I’ve now reviewed the protection from Sea Otter from quite a lot 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 exterior title” to give you “Bilco door:”
I suppose Bilco is the Dumpster of…exterior 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 sort sufficient to remind me of this, and it’s a part of a protracted and boring custom of portray new gravel bikes like outdated bikes:
Although as a retrogrouch I’m deeply offended when bikes with disc brakes and suspension and carbon are painted like basic bikes. It’s cultural appropriation!
Shifting on, even the New York Occasions has seen that Bentonville has develop into Bike City USA:
I’m sufficiently old to recollect when that distinction belonged to Portland:
However now when individuals consider Portland they largely consider riots and vagrants, and so Bentonville has taken over roughly fully:
There’s a lesson there someplace, and it seems to be that, not less than in terms of 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 changing into a bona-fide bike city beneath the administration of gazillionaire mayor Michael Bloomberg:
Not that Bloomberg preferred driving bikes, however he did just like the concept of bikes, or not less than the thought of different individuals driving bikes who weren’t him–although possibly if he had truly preferred driving bikes possibly it could be enjoyable like it’s in Bentonville, whereas right here it largely appears like individuals who don’t truly experience are always experimenting with bizarre bike lane configurations, like an condo dweller with a vast finances who’s always ordering stuff from Wayfair:
There are in all probability hundreds of acres of overgrown trash-strewn parkland in New York Metropolis that would simply be reworked 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 rework town into his personal private playground.
However hey, we’re getting new bike lane visitors indicators:
These will probably be at eye degree so individuals will now not must lookup with a purpose to ignore them.
I can’t think about how lengthy that photographer will need to have stood there with a purpose to get a shot of somebody stopping for a type of lights.
Talking of being vigilant, maintain a watch 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…
