Tacking it On: Sabotage!

In an incident that will be forever known as "Tackgate," or "Puncturegate," or perhaps even "Prickgate," a number of Tour de France riders--most notably Cadel Evans--fell victim to a saboteur or saboteurs who strew ("strew" is pretentious for "threw") tacks at the summit of the climb on yesterday's stage 14.  Here's what Evans's tire looked like afterwards:



And here's what it looked like when Jim Ochowicz tried to give Evans a wheel change, as captured by Cycling Inquisition:



By the way, the above video is completely unedited, and they just so happened to be listening to the theme music from "The Benny Hill Show" in the BMC team car at top volume at the time of the incident.

In any case, this deplorable tacking is obviously the work of notorious villain Monsieur Punaise, and once French authorities apprehend him perhaps they can come to New York and help us with our own tack problem, since the NYPD certainly aren't interested:

Which is hardly surprising, since the NYPD is very concerned about squirrels all of a sudden:

“We have more important things to worry about, like people getting shot and squirrels getting run over,” said one cop. “A flat tire is not the crime of the century.”

Despite the fact that I myself have been the victim of the Central Park Tacker in seasons past (this has been going on for years, as the Post fails to point out), I would agree it's a good thing that law enforcement is finally looking out for the squirrels, especially given the problems that plague their communities in large cities all over the world:

People use the word "squirrely" to describe skittish and erratic behavior, but before the crack epidemic squirrels were actually sluggish and docile creatures whose only indulgence was a little bit of "Wednesday weed" from time to time:



Now even crack isn't enough for them, and in recent months they've taken to breaking into shopping malls and stealing bath salts from The Body Shop.

Anyway, nobody benefitted more from Tackgate than Bradley Wiggins, who has subsequently been dubbed "Le Gentleman" by the French:

In fact, "Le Gentleman" is already running with his new sobriquet and has purchased a custom car to match:

Calling it "Le Car" is a bit audacious, but getting it in yellow before he's even won the Tour is downright tacky.  And if all that weren't enough, he's now calling other riders "uncouth" to boot

Wiggins was not impressed with Rolland afterwards “I just thought it was a little uncouth at the time, the stage was gone. We had been up the final climb which was very tough, no one went away, the stage was over for GC riders.”

Just last week "cunts" were rushing out of this guy's mouth like it was a burning gynecologist's office, and now he's using SAT words to call other people rude.  At this point I'm beginning to suspect it may be Wiggins himself who orchestrated the tack attack in order to rehabilitate his public image.  Or, the other possibility is it was last-placed team Argos-Shimano, whose budget is so low that they can't afford GPS and instead use paper maps.  The likely explanation in that case is that they were marking key moments on the day's route map with thumbtacks and then the directeur sportif dropped the box out the window by accident.


Speaking of the Tour de France team classification, the first-placed team is supposed to wear yellow helmets, so it's only fair that the last-placed team should have to wear these helments with the integrated lanterne rouge:

I mentioned these helments awhile back and I still can't believe people gave the "inventors" $68,000:

It seems to me that you have helments, and you have bike lights, and therefore there's no real need to transform your head into a great big search light of dorkiness.  I'd much rather make my head look like it's being swallowed by a satanic platypus, which I now can thanks to this Cyclehawk hat I received from Kevin "Squid" Bolger, the patron of the New York City messenger community and all-around stand-up guy:

You can support the New York Bicycle Messenger Foundation by buying a hat from their eBay store.  Or, you can give some Kickstarter design douches money to turn you into a rolling R2-D2, it's completely up to you.

Meanwhile, in other urban cycling news, a reader tells me that one person broke a leg and an undisclosed number of fixies were destroyed when a car plowed through the bike rack at Zeitgeist in San Francisco's Mission District:

Officer F. Landis was the first to arrive at the scene, which was so grisly that a local hipster administered last rites to a 3Rensho with his iPhone:

If you don't have the Vatican's Last Rites "app" on your iPhone or Android device you really should download it immediately since you never know when you're going to have to prepare someone's soul for the afterlife.  And thanks to the patented "Point and Anoint" technology it's both accurate and easy to use.  In fact, it's so easy that it requires no formal Catholic training whatsoever, hence the Vatican's controversial marketing slogan:

It's all part of the Vatican's plan to make Catholicism the Apple of faiths.  I suspect they'll be successful too, since things are getting downright Biblical out there.  Consider this image that was forwarded to me by another reader:

I don't know if this guy is riding a fixed-gear, but he's certainly in a Zen-like state, right down to the headphones:

The Helment Nanzis are saying, "Where's his helmet?"  The commuter dorks are saying, "Where are his fenders?"  And the amphibious vehicle enthusiasts are saying, "Where are his pontoons?"  As for me, I mostly just enjoyed the picture, though I was rather annoyed by the incessant pop-up ads:

Insert your own pontoon joke here: ______________: