any type of registration, solely to be recognized by the self-importance plate tattooed in your head…