Going to miss this little mountain. And not off to a very good start.
That’s the hole a Jones bike leaves when it comes through your side window 30 miles from home on the 2700 mile trip. My once valiant Subaru factory rack is now past tense.
Normally, I find myself on the side of science when it comes to most debates. I not only believe global warming is real and the result of human activity, for instance, but I even know the names and corporate titles of a few of the humans directly involved. Sure, there are downsides. I always have to take people’s word for it that Jesus is appearing to them on their toast or their dog’s asses, and maybe watching “Finding Bigfoot” would be more fulfilling if I thought it was a show about something other than lonely men spending time between Comic-Cons outdoors.
When it comes to the delicate subject of bicycles and genitalia, though, I can’t help but find myself at odds with the pocket protector crowd. First, there was the widespread panic among every supersized, red-blooded American male with an old Huffy hanging unused in his garage that any means of conveyance that didn’t involve fossil fuel was going to render his penis slightly more useless than it was already, and now it’s the ladies’ turn. The New York Times is citing a study of 48 frequent cyclists conducted at Yale in 2006 that found the female cyclists have “less genital sensation” than a control group of female runners.
In the latest study, the Yale researchers tried to determine whether there are specific factors that influence soreness and numbness among female riders. Forty-eight women took part in the study, each a consistent rider who cycled a minimum of 10 miles a week, but typically much more.
The women took their personal bikes and saddles into the lab. The researchers mounted the bikes on a stationary machine, and had the riders position their seats and handlebars according to their preference. As the women pedaled, they reported whether they felt soreness, numbness or tingling as a result of sitting on the bike seat, and a device was used to measure sensation in the pelvic floor.”
I trust scientists and all, but I do think a follow-up study that measures the effect of “a device used to measure sensation in the pelvic floor” on a woman’s overall well-being might be in order.
While I don’t doubt there’s a correlation between sitting on a bike for hours and “environmental changes,” what concerns me is that an uneducated public traditionally uses this as yet another excuse not to ride a bike more often. And that’s infuriating. Of the many things affecting women’s sexual health and overall well-being right now (Rick Santorum, men who watched “Jersey Shore,” etc.), riding a bike can’t even be seriously included in the same list. Seems I’m not alone in questioning the overall usefulness of the article, though at least the world of science has given saddle manufacturers their next marketing campaign.
I’m the textbook definition of “biased” here, but given the overall physical, mental, and emotional health of women who ride bicycles versus women who, say, immediately eat a Big Mac any time the genital-despoiling urge to ride a bike pops into their heads, I’m betting the bicycle riders are healthier and more satisfied overall people.
You know what is dangerous about bicycles, though? Evading the police on them. I have no idea if this is possible or real, but, seriously, is there any way European cyclists don’t embarrass home-grown American attempts at cycling stupidity?
Maybe cycling sometimes impedes blood flow to the head.
Bike shops all around America are sitting on a potentially huge money making opportunity, and it’s something they’re actually paying for right now. Following news that the U.S. government’s GSA agency spent over $820,000 in tax-payer funds on a lavish conference in Las Vegas that included a mind-reader, a clown and a $75,000 team building exercise assembling bicycles, I was left wondering two things.
First, what the hell is the GSA? From what I can gather, the General Services Administration is the division of the U.S. government that helps other agencies make smart purchases–particularly when it comes to things like conferences. Well, that makes sense then. Apparently the GSA clips coupons on office chairs and teaches less frugal agencies money saving tips, like hiring outside contractors to help plan your party in Vegas, even though your agency has people who do that sort of thing for a living. As a quick reminder, this is what it looks like when Ron Paul laughs:
Gruesome. Thanks a lot, GSA.
Second, and more relevant to my point, who sold these tools unassembled bicycles for $75,000? Some further research suggested 24 bicycles were involved (which were later donated to the Boys and Girls Club). My calculator says that’s $3125 per bike for bikes that were apparently suitable to then donate to children. This would either suggest there are kids at one or two Boys and Girls Club locations currently doing some playground derby on a carbon frame with Ultegra components, or that the clowns at the GSA spent over $3k on bikes with a street value of less than $500 (probably less than $300) and they had to do the assembly.
Bike shops of America: why the hell haven’t we thought of this sooner? Instead of paying for bike techs to properly build the bikes you sell to customers, in today’s DIY culture, why not charge ten times more for the customer to have the honor of actually assembling his or her own bike?
Imagine what else we could do with this! The money making opportunities you’d been sitting on all along could make you a fortune–with the right marketing. Some possible window signs.
All this week, buy one bike and we’ll let you pay for a second bike for one of the shop guys!
Get one free baseball bat test shot to the head by each member of our staff with the purchase of any helmet over $80 and $1 off full price on your next helmet!
Free lifetime service of our bikes in our shop by you, with the purchase of any bike valued at over $750, and half off the cost of maintenance supplies you use while building our bikes!
Endless possibilities, really.
I’m about to put an idea in your head. Seriously. Like all ideas, it’s a little scary, and it does suggest you start paying attention to the world around you and stuff, but it’s not a bad idea. In fact, it’s probably a very good idea. Still, I know ideas really upset some people, so I figured a heads up was in order in case you want to just skip the next few paragraph. OK, here’s the idea:
People have become things. I meant this literally. Pay attention to nearly everything you read, and I promise you’ll notice. The word “who” has been almost entirely replaced by the word “that.”
I don’t know what this means, or who’s to blame–though I suspect it’s a side-effect of reality television and “Me First!” culture on the skids. I don’t think it’s a coincidence, though, that this new grammatical quirk is happening at the same time mixed martial arts is more popular than ever and at least some part of America thinks hospitals should let some people die. Check out the “fuck you” face on Alpha Male Model up top there. He and his swooning girl can be found on the Kohl’s site, where once famous cycling industry maverick Michael Ball’s bankrupt company crash landed. Do you think that man regards you as a person? Be serious. He doesn’t even regard “his girl” as a person, let alone your sorry Levis-wearing ass. While it’s not the model’s fault his photographer kept yelling, “Look like a nasty asshole, yeah! Like a mean thoughtless prick! Nice!” the fact remains that dickishness is in, and it’s hip to regard others with a mix of disgust, contempt, and obliviousness–as “those people that we don’t know.” We’ve stopped seeing people as people, and it’s showing up in our speech and our writing. Grammatically, we’re walking around in a near permanent state of asshattery when it comes to our fellow man.
If you skipped those last few paragraphs, skip this one, too, because I’m not done yet–or read it with no context, which might make it almost fun. Offering examples is ridiculous because they’re everywhere, but I’ve noticed the problem is particularly rampant in business web articles, suggesting that as corporations became people, people became things. Here’s an article, for instance, that offers productivity tips for “People That Hate GTD (Getting Things Done)”. Well sure, you’re thinking, cold hard business tracts about ruthless shit sometimes read even better when humans are debased, but that’s just business. But explain “Those That Believe,” a sweet little web article that argues salvation will be granted to everybody, not just some of us, while grammatically disposing of each and every one of our souls.
Maybe we have the word “whom” to blame, a simple word that’s as mysteriously unknowable as Ahab’s white whale and as terrifyingly unfriendly as Ridley Scott’s aliens, all at once. Did the fear of “who vs. whom” lead us to stop regarding each other as human beings? Who knows?
One thing I know, however, is that the new Santa Cruz Tallboy LTc is one badass looking bicycle.
See, and you didn’t think I was going to mention bicycles at all today.
Believe it or not, I’m actually trained in the art of English writing. Like I have a few degrees. I can tell you, for instance, that my previous sentence isn’t really a sentence in the proper, independent clause sense, but rather a “fragment” or dependent clause that can’t stand on its own as a sentence, but has found itself sitting there, pretending to be a sentence, either because its author doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing, or for effect (I’m guessing the former).
I mention this because once upon a time I tutored professional college athletes at the University of Pittsburgh, including a few guys who went on to play pro ball. I have no idea what bovine growth hormones they were putting in these guys’ steaks, but if you paid attention, you could literally hear the freshmen linemen getting bigger and bigger each week, based on the sound the elevator made straining to get them to our floor and the reverberations through the building as they came down the hall.
The thing is, every one of these guys tended to be more humble than I’d expected, given that they’d often just been through the courtship of their lifetime and were generally regarded by the entire school as not just students, but financial assets. One likened the experience to being treated like the proverbial “piece of meat,” but told me it only drove him to focus even more on his studies. All things considered, they were remarkably level-headed guys, which is something that came to mind when I found this article about Taylor Lewan, a six-foot-eight, 302-pound offensive tackle at Michigan, who rides a tandem around campus, usually with somebody else.
Lewan was interviewed recently by Michigan’s MGoBlog, and the subject of his bike appeared to be a bit distracting for the individual conducting the interview. Granted, this isn’t the world’s go-to-source for hard-hitting journalism and it’s not like major news sources have run with this as a story or anything, but tandem fascination has clearly gripped the world of college football.
Lewan is a goofball, no doubt, and to act like he’s only riding the bike around to get places would be to ignore his sense of humor, but, all comedic intent aside, he is actually using the tandem to get around campus, and it’s not something he takes out only occasionally for giggles. In fact, given all the comic fascination, his straight and simple responses in this interview seem to suggest he has real talent as a straight man when need be, but also that he simply likes his bike. Riding it isn’t only about joking around, and that’s clearly tough for his interviewer and everyone who’s picked up this story to get their heads around.
“I do. I ride a twosy bike. That’s not leaving Ann Arbor. I’m keeping that twosy bike.”
Is there ever someone on the back?
“Oh yeah. I give rides. I carpool. I ride with a couple guys. Drew Dileo’s in the back of the thing all the time. You guys know Chris Brown from hockey. He’s on there, too.”
Is the weight distribution an issue?
“No. There’s really no problem with that. Do you have any more football questions at all?”
What has Elliott Mealer done this spring to move into the left guard position?
“Elliott Mealer’s a fifth year senior. He’s been through two coaches. He knows football. He gets it. Coming in, I think he’s doing a phenomenal job. I have 100% confidence in him. If he’s the guy I play next to in the fall, I’ll be excited about it.
“Anything else? You guys just want to talk about the tandem bike. I get it.”
When’d you get it?
“A couple weeks ago.”
Where from?
“There’s a place on North Campus called Midwest Bike & Tandem … I’ve always wanted a tandem bike, a twosy. So I had to get it.
“Do you have any other football questions?”
No.
“You good? Okay you guys have a great day.”
So yeah, I’m sure Lewan and his roster of passengers are plenty aware of the comedic effect of the tandem, but they’re also not riding the thing in parades here. It’s serving a purpose. The weird enthusiasm of the person conducting the interview took me back to my days with the guys at Pitt. Gifted and in demand or not, they tended to need to concentrate twice as hard just to function, given all the bullshit constantly surrounding them, and they had to put up with the more bizarre forms of scrutiny. Sometimes, they even had to be the adults.
So why do college athletes get attention for even the simple stuff? I think it’s intentional, a kind of mind-numbing media hazing designed to prepare them to answer the tough questions later in life with simple “fuck you” answers like, “I’m just taking it one day at a time,” “I can’t say enough good things about this team,” and “Yeah, I ride a bike.”
Funny or not, the Lewan interview reminds us there are still a lot of places in America where you’re expected to explain why you ride a bike, instead of having to explain why you don’t.
Image courtesy of my daughter, Riley, the most cynical 11-year-old ever. And of course she built her own blog, too.
Contrary to the whole point of many blogs, this one has always tried to be about something. I mean more than what I ate for breakfast or what crap I just bought. Mostly, that’s because I have no life and frequently get all pissed off about various marketing, e-comm and bike industry stuff. Lately, a few of you have noticed I’ve seemed almost prolific, posting a blog a day, five days a week–and yes, that’s what I’ve been doing. Pretty cathartic, this stuff.
Thing is, I find myself about to be working two fairly significant jobs pretty soon, in addition to trying to develop prototypes for my full-suspension design and occasionally sending some of my charming snark Dirt Rag’s way for Manic Mechanic and various other magazine locations they’re hoping to see shed some readership. Obviously, the plate’s kind of full, and here’s this Canootervalve.com thing that doesn’t pay any bills. That’s a tough one.
I’m thinking the most sensible solution is probably to roll this space into one or more of my actual jobs. I’d like it to always be a place for news about Project Danzig, the suspension project, but I’m starting to think it might make sense to roll this whole blog into my new job, a bike+web startup project that should start making some noise around the end of April. I have a lot riding on it, like moving my whole family 3,000 miles in order to make it happen, and I’m thinking I should make any really early announcements about it here.
But what do I know? My life is rarely entertaining to me, let alone any of you, so how about we test this form thing I just added, and you let me know what you think I should do with this blog.
A while back I was on a kick about small retailers making and owning their own content. I never read my own posts (too many typos, and I hardly ever agree with myself in retrospect), but I’m pretty sure I’d been talking about independent bike dealers getting their shops on the Internet–however they can–and leveraging the great content they already have. Almost every shop is filled with people who race, and many of them also have interesting hobbies. The percentage of bike shop employees and hangers-on who dabble in music, film or writing tends to be considerably higher than that of the local bank or accounting firm, and, even if your particular crew seems to have little talent–maybe, particularly if you have little talent (have you seen what goes viral these days)–you should be creating content to identify your brand.
And your patron saint in this endeavor should be Red Bull, a company that seems to’ve spent five dollars creating a beverage and millions upon millions in marketing it. Consider this recent FastCompany article about Red Bull’s Media House. Media House is the content production wing of Red Bull, a 100,000-square foot building in Santa Monica, California that lets Red Bull basically bypass traditional marketing channels and go directly to their end users. Media House represents one of the first and most significant changes social media and direct contact has wrought on the world of conventional marketing. Why buy an ad during the Superbowl or blanket billboards when you can spend a reported $2-million creating your own film, The Art of Flight and use it to market your product directly to your users?
Oh, and you can also get them to pay for it.
According to FastCompany, The Art of Flight has topped more than one of iTunes’s sales charts for a week, selling for $10.
That’s right. Red Bull is actually selling us their advertising. And we’re buying it.
This isn’t because we’re stupid (though I guess that’s debatable), but because it’s really pretty amazing. If you’re in the bike industry, you know what I’m talking about: mind-blowing, downright inspirational acts of skill with everything from rally cars to trials bikes, captured on film and expertly pieced together into something amazing.
And they didn’t just happen to accumulate this content. Realizing they were basically selling a new, even nastier kind of soda, Red Bull and other “energy drink” companies started hoarding content immediately. Dietrich Mateschitz, who started Red Bull reportedly saw marketing as equally important to the product. If not more important.
Media House managing director Werner Brell is quoted in the article:
Whenever we did any event, or signed an athlete or executed a project, everything has been put on film or photographed. Stories have been told. It’s part of the DNA of the brand.”
Red Bull is likely to be a $500-million dollar company this year. On the scale at which a company of that size operates, their in-house marketing department poses a unique threat to conventional marketing companies. Mostly because it’s so much better.
I’ve been unfortunate enough to sit through multiple marketing, web-development, and countless other “creatives” meetings, and the standard method for dealing with a brand’s content usually goes something like this:
Marketing Guy: So then you provide us with the deliverables, your content, and we will turn it into something incredible, blah, blah, trust us.
Brand X: But what does that mean exactly? We’re struggling to make the content ourselves?
Marketing Guy: Partially that’s because you lack our Shitwad 4000 CMS system, which is based on hot new Photoshop-like web app technology that most hardcore programmers wet themselves laughing at and will be obsolete by the end of the year.
Brand X:: What?
Marketing Guy: Did I just say that out loud?
Brand X: Yes.
Marketing Guy: Ha, ha. I was just making sure you’re listening. Let me show you the work we did for Pepsi creating that awesome sans-serif custom font again, and then let’s critique that logo you drew yourself one last time.
Brand X: Uh, OK.
Marketing companies aren’t in the content game. They’re in the content container game. You know who’s always ultimately responsible for the content-driven success of a company? The company.
Any small business in existence should be capturing all the content it can and making as much of it available to end users as possible. I think bike shops are uniquely positioned to make this happen. Unlike Red Bull, you don’t even have the added inconvenience of a product nobody actually needs. You sell bicycles. Bicycles kick ass. Own your content.
That’s the “Ferrari” of electric bike maker EH Line’s current lineup, the unimaginatively named “Street Racer.” According to Gizmag, it weighs about 35-pounds, has a top speed of 28mph under its own power, and costs just under $10,000. I mention it here only because some of you heavy embrocators out there may one day find a new High Tech Fred bridging up to you aboard one of these, and I’m sure he’ll want to talk. Sure as robots taking over the world and yearly Spiderman movies, the clash between whatever it is we consider “cycling culture” and motorized bicycles is coming, so you might want to start sorting out your opinions.
Speaking of hot new commuting rides and robots taking over the world, I’m pretty sure that if I ever caved to the joys of electric assist, I’d go all in.
As Seen on TV
Anything good enough for Carrie Brownstein is good enough for me. As marketing goes, the best thing about Portlandia product placements is that the show itself goes out and looks for weird Portland-made stuff–though it still pales in comparison to the best product placement ever seen in a TV show.
But the latest trend in marketing has yet to show up in the bike industry. Mostly, it’s still in beta testing by companies like Belvedere Vodka, that recently posted the image of a smiling man grabbing a panicked woman from behind with the title, “Unlike some people, Belvedere always goes down smoothly,” on the company’s Facebook page.
Yes, that really happened, and–as is the way with this hot new guerrilla marketing technique–Belvedere then issued an immediate apology, donated some money to a related charity, and sent out the obligatory bullshit “well, I never” letter from President Charles Gibb, which went like this:
It should never have happened. I am currently investigating the matter to determine how this happened and to be sure it never does so again. The content is contrary to our values and we deeply regret this lapse.”
While Mr. Gibb investigates–a process he certainly makes sound more laborious than the President of the company picking up a phone and saying, “I want the fucking idiot who posted a rape scene on our Facebook page in my office by this time tomorrow holding a box of all the shit in his cubicle”–the public apology has certainly made the rounds.
At least in the new viral marketing landscape, charities stand to do pretty well, positioned as they happen to be to receive considerable mea culpa money. As the saying goes, better to ask forgiveness than permission–especially when it comes to brand exposure. Once the next marketing hotness goes mainstream, I suspect we’ll see all sorts of crimevertisement hybrids, from date rape video product feature condemnations from Budweiser and Abercrombie and Fitch, to McDonald’s wild viral success, “World Vomit Day!” and the record-setting “Cannibalism Apology” following a new Pizza Hut topping rollout.
It’s going to be an exciting time to be a consumer.
For as mellow a winter as most places had, Spring seems to be out of the gates strong this year, with April Fool’s day apparently being celebrated far earlier and longer than usual, and almost more glorious madness than a chronicler of such things can manage.
By now you (and nearly five million other people) have to’ve seen the dude who created bird wings that briefly got him airborne.
Except that they didn’t, the whole thing being a really elaborate hoax perpetrated by one Floris Kaayk, an artist in the Netherlands. Apparently Kaayk (which I believe would be the ultimate name for the first automobile bike rack from IKEA) really did intend to inspire people, but also to conduct an “experiment about online media.” Whatever that was, seemed like it worked. Hoax or not, why do I suspect kids in the Netherlands will be flying to school while we’re still taking our kids to school in these?
In the interest of full disclosure, in the past I did alternate picking my daughter up from school on the bike with picking here up in this.
In my weak defense, it was supposed to be the company car for my original bike company, Asylum Cycles (big wheels, get it?), and Tall Dan the Mechanic and I had converted it to run on veggie oil, but what it really ran on was wads of burning cash. Also, the doors rarely closed properly, and trying to accelerate hard to slam the door shut while my daughter teetered precariously six feet above the ground, giggling uncontrollably, definitely made an impression on the other parents at the school. After the Mog, they even gave me extra room when I showed up on the bicycle.
(Owning a ’77 Unimog was maybe the best and worst thing in my life.)
At any rate, it’s getting more and more difficult to tell the true stories from the jokes. Consider Nokia’s patent on vibrating tattoos. Hard to imagine why Nokia’s lost so much market share.
But arguably the most unbelievable of all recent news has to be the return, at age 46, of troubled bike fabricator and world record setter, Graeme Obree and the latest bike he’s created for the attempt.
As is his way, Obree built the bike he’ll use to contest the hour record out of basic bike parts and plenty of stuff he found himself around the house. Yes, in the age of using wind tunnel testing to shape carbon fiber structures for maximum aerodynamics, Obree is coming out of retirement on a Reynolds 653 steel frame he cobbled together with a combination of classic components, stuff he modified with a grinding wheel, and parts he literally whittled himself. You really should go check the full bike out at Cyclingnews.
Between Merckx riding through his entire career with a life threatening heart condition–then shrugging off the news once he found out–to Obree’s well-documented struggles and obsessions, if there seems to be a pattern to my recent ramblings about the true characters of cycling, it’s not an accident. This is mankind at our most self-deluded and absolutely magical, and I’m certainly pulling for Obree again. The thing is, just like our strange friend in the Netherlands didn’t really need to fly to get our collective attention, Obree really doesn’t need to break the record again. He’s already succeeded in creating another incredible story for us, which is really what he’s always done best.
Does anyone else find it just a little odd that recent revelations about the Cannibal’s potentially fatal heart condition suggests doctors kept the news of the problem from Merckx himself? I did, based on this AFP article, which seemed to suggest Italian cardiologist Giancarlo Lavezzaro was something akin to a Disney villain, green-lighting Merckx to race despite knowing the man could die. Such is the nature of “stuff on the Internet,” though. Only after reading a bit more thorough article on VeloNation did it become clear Dr. Lavezzaro lacked the tests necessary to make a definitive determination.
But still.
In the VeloNation article, Lavezzaro is described as saying, “Every day after work I went back home and asked my wife what had happened in the Giro. I feared she would reply that there was a problem with the Belgian cyclist Eddy Merckx,” also stating that, “Today I would never let Merckx race.” What seems odd in light of today’s, um, “extremely thorough” relationship between doctors and racers, is the downright outpatient nature of the diagnosis. Lavezzaro apparently states, “We could clearly see that he had a problem, but an exact diagnosis could then only with an invasive procedure. During the Giro was impossible.”
Brutal as the ’68 Giro was, it did, nevertheless, end at some point, but this all pre-dated iPads and even Google Calendar, so I guess nobody thought to write down, “Make sure Eddy’s heart doesn’t explode once the Giro’s over.” Così va la vita.
All this information is coming to light thanks to a new Merckx biography by Daniel Friebe, Eddy Merckx, The Cannibal, and this might be a book I have to own.
Either way, this most recent story continues to prove that things were a little different back then. You could be a big shot actor and still race motorcycles on weekends in the late ’60s, and, while I certainly don’t mean to justify what still, to me, seems somewhat less than Hypocratic patient care here, it’s difficult to imagine the sport of cycling in a world where Merckx stopped racing in ’68, and Merckx himself seems unperturbed by the whole thing, and pretty happy with his career post-68.
Today, in contrast, regulation of athletes and sport continues to be more important than ever. Following the release of new rules by the UCI restricting sock height and forcing teams to leave the “lawyer tabs” in place on their forks, one can only expect to soon see a ruling declaring reflectors mandatory during competition.
At least we should see some sweet UCI-approved technological advancements in the field of competition visibility.
I smell another use for batteries!