In life there are sometimes unfortunate side effects. If you drink too much, you could get a hangover. If you engage in physical activity, you could get sweaty and smelly. If you drink too much and engage in physical activity at the same time, you could become a parent.

Surely it is, though, a mistake to dwell on these uncomfortable side effects. Isn’t happiness really more about looking on the bright side of life, as Terry Gilliam advised us?

Unfortunately, in the real world, you may experience some pushback regarding your bright-side philosophy from the world’s many sayers of nay, which is exactly what happened when some cyclists stopped off in an English pub for a pint after a short ride. It seems that they presented a somewhat fragrant odor that the other patrons found to be disturbing, and after some complaints were asked to get back on their bikes and leave.

Now, it must be said that the practicality of wearing clothes designed for working out that they somehow generate stink much faster than regular clothes. While it is more comfortable for the wearer to be in sweat wicking attire, there is definitely something about these clothes that works up a funk of which Bootsy Collins himself would certainly be proud.

Anyone who has ever worked out in a cotton tee shirt, however, can tell you that you end up feeling like you’re wearing a poncho made from thick-sliced deli ham. Or at least you might if you sweat as much as I do. If I am working out at all, I’m doing an exact reverse impersonation of a sponge; a fairly startling impediment to my vanity, believe you me. That’s not even to mention the horror of vigorous physical exertion while wearing cotton boxers under a pair of jeans. Whatever body issues might cause one to eschew a road cycling kit surely pale in comparison to the consequences of jeans and cotton boxers on your gender-specific body luggage.

Not to defend the pub for kicking its patrons out, but I think that exercisers are in the same sort of predicament as smokers in that they don’t really realize how stinky they are. As a smoker, you might commiserate with your fellow inhalers and assure one another that you really don’t smell that bad, but trust me when I tell you, you definitely do. This leads me to wonder if the pub in question allows smoking.

It seems only fair to me to kick smokers to the curb if we’re not allowing people to stink up our pubs. Thoughts?

Have you ever been wandering through Wal-Mart looking for a scented candle or some meaning in your life? Lord knows I have, and while a scented candle is a relatively easy thing to round up, life meaning can be elusive. There you are, wandering the wide hallways cleared between hedgerows of commerce, comparing the products your eye falls upon with the images of “life meaning” and “some semblance of happiness” in your head. All of a sudden, you find yourself looking at a bicycle. Two wheels, a handlebar, and some pedals, and for less money than you’ve spent on a single night of dinner and drinking. Even though as a cyclist, you know that there’s no way a department store bike can hold up in the real world, you have to wonder… could you get your money’s worth?

This is nearly the question that a gentleman from Great Britain posed to himself some time ago, but he’s gone one step farther than blathering about it on the Intertweeds. He’s actually put the things to the test.

Simon Hartwell, the article’s author, wrote:

My plan was to purchase a sub-£100 mountain bike. It had te [sic] be full suspension, brand new and from a legitimate source. I could change nothing on it except the pedals; everything else was to be as supplied.

Side Note: £100 is the same amount of money as about $1500, so these bikes might actually be kind of nice.

The question this challenge seeks to answer, I think, is “What am I getting for my extra thousands of dollars when I buy a top of the line bike?” You might be surprised how well the cheap bikes fared under the harshest punishment, but I think the answer is that you’re getting a different experience. Such as, for instance, brakes that actually do something.

If the price point indicates how great one’s experience will be, then at $1200, this bike surely delivers “experience” in truckloads:

GT Track Bike Dura Ace components – $1200

GT track bike frame (58cm), with Chris King headset, Dura Ace track chain rings (47 and 48) and another track chain ring (48), two Dura Ace cogs (15 and 16), bullhorn bars, Pista 3T track bars, Mavic Open Pro 28 spoke gray wheels, Dura Ace track hubs (rear hub is flip flop hub), Continental Grand Prix 3000 tires, Sugino 75 cranks, Shimano 105 brakes.

I bought the frame and fork and cranks used, everything else is new and has been rarely used. The bike is currently set up as fixed with bullhorn bars and brake for riding around the city, remove the brake and swap the bars to race at the velodrome. Brooks saddle is not included. Everything else is for sale.

email with any questions or offers. pics attached

If you’re in the market for a bargain frame with top of the line components, excepting the saddle of course, then I think you have found the right bike for you. I’m interested in it purely for the Chris King headset. I’ve always wanted to know what makes those things so highly prized. I mean, how awesome can the act of turning the handlebars actually be? I may never know.

Alas, my pockets lack the necessary depth, but I invite you to purchase “GT Track Bike” as soon as possible. I look forward to your report on the experience!

Welp, they’ve finally gone and done it. Some Korean designers have upgraded the bicycle to version 2.0 after many long years. All this time we’ve been riding around on 1.0 versions of the things and not even knowing how backwards we were. Can you imagine? The shame!

Here’s what the designer had to say about Bike 2.0:

Bike 2.0 the next generation bicycle, will give you more fun with energy boosts when you are cruising around. It makes you daily ride more comfortable with energy leveling and the stepless gearbox. You can even add the seat-tube battery and get there faster. Bike 2.0 has a generator and wires instead of a chain, so you will never get oily pants or fingers from the chain again. The two wireless control-units will control any aspect of your ride. You can easily control all this with the two wireless rings on the handlebar.

I like new bikes as much as anyone, but the problem with trying to design bike 2.0 is that bikes are already distilled to their necessary parts. It’s hard to come up with a new version of the basic frame-and-wheels that is better than the one we already have, but that doesn’t stop designers from trying. Usually they remove at least one of the tubes, or make the tubes go all over the place, all curvy and whatnot.

I think of it like trying to design a better woman. Like bicycles, some are more alluring than others, but for the most part, their respective parts are in the same general places. Moving them around or taking some away doesn’t necessarily make them better.

The included photo of Bike 2.0 is pretty, I’ll grant you that, but with the down tube and chain stays missing, your options for locking it up are limited. On top of that, I’m willing to bet that Bike 2.0 is approximately as stiff as would be a traditional bike frame made from warm cheese.

These practical matters are the sorts of things that designers tend to ignore a lot of the time, but honestly, that’s where innovation comes from: doing things that seem silly. You never know when one of these seemingly silly things will be a big hit and change the world.

Just wait until someone comes out with Cheryl 2.0.

As you already know, I spend a certain amount of my day wandering the mean streets looking for cycling-related tidbits to post here. It was in that process that I stumbled upon the following webular comic from Doghouse Diaries. Click upon the following image to see it in its full resplendence at its home site.

That webbonical cartoon apparently sparked the ire of some cyclist with a copy of Photography Shoppe, because I found this retort on Reddit. Click for the full image.

Now, the problem here, as I see it, is not that one is right and the other is wrong. It is that both are equally right and wrong. In this way, a simply drawn web comic and a cobbled-together mockery thereof come together to form what I consider to be a kind of elegant metaphor for our American two-party political system… but let me not digress.

The Doghouse Diaries web comic is completely correct. Cyclists are known to occasionally act like the rules of the road do not apply to them and they’re wrong to behave that way. It’s wrong to split lanes, wrong to run lights, and wrong to blow through stop signs. They get away with it because, for whatever reason, they aren’t policed. I don’t know why cops don’t ticket cyclists, but I wish they would. I think it’s only fair.

It is ridiculous to condemn drivers for not following the law if you yourself don’t follow it.

I’m not completely sure what the main point of the cobbled-together retort is, unless it’s to state that drivers are NPR-loving homophobes, but it does seem to want to reinforce the commonly-held belief among riders that they deserve to ride like jackasses because they’re singlehandedly doing the entire earth a favor by not driving. Yes, bikes are an excellent green alternative to motorized transport, but riding one simply does not make a person above the law, and it does not excuse anybody from common courtesy.

That’s not to say that drivers don’t perform their own special acts of ass-headedness, oftentimes while holding a cellphone to their faces, willfully drawing their attention away from the road.

The problem described in both web comics is that people sometimes act like jerks, regardless of their chosen mode of transport, but really, what better time of year than Thanksgiving to come together and start treating each other with a little more respect?

Let’s get ourselves some turkey and dressing and stuff ourselves silly, and maybe on a full stomach we can all agree to be a little more considerate going forward.

By my reckoning, there are two kinds of horrors. Actual horrible horrors, and oft-overdramatized daily horrors which are excellent fodder for hyperbole. Let us forget the former, which are actually bad, and focus on the latter. Now, let us arrange our mesh-back hyperbole trucker hats and continue. Ready? On we go!

What could be more horrible than bike theft? Death? Dismemberment? Meeting Cheryl’s parents? I submit to you that there is a horror beyond even these, and it is bike theft.

Picture it. You’ve ridden over to the coffee shop in hopes that the cute one is working. You go inside without rolling your pants leg down because you want her to see that you’ve ridden your bike in hopes that it will make you somehow more desirable as a flirting partner (it doesn’t). Coffee purchased and flirting mishandled, you walk outside with a “Well, at least I still have my bike” frame of mind, only to discover that your bike has been… stolen! Nooooo!

That’s when the ninjas attack.

Okay, I’m lying about the ninjas, but people do get their bikes stolen all the time. So how do you protect yourself?

Check out this article from The Guardian, which is to England roughly what the Creative Loafing is to Atlanta. It tells the tale of Omar Aziz the bike thief and includes some tips from him on how to keep your bike. Here I have distilled it to its main points.

How to guard against bike theft:
1. Ride a shitty bike.
2. If you can not do 1, never lock your bike outside.

Some people advocate buying a nice bike and then shitting it up with filth or spray paint to hide its worth, but I don’t recommend it. Better to just ride an authentically shitty one and save yourself some time and effort, I think.

In the article, Omar comes right out and says that if someone wants to steal your bike badly enough, they are going to steal it and no amount of locking can truly protect it.

Owners of bikes costing more than a few hundred quid should always take them indoors. Whenever Aziz’s crack dealer got wind of an expensive bike locked up in the area he would send Aziz out to fetch it. Thieves also watch where expensive bike are regularly parked. For anyone with outdoor parking, he recommends riding a cheaper bike.

Incidentally, a “quid” is like a dollar, but its a coin instead of a slip of paper. It is worth more, but the people who take them also charge a lot more for things, so it evens out.

In the case of bicycle protection, there may be a third option. Behold!

Now, I don’t speak whatever language that is in the video — I think it might be Latin — but anyone can see that the gentleman pictured is using some manner of contraption to raise his bike up a pole and out of the reach of the teeming hordes of would-be bike thieves, not to mention ninjas.

I wonder what Aziz would think of the pictured contraption. Perhaps he has met his match!