"Right," Said Fred: Footloose and Jersey-Free

In yesterday's post, I suggested one should not wear the "mayo jaune" of the Tour of France race leader  unless one is in fact the Tour of France race leader.  I would now like to retract that statement.  The fact is that wearing any jersey--even one reserved exclusively for the most bestest cyclists in the world--is vastly preferable to wearing no jersey at all:

In the world of roadie fashion, there's Fred and then there's Right Said Fred, and this particular look is distinctly the latter.

There is one exception to the "any jersey is better than no jersey" rule though, and that is of course classic Primal Wear:

The above jersey was of course a part of Primal's wildly popular "Lophiiformes" series, because nothing goes together quite as well as cycling and ichthyology.

Speaking of Freds, it's well known among physicists that Fred "Woo-Hoo-Hoo-Hoo!" speed is 46mph:


Sadly, Freds Down Under (or "Frumundas" for short) might never know the joys of this magical velocity, for a Melbourne City Councillor wants to impose a bicycle speed limit of 20 so-called "kilometers" per hour:

Why?  Because he was almost hit by a cyclist who ran a red light:

Cr Ong said he was almost struck by a cyclist moving at speed recently. ''The other day when I walked out from town hall I nearly got run over from a cyclist who shot through a red light as I was crossing Little Collins Street right in front of town hall.''

Maybe I'm missing something here, but isn't the problem that the cyclist ran the red light?  If so, I'm assuming that's already illegal in Melbourne, which means that no additional legislation is necessary. Really, imposing a speed limit because someone ran a red light is like raising the sales tax to combat shoplifting.

I suspect what may really be going on is that Australia is determined to usurp the United States from its position as the most "cycling-challenged" nation in the world.  However, they're going to have to get up pretty early in the morning if they want to do that--even earlier than they do now, which is like a day before us, since I think it's already Friday there.  Sure, Australia may have mandatory helmet laws and politicians proposing speed limits and newscasters who think cyclists "door" themselves on purpose, but here in Canada's chamois we just suspend students when they try to ride their bikes to school:

Yes, even the support of the police and the mayor wasn't enough to absolve these kids from the mortal American sin of slowing down motor vehicle traffic in an uptight suburb of a place that barely qualifies as a city:

"It was causing a problem, they were taking up a lane of traffic,' said Pennington. So it was an inconvenience for parents, teachers, but it was also a safety risk," said Pennington.


The students notified Walker Police and had an officer and Walker Mayor Rob VerHeulen escort them. But but Kenowa Hills High School principal, Katie Pennington says she was not informed. She says the bike ride caused a traffic back-up and created a safety hazard.

Also enraged was the Reverend Shaw Moore from that similarly uptight town in "Footloose," who had this to say:

"Even if this was not a law, which it is, I'm afraid I would have a lot of difficulty endorsing an enterprise which is as fraught with genuine peril as I believe this one to be."

Fortunately, wherever teenagers' rights to ride bicycles and/or dance is threatened, there's always one person ready to come to the rescue:

Incidentally, I'm surprised self-conscious and brake-dependent Nü-Freds haven't adopted Kevin Bacon's subtle behind-the-fork caliper positioning.  

Meanwhile, in Washington, DC, a Tweeterer informs me that someone is using the Capital Bikeshare to steal iPhones:

Here's how it happened:


A man rode up, hit her in the face and pedaled away with the device — all without hitting the brakes.


“She said she was on the phone and was trying to be aware and was holding the phone pretty tight,” said a man who talked to the woman immediately after the robbery but did not see it. “He hit her in the face. He didn’t even stop.”

He didn't even stop?!?  How rude!  If only there were a bicycle speed limit in place then this crime would never have happened.  Hopefully a local politician will get right on that, because speeding cyclists are far more dangerous than people who watch TV while they drive:

I encountered this person while riding through Brooklyn yesterday, and while the reflections from the window make it difficult to see, the driver's eyes were glued to a TV screen placed discreetly by the gearshift:

I guess this is what the police mean when they say "no criminality."  After all, he'd never kill someone on purpose.  He'd just do it because he was watching TV.

By the way, on that same ride, someone almost let his dogs go pee-pee on my Scattante:

Sure, I don't have proof that he would have allowed it, but he did seem to be nudging the larger dog towards my wheel with one of his flip-flops, and I'm reasonably sure that if I had arrived a second later I would have caught it in flagrante urino.  Indeed, people let their dogs urinate on bikes all the time, which is why you should never leave yours parked with a baguette on it:

The above was forwarded to me by a reader, and it is easily one of the dumbest "portaging" systems I have ever seen:

Though I would enjoy it if Nü-Freds abandoned the messenger bag in favor of self-mummification.