Hold your head high!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Just remember not to be taken in by cute depictions of tandem bicycles:

Seems lovely, right?

Hardly.

While ostensibly a symbol of love and togetherness, the tandem is nothing but a sordid ruse, and an invitation to pilot one is merely a pretense for turning you into the object of salacious leering:


Never trust a stoker.

Speaking of ruses, the pro Freds want the UCI to ban disc brakes again:


Here's why they say they don't want them:

Cyclingnews has seen a copy of a letter sent by the riders' association to the governing body on Sunday in which it formally sets out its opposition to the reintroduction of disc brakes this season. Chief among its concerns is the danger posed by having different braking systems – and therefore different braking times – in the same peloton.

The letter, signed by CPA president Gianni Bugno and addressed to Mark Barfield, head of the UC's technical commission, with UCI president Brian Cookson copied in, criticises the UCI for failing to take into account the safety concerns expressed by a majority of professional riders.

Hmmm, I don't remember ever hearing this argument in the context of single-vs.-dual pivot calipers, or carbon vs. aluminum braking surfaces, or anything else that makes a difference in braking time.  Yeah, I think we all know the real reason they don't want them, which is that no team wants to spend a bunch of money outfitting a whole new fleet of bicycles with hidden motors.

Come on, these people will ride anything you put under them.  There's a team riding around with chain oilers attached to their bikes for chrissakes!


Yet here's a braking system that might actually help them descend Grand Tour mountain passes on crabon rims in the rain and they're not only resistant to it but insisting it be banned outright?

As Shakespeare famously wrote, "The Freddies doth protest too much, methinks."

Meanwhile, the amateur Freds, the vast majority of whom have absolutely nothing to gain from these things, can't upgrade soon enough.

Go figure.

Of course, the Golden Age of EPO set loves the whole mötödöping thing because it gives them something to feel smug about:

Still looking for a motor......I even rode it today and dropped @ghincapie but that doesn't say much....... pic.twitter.com/jhv4tFO4Pa— VandeVelde,Christian (@ChristianVDV) February 3, 2017

El-oh-el.

See, it's funny because they only regular-doped.

Frankly I don't buy the argument that an artificial tailwind provided by a motor that's either on or off is any worse than transfusing your blood or permanently altering your physiology through use of banned substances.  In fact I think it's even more ethically defensible, not to mention quite a bit safer.  Imagine your kid became a pro cyclist.  (Lob forbid!)  Would you rather them ride a bike with a motor or let some Belgian soigneur who never finished high school fill them with blood in the bathroom of a team bus?  I know which one I'd choose: vroom, vroom!  Pro cycling needle doping is barely a notch above letting someone shoot heroin between your toes under a highway overpass.

But hey, whatever makes these feel better about their careers.

In other news, meet the Lancelock, which is a new titanium bike lock on Kickstarter and not what Floyd Landis has Lance Armstrong in now:



It's a classic American tale: guy has 12 - yes, 12 - bikes stolen, gets mad as heck, and becomes obsessed with solving the problem and ending the decades-long, worldwide bicycle theft epidemic once and for all.

Yeah, I'm not sure I'd buy a bicycle security product from someone who's lost twelve (12) bicycles.

I mean sure, maybe this thing really does work, but you'd never know it from the video.  I was waiting for them to break out the heavy equipment, but all they proved was that it can resist gentle tapping with a hammer:


And that, like a calloused nipple, it's also resolute in the face of gentle twisting:


As for power tools, they don't even entertain that as a possibility:


Oh, sure.  Sometimes, but not always:



Meanwhile, remember the fixie periscope?


Well it's been reinvented for the older set by a couple of guys in Florida:



Okay, so apparently the cycling equivalent of the elderly driver who can't see over the dashboard of a Buick is an aging Fred who can't look up from his aerobars.  And of course the solution to this problem is this:


Instead of, you know, sitting up:


So what's the opposite of "Eureka" anyway?  Well as far as I know there's not a single word, but this phrase comes pretty darn close:


"So then we came up with this device to allow us to see what's in front of us while we don't necessarily have our head up."

Holy crap that looks dangerous.

Also, the inventors' total obliviousness to the world around them is clearly not limited to when they're riding with aerobars:


"It's very hard to find any accessory for a bicycle that makes you safer, faster, and more comfortable."

No it isn't.

In fact there's a bike designed to do just that, and it's called a Rivendell:


At a certain point you're a lot faster on a comfortable bike than you are bent over a plastic Fred bike like you're getting a prostate exam:


Who wants to ride around viewing the world through a series of strategically-placed mirrors anyway?  You might as well just ride with an endoscope up your ass.

Speaking of looking at everything from an oblique angle, this hurt my brain:

It's mostly sensory to me, trying to be with a bike enough to review it, which to me means to understand it: What it is built to achieve, what it shares with others with the same ambition and all other bicycles in general, how it might in some way differ from all the others (alike and not), how well and how much and in what ways it fulfills or sometimes exceeds its ambitions, who it is made for me and who not, and who might like it whether made for them or not. Who needs this bike? Who imagines they do with enough ardor that it might as well be true need? Why did the bicycle and I do that through that corner, or go fast there, and how much was bike and how much was me and how much was that (silly to say but real so here it is) mystical mixing of the two of us? . Secondly, it is holistic. Nothing happens because the chainstays are longer or the bottom bracket is stouter or this is that-er, but those are an ineluctable part of why the whole bike does this or that or feels yes or no. Changing any element changes things but that means all things, the entire bike, the whole ride and, because you are as necessary to the ride as the bike is, changes you while you are with that bike. Express the ride (the bike) without trying to diagnose it. . And godammit, have some fun while you're doing it or what's the point? . . . #edchoice17 #bicyclingmag #biketesting #bikereviewing #healdsburg #bicycles #bicyclette #bicycling #bike #bikelife #bikes #cycling #cyclinglife #cyclist #mybikelife #ridelife #thebikelifeA post shared by Bill Strickland (@truebs) on Feb 14, 2017 at 8:14am PST

I never thought I'd say this, but I think I prefer that ridiculous VeloNews numbering system.