Secondly, this, as forwarded by many readers:
As my lord and saviour Jesus Christ famously said, "My heart bleeds for them when I hear someone walked face first into a camera, but it’s their own fault at the end of the day."
So far I've watched this video roughly two thousand times, and my favorite thing about it is that Canadians still have adorably lilting accents, even when they're evil incarnate and they're in tremendous pain.
Anyway, you may be wondering how and where I found Jesus Christ. Was he in one of his usual hiding places? The broom closet? My other pants? In the study, with the rope, snogging with Colonel Mustard?
Nope. Jesus was in my Surly Big Dummy, along with pretty much everything else in the known universe.
See, springtime is child-portaging time. You know the drill: picnics, waterside bike rides, gruelling survivalist outings in preparation for the coming Apocalypse. (Nothing brings a family together like painting yourselves in camouflage, spending three days in a state park, and shooting at pictures of President Obama.) Therefore, I was giving the Big Dummy a little going-over, which of course involves throwing away the gazillions of pounds of crap that accumulate in the luggage area. And not only did I find Jesus Christ, but I also found this:
The Clif Bar on the right is obviously, well, a Clif Bar, and the black desiccated thing on the left is apparently what a banana becomes after a period of extreme neglect. I have no idea how long it was in there since it was in a plastic bag, and I had just assumed the plastic bag was empty. Finally though, I went to throw the plastic bag away and to my surprise there was a prehistoric banana in it. There was also a neat little hole in the bag, suggesting that perhaps a rodent of some kind was nibbling on it back in an age when it contained more nutrients.
Needless to say, I ate both the Clif Bar and the banana, after which I blacked out. When I awoke, Jesus Christ was standing over me, both resplendent and "commando" in his gleaming white Robes of Justice.
Challah Lawyer, Ah, Meh.
Moving on, yesterday I mentioned the Sram Red blahbidyblah groupeaux with hydraulic rim brakes, which prompted a reader to leave the following comment:
Anonymous said...
I don't know what idiocy prompted me to click on the SRAM yadda yadda groupset link, but then I saw that they're offering hydraulic rim brakes.
Let me take a moment to repeat that: hydraulic rim brakes.
wwwwwwhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!?
APRIL 16, 2013 AT 4:44 PM
Why? Silly Fred! Didn't you read the article?
It’s when the road starts to fall, and the speed starts to rise that the HRR (Hydraulic Road Rim) really starts to impress. With the lightest of touches, a single finger is more than enough to scrub masses of speed. As our confidence grew we found ourselves leaving it later and later to slow our velocity on entry to a corner and make significant improvements in overall speed. For example, the previous day's ride on mechanical brakes gave a max speed on the same descent of 42.8mph. On the hydraulic set-up we clocked 47.8mph.
Yeah, that's right. With Sram hydraulic rim brakes, you can finally attain Fred "Woo-hoo-hoo-hoo!" speed:
By the way, I'm sure the fact that they were able to descend faster on the second day had absolutely nothing to do with their now being more familiar with the descent. I'm sure it was all because brake fluid rather than a cable was causing an otherwise identical brake pad to make contact an otherwise identical rim.
I don't doubt that the hydraulic brakes do feel nice and all, but I'll stick with my current descending performance enhancing technique, which is harnessing the awesome power of gravity by applying additional mass to my midsection via regular consumption of alcoholic beverages.
(As Jesus always says, nothing gets you down hills faster than being fat and drunk.)
But you know what stops me in my tracks faster than any hydrolic break ever could? An email subject line like this:
Cycling Kickstarter Needs Support!
What? Your Kickstarter project needs help, you say?!? What do you need? I'll do anything! Shall I give you a blank check? Bood, do you need blood? Really, I don't even need to know what the project actually is, so sure am I that it will be revolutionary--though in this case I eventually clicked through and learned it's for something called "BarBumps." BarBumps may sound like something Lindsay Lohan does on a night out, but it's actually just tumors you put under your bartape. You can put them here:
Or here:
Or here:
(Looks like she did too many BarBumps.)
Or you get the idea.
Anyway, it's certainly not a bad idea, but for this he wants $32,000?
I'm not giving that kind of scratch to someone who wraps his handlebars from the top down:
I did just have a million dollar idea though, which is that SRAM should buy this concept and modify it so that the BarBumps could also contain the brake fluid. That way their new hydraulic levers wouldn't have to be all coneheaded.
You're welcome.
By the way, remember these?
Yeah, neither does anybody else.
In the meantime, if you need me, I'll be riding my new fixie, as forwarded by various readers:
Look for me in Central Park doing Fred "Woo-hoo-hoo-hoo!" speed times two.
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