Batten Down The Hatches

I’ve now reviewed the protection from Sea Otter from a wide range of media shops 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 give you “Bilco door:”

I assume 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 sort sufficient to remind me of this, and it’s a part of an extended and boring custom of portray new gravel bikes like outdated bikes: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 traditional bikes. It’s cultural appropriation!

Transferring on, even the New York Occasions has observed that Bentonville has change into Bike City USA:

I’m sufficiently old to recollect when that distinction belonged to Portland:

However now when individuals consider Portland they principally consider riots and vagrants, and so Bentonville has taken over kind of fully:

There’s a lesson there someplace, and it seems to be that, at the least on the subject 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 turning into a bona-fide bike city underneath the administration of gazillionaire mayor Michael Bloomberg:

Not that Bloomberg preferred driving bikes, however he did like the thought of bikes, or at the least the thought of different individuals driving bikes who weren’t him–although perhaps if he had really preferred driving bikes perhaps it will be enjoyable like it’s in Bentonville, whereas right here it principally appears like individuals who don’t really journey are always experimenting with bizarre bike lane configurations, like an house dweller with an infinite price range 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 might simply be reworked into bike trails and dozens of locations to construct new velodromes for Star Observe, if solely we had an ultra-rich autocratic mayor who was additionally a bicycle owner and decided to remodel town into his personal private playground.

However hey, we’re getting new bike lane site visitors indicators:

These can be at eye stage so individuals will now not should search for to be able to ignore them.

I can’t think about how lengthy that photographer should have stood there to be able to get a shot of somebody stopping for a type of lights.

Talking of being vigilant, hold 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 on your smut heist that doesn’t require any type of registration, solely to be recognized by the self-importance plate tattooed in your head…