Once again, I beg of you, do not get road rage and hurt cyclists. I understand that when some douche bag is going 35 MPH under the speed limit and making you late for work, or keeping you from getting home to your family, it can be very tempting to take matters into your own hands. This is what they want. Cyclists ride their bikes on busy, high speed, high traffic roads, they are not afraid to be injured, or even die, for their pitiful cause of wreaking havoc on our roadways. They will go so far as to make the accidents themselves, injuries and all. Always be careful and alert, you never know when a cyclist will try and fake an accident, either to clean you out in court, but more importantly to get political capital to make new laws that give cyclists even more power to make our roads even more dangerous.
I suppose I could just ask the reader who forwarded me the link, but that would involve hitting "reply" and typing words, and then waiting for the reply to my reply, and by that time I'd be nearly as old as Dorothy Rabinowitz. It certainly seems stupid enough to be real, though the advertisements point to parody:
Do a lot of people who hate cyclists and think they are faking their own deaths just to spite drivers also want to meet single cyclists for romance?
Actually, maybe they do, in the same way most homophobes secretly yearn for the touch of someone whose genitals match their own.
The other possibility is that Robs Fords are writing it, since it smacks of his crack-addled worldview:
Myth #3: It is a great tragedy when a cyclist is killed by a motorist.
Fact: Riding a bike on major highways with speed limits of up to 55MPH with hundreds of two ton vehicles is about as smart as playing Russian Roulette.
A lot of people gamble with their lives, soldiers, police officers, firemen for instance. When these people lose their lives it is a great tragedy because they lost their lives while pursuing noble efforts, catching criminals, saving lives, protecting freedoms. Getting killed because you thought it would be “cool” to tie up traffic during rush hour isn’t noble. Losing one’s life to stupidity isn’t a tragedy.
We at Spare the Road do not want to belittle anyone who has lost a loved one to this situation. However, as mentioned in Myth #1 most cyclists have no one who cares for them. If you are in that minority though we are sorry, sorry that your family member or friend was so selfish they cared more about being a jackass on public streets than being there for you. When some idiot on a bike gets hit by a car, it’s not a tragedy; the tragedy is his kids are going to have to grow up fatherless because their dad thought it would be awesome to “stick it to cagers” by riding his bike on busy streets.
In any case, it's pretty clear someone needs a hug. So does Dorothy Rabinowitz for that matter. (Those who have hugged her say it feels like hugging a bag of candy canes, only more brittle.)
Meanwhile, renegade filmmaker Casey Neistat continues to produce his irreverent brand of bicycle-themed YouTube videos. At times, Neistat is brilliant, as in his famous bike lane video. Other times, he's kinda douchey, as in this latest video:
Basically, Neistat has a studio so large he can skateboard in it:
But instead of just bringing his bike inside, he skids around on the sidewalk feeling angry that there's no bike parking immediately in front of his building:
(Sidewalk riding?!? Dorothy Rabinowitz is going to plotz!)
See?
"Sometimes," he explains, "I have to lock my bike over other bikes:"
So basically, Neistat locks his bike on top of yours because he can't be bothered to bring it into his gigantic studio.
Dick.
Then his bike gets stolen because he locks it wrong. So he takes matters into his own hands and installs a rack on the sidewalk all by himself. He also uses a brass knuckle knife to open boxes and jots down measurements on his hand with a Sharpie, because he's just that badass:
The bike rack, he explains, will solve all his bike parking problems--though not the scranus problems he must have from that seat angle:
I wasn't sure how much good the bike rack would do, since if bike parking is as scarce on his street as he says it is then it will be full in a matter of minutes anyway and he won't even get to use it--though it's all moot anyway, since predictably the city makes him remove it:
So ultimately, instead of going through all that trouble, he could have just made a video of himself installing one of those hoist-a-bike things from Nashbar in his studio:
(Disembodied hands hoist mountain bike of yesteryear.)
I realize ordering stuff from Nashbar is not considered "badass," but he could still open the box with the scary knife, and he could also write the order number on his hand with a Sharpie while he's waiting for the confirmation email. He could even compensate for the decreased "badassitude" factor by using a "Saintraper" road bike, as forwarded by another reader:
I'm pretty sure I saw Saintraper open for Morbid Angel at Sundance in Bay Shore. I'm also pretty sure that Saintraper has a Taintraper saddle:
Actually, it looks a lot like the saddle Casey Neistat was riding.
Of course, if your taint is being ravaged by your saddle you may be considering a recumbent bike, and here's one Kickstarter entrepreneur who seems to think he invented them:
Of course, if your taint is being ravaged by your saddle you may be considering a recumbent bike, and here's one Kickstarter entrepreneur who seems to think he invented them:
I didn't think it was possible to make the recumbent bicycle less practical but he seems to have managed, and like any good inventor he shares his "Eureka!" moment with us:
"My girlfriend and I came back from a two-hour bike ride, and let me tell you my tail end was in pain."
I'm not sure exactly what they did during that ride to cause him so much pain in that area, but here he is indicating the size of whatever it was she inserted in there:
"Eureka!" indeed.
Also, here's his friend:
Also, here's his friend:
With those Roy Scheider-esque movie star good looks, it's not difficult to imagine him sweeping Dorothy Rabinowitz right off her feet and right into his Banana Hammock.
By the way, I was especially intrigued by the "urban" model, which is specially designed for city riding, presumably because it's spray-painted black:
As far as urban transport goes, you'd be a lot better off just carrying a beach chair onto the subway with you.
