Bikes – Page 19 – CanooterValve

Lemmy Up

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Feb 222012

I’ll be traveling to Portland on Thursday, and I have to admit, I’m a little intimidated. I’ve ridden mountain bikes, road bikes, and various things in between for a whole lot of years. I’ve also spent a good bit of time on single-speeds, done some stupid stuff on tandems, and towed kids on the fixed. I am also, apparently, associated with the bike industry, meaning a trip to Portland, even one strictly for business, is supposed to feel just a little like coming home.

But the thing is, I’ve never ridden a tallbike, and I have no intentional piercings. If left to my own devices, I will not drink Pabst Blue Ribbon or make my own bike parts out of leather. More concerning still, the creativity of my facial hair ranges only from “getting slightly straggly” to “just shaved.” My riding conditions here in Mayberry also couldn’t be more different. Much of my experience sharing the road involves places where cars rarely travel (though, in fairness to me, when you do see a truck on some of the roads I ride, it’s usually best to dismount and scurry up the nearest tree before it can even get near you). To my credit, I’ve been in a band and own some really nice cloth grocery bags, but the band was a long time ago, and I think the bags were mass-produced.

Portland just bore witness to the Mini Bike Winter Olympics in general and the Ben Hurt Chariot Wars in particular, which, to my untrained East Coast eye, appears to be a cross between a GWAR show, a Michael Bay film, and that eviction scene at the end of Michael Moore’s Roger and Me. Of the various places where you can check out the festivities on the Internets, the most hipster ironic is a site out of Texas with completely corporate name.

Further irony, I’m headed into the heart of Steampunk to, among other things, discuss a bicycle frame that’s pretty non-retro and very “not steel.” In fact, it’s pretty damn high tech. Blog entries may be patchy over the next few days, but I’m hoping to show everyone a rough sketch of the new frame design. I’m finalizing a revised drawing of the the suspension that shows the shock now in the (hopefully) final, vertical position, and I hope to be able to post that up here before the week is out.

In the meantime, I’m concerned about how high the pivot is on the Superlight 29er, but I still want one. I’m a single-pivot guy from way back (but, then again, everyone who owned a full-suspension frame before 2000 pretty much had to be a single-pivot guy), and I think this bike would be just a total and absolute blast to ride.

And the new dropouts on the Highball Alloy frame? So very, very nice. I’ve had a man crush on Graney and the entire SC engineering department for years (guess I’m just drawn to the dangerous bad boy types who–literally–wear the engineering hats at bike companies). Seriously, look at the dropout.

Others have done similar things, but somehow the guys in Santa Cruz keep taking the rough-edged ideas normally found only on Hand Built Bike Show bikes and adding shit like “mechanical engineering” to create things that look good and work really well. They’ve made all kinds of slick shit at SC, but for my money, “captured nuts” is the concept that pretty much sums up the brilliance of that company’s entire crew; they’ve harnessed the power normally reserved for building the worlds first 100% deadly potato cannon or remote control 4×4 beer keg, and used it to create arguably the most rider-friendly bike designs ever made. Just very polished, usable products.

In contrast, consider the particularly un-usable Motörhead box set even Lemmy doesn’t want you to buy. First Elvis Costello, and now Lemmy Himself, is telling fans a record company’s box set of his early material is overpriced. According to this article from the Consumerist, “Unfortunately greed once again rears its yapping head,” says head Motörhead Lemmy Kilmister. “I would advise against it even for the most rabid completists!”

Only in the UK can you look like Lemmy . . .

and use a phrase like “rapid completists.”

Come to think of it, I have my mantra for the whole Portland trip. When it comes to being authentic without going hipster, Lemmy is the way and the light.

Supply Chain Reaction

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Feb 212012

If you’re a dealer cog in the complex drive train of bicycle sales, a big gear in your system started turning last weekend. You might not have felt it yet, but you will.

This was the first year I didn’t attend Frostbike, a mammoth bike industry get together at the mothership of the industry’s most formidable distributor, Quality Bicycle Products, in Minneapolis. I’d like to think I didn’t attend because there just wasn’t any challenge in it, given the incredibly mild weather the Twin Cities had this year–at least, compared to last year, when our flights home were canceled and we had to rent a car and idle through a 300-mile white-out at a blistering fifteen miles an hour while subsisting on cheese curds and counting wrecked cars to pass the time. Sadly, not attending this year means I missed something that’s been many years in the making. Bicycle Retailer is describing it as a “war”. The mighty Q’s El Presidente and Raison d’Etre All in One, Steve Flagg, called out some large retailers, including Amazon, in a pretty unequivocal way:

“I believe that our industry is losing the war against the Chain Reactions, the Wiggles, the Amazons. We think that together with all of you we can address this problem.”

Well damn. This is a tremendous statement. If it doesn’t seem to tremendous consider that QBP’s headquarters is very much in Minnesota, where the average denizen could be handed a foamy-mouthed possum instead of a burger at a drive-through window, and just politely drive away for fear of hassling the store manager and maybe getting somebody in trouble. In fact, this statement translates from the native Midwestern parlance just about like this:

And just what does QBP intend to do about it? According to BRAIN’s article, Flagg is quoted as telling the gathered dealers:

Via mobile device, a customer in a shop could log on to a QBP service with access to its stores’ inventory and search for a specific product. A map would pop up indicating the nearest shops that have the product in stock or that will have it in a predetermined number of days.

If a retailer is selected for same-day pickup, the customer would pay for it online and then be asked if they want the product installed at the shop. Flagg noted this would play to local dealers’ key strength and offer what online competitors can’t: service, warranty information and deep product knowledge.

“I believe we have the capacity in 2012 to do this.”

BRAIN has a known weakness in what I believe is generally considered “journalism” and involves things like follow-up questions, and, having not been there, I’m left to wonder if Flagg was merely musing here (as he did one year when he asked the gathered dealers clamoring for him to basically make them all web sites why he shouldn’t just become the biggest on-line dealer himself), or if this technology is on the short list of to-dos at QBP. Even if this idea is only that, though–merely an idea–it marks a technological answer to the problem of mobile price shopping apps released by the likes of Amazon–an issue heretofore only addressed by Specialized, who only whined about it and used for their own political ends. To be sure, QBP stands to experience their own political gains–not to mention top line growth–in pursuing something like this, but a trademark QBP distinction is also evident: this helps local dealers.

But showing us a shiny new weapon in the battle for independent bike shops is only a small part of the significance of this statement. I’ve long been rambling on about how local bike shops need to get their asses on the Internet and start staking their claim to bicycles in the digital age, or stop whining, give up and become a repair-only shop.This newly announced stance by the major player in the wholesale distribution space is a big deal for reasons that might not initially be so obvious. In singling out a particular type of massive on-line retailer–the digital equivalent of Walmart–and pitching a new mobile technology for local shops, Flagg is legitimizing the Internet as a means of selling bicycle parts.

The minute you’re pro-actively heading onto the web to pursue sales, you are an “Internet retailer,” and this is precisely what Flagg had to sell at Frostbike this year. Whether the mobile app involved takes us to a local shop’s web site to make a purchase, or tells us where we can walk in their door is, ultimately, inconsequential here. He is suggesting the IBD move from “gatherer” to “hunter.” That’s a big deal. More importantly, he’s letting us all know this is not a drill, and he’s not a guy you should ignore. Even if Flagg wasn’t one of the smartest people in the industry, listening to everything he says very carefully would be wise, if only because of the huge quantities of industry intelligence and analytics his company is constantly gathering. Add the fact that he is one of the smartest guys in this or any other industry, and you’re looking at a genuine warning for all IBDs. Far be it for me to say I told you so, but with or without QBP’s help, dealers need to do something now.

The Thin Green Line

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Feb 202012

This weekend news of L.A.’s Spring Street and the infamous Green Bike Lane that Shall Not Be Filmed spread across the country with a speed normally reserved for stupidly large sunglasses and bad music. Really, it’s one thing when America has to tolerate bicycles getting all stuck in the fender wells of their pickups, but the idea that the most famous street in the world for filming movies and car commercials has quite literally gone green, well, that might be too much. This is, apparently, an “Anytown U.S.A.” icon where freakin’ car commercials are filmed for crissake. While I suspect Republican Senator Darrell Issa has already subpoenaed “everyone in Hollywood” and “cars from car companies” to testify to the utter job destruction this has caused and requested a special “grief” round of tax breaks for oil companies, it occurred to me that this green lane might not be all bad.

Not because of the bike thing. Everybody knows that riding a bike to work without barely escaping several life-threatening personal assaults does nothing to promote the more marketable “extreme” side of cycling so vital to the fashion industry. No, I think this strange and accidental new shade of green that renders streets impervious to film crews is a good thing for the most obvious of reasons.

Fewer movies.

At the rate we’re currently creating what passes for movies, by some calculations we will have utterly depleted everything that passes for “culture” in America for 2019.

Think about it. At some point, we’re going to run out of Dr. Seuss and comic book characters and both Starsky and Hutch and the Dukes of Hazard have already been turned into movies. Sure, we can release a Kojak movie, and–I was going to say CHiPs, but, no shit, I think there’s already a CHiPs movie planned for release in 2013–but after that, the resources are nearly gone. Like any resource, prices will go up as the availability of creativity decreases, meaning only the very fortune among us will be able to afford $250 tickets to see sparkly vampires and Resident Evil 19: Underworld, Werewolves and Vampires vs. Zombies, but even that can only last for so long. Eventually, like savages, we’ll be forced to film the cryogenically preserved head of Nicolas Cage starring in Bratz 3: It’s a Mall, Mall World.

No, there’s only so much creativity to go around, and that’s why we need to slow the pace of consumption now, while there’s still time to do something.

We need green bike lanes everywhere. In wrapping nearly every major city around the world in unfilmable green paint, we can at least cause fewer horrible movies to be made while slowing the inevitable end of all creativity as we know it. It’s clear we’ve found something–possibly the only thing–that can stop movies from being made. It falls on us now to take bold steps and act on this technology before movies leave us with nothing. Green bike lanes can save us if we take bold action now.

Or after the next Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle movie. Those are awesome.

Friday’s Fifteen Minutes and the Power of 300

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Feb 172012

Over the past six months I’ve thought a lot about a new type of retail shop. You know how all bike shops are supposed to be “about great service”? I’ve been wondering what would happen in the world of on-line retail, if we redefined that whole relationship between “store” and “customer” to better suit today’s consumer. In other words, can we build the store around the modern consumer. Literally.

To do it, we’d have to figure out what a consumer looks like these days. No small feat, because the definition is changing so rapidly. The blog photographer Jason Lee created for his daughters is pretty wonderful across the board, but this “cookie monster” image might just also happen to be one of the greatest comments ever about identity in the 21st Century. “Interactive” is one of those buzzwords that gets kicked around a lot in development and marketing circles, but I think Lee’s photo is a quiet little statement about where we’re headed as consumers. Despite not having any clear idea how it will look, or where it’ll originate, everyone–and I mean everyone–is looking for something called “social commerce” to be the Next Big Thing. I think–and hope–it’s going to look a bit like this photo.

What the hell does that mean? Well, partly it just means that it’s no longer any fun to support a company that doesn’t support us back. Still blurry, I know, but if I had a highly specific description of “social commerce” to offer, I’d be engaged in some yacht crash derby with young Mr. Zuckerberg this morning, and, having paid Salman Rushdie to write today’s post in my absence, would be subjecting you to some genuinely intelligent commentary about the state of the world. As it is, you have me, showing you bitchin’ Cookie Monster photos.

But we do know the future is going to be about each of us–or some such over-simplification. Already we’re seeing the down sides, including the political ramifications of each of us having our own separate and incompatible red or blue echo-chamber version of reality. (Which reminds me, I need to rewind my Glenn Beck “Time to Buy New Gold Coins and Guns Because We Have a Black President”-edition combination water purifier and Rapture-Watch™ alarm clock. My friends at Goldmine have a great price on some super-rare, chocolate-centered gold coins I can purchase right now as a hedge against Mayan end time currency devaluation.) There’s also the chaos that tends to follow from listening only to those who reinforce the really stupid voices in your head, but on the other side of all this deafening feedback, there could be some music. The only logical extension of where we’re headed is full personalization of the web, including each and every one of us:

Realizing we’re responsible for our opinions
Realizing those opinions are now commodities
Taking an active role in marketing those commodities ourselves
Knowing if we don’t, somebody else will be doing it for us

I’ve mentioned before that I’ve never understood why corporate Facebook pages would have “fans” or why people would bother to “like” Coca-Cola, but of course that’s not entirely true. People like these brands to connect with other people who also like the brands. The brand itself is just the umbrella. And while I still think “me-tooing” something as enormous and bland as Coke or McDonald’s makes even less sense than liking “breathing” or “the sun,” letting people connect over more meaningful brands makes a lot of sense.

That’s a fair chunk of philosophical pondering to boil down to this: if somebody started an on-line bike shop and let visitors make money selling the products, would people do it? I’ve been thinking about this for a long time now, and it seems to me that we’re not going to have “social commerce” until people have a vested interest, not just in the buying process, but also the selling. I can’t figure out why nobody has yet crowdsourced sales.

One answer might be that sharing your own opinions about stuff is easy, but curating a mash of those opinions is hard. While we’re all interested in getting in on things, sometimes none of us what to be a part of what all those separate opinions and ideas produce. Consider the new town bike concept, designed by Philippe Stark, a designer who “has applied his talents to products as diverse as a lemon squeezer and the Virgin Galactic Spaceship,”, not to mention the fugliest goddamn motorcycle I have every personally seen:

Yes, Mr. Stark has turned his attention to the urban bicycle.

According to this article, sponsored by a company selling bike riding insurance in the UK (which surely needs it), Stark “distilled” the opinions of three hundred people from Bordeaux, a city in which, , “ten per cent of trips are undertaken by bicycle,” (which frankly seems low for a European city) to create the “City PIBAL Streamer – a concept that allows the rider to sit and pedal in the conventional way, or stand on a platform and use like a scooter.” Here is the result of that collaboration.

"Tonight, we ride in hell!"

Maybe I’m being a little hard on Bordeaux, but of the horrors 300 people are capable of producing, I’m pretty sure this is the most gruesome accomplishment yet. As such, Peugeot has agreed to do the manufacturing. I’m not entirely sure what occurs in Bordeaux that requires augmenting a basic commuting bike with some of the sweet design features of a Razor scooter, but it’s obvious Mr. Stark and his 300 Bordeauxians have given the world something . . . else.

No doubt we’ll be seeing some interesting new social business models in the next six months, but the problem with crowdsourcing will still the crowd.

The Dude Effect

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Feb 162012

Last night I had a few beers with the guys I used to work with back when my company was in Pennsylvania and still owned by me. From what I understand, this sort of thing goes on all the time in bars and bowling alleys around the world, but it was notable for me, because I’d never done it before. Ever.

Don’t get me wrong: I’d been in a few bars before, when it was unavoidable (keep in mind, I grew up when smoking was still not only allowed, but seemingly encouraged, in bars around Pittsburgh), and I’ve had to attend various social events and business lunches and dinners and such that involved talking to people and simulating fun. And, to be fair, part of never going out for beers was that I didn’t drink. I hadn’t had a beer until working under the interesting new ownership of my company last year. But I’m forty one years old now, and the statement’s true: I’d never gone out with the guys just to have a few beers.

For the last decade and a half, I didn’t go out after work partly because there was no after work. There was the more intense “daylight” phase of work, and then there was the calmer, more introspective “planning” phase of work that normal people call “after work.” A lot of people who own their own businesses fall into this trap, and lots of over-simplistic stuff has been written about how you need to learn to enjoy yourself and step away from your business now and again, but I always ignored all that.

Which was stupid.

The thing about me was that I really loved work. I loved working on web sites, talking about bike parts, designing bike parts, creating supply chain management systems, overseeing groups of people, working out marketing campaigns–all that stuff. Something about me just considers that stuff fun–or more than fun: the kind of thing I’d prefer to do if left to my own devices. I love building shit. I blame Legos.

This is what owning your own business feels like.

Maybe I’m an extreme example, but just in case, my advice to any similarly self-destructive entrepreneurial types out there is to put the shit down and go have a beer. Or a coffee, if that’s your thing. The beverage doesn’t matter. Stepping outside the box you’ve made for yourself to get some perspective is what matters.

After this first foray into uncontrived socialization, I came home to a bunch of work I need to have done soon and some comments WordPress had pushed to my email. Carson Leh, the guy raising funds on Kickstarter to produce a series of “brogue” leather-covered saddles had contacted me to point out that his life wasn’t all fun and games. I recently gave Carson a bit of a hard time over the biography included on his project page, which, like a lot of Kickstarter bios, seems more focused on establishing credentials as a dynamic young person with a lot of exciting personal interests than it does convincing people you’re trying to build a responsible business. Carson, and a friend I tend to suspect might be his mom, wanted me to know he was no “Trustafarian,” and that he was holding down a day job in addition to sewing up leather saddles, and that–basically–I needed to lighten the fuck up.

He had a point. Sort of.

I’ve not found many people discussing this, but I think the Internet has fundamentally changed what we look for in a company. To some degree, bloated corporate statements about “hard work” and rigorous dedication to laboring away at the nuts and bolts of your business are giving way to a more narcissistic but genuine emphasis on the very personal story behind the business. Facebook and Twitter have fundamentally changed the game for marketing departments everywhere, and one of the reasons large corporations struggle figuring out how to use social media or just plain relate to people, compared to someone like Carson, is that these mega-corporations have no compelling, human stories to tell. Maybe they did once, but suffice to say that’s no longer our perception of them. Our perception is that they employ hundreds of thousands of people to produce hamburger-shaped objects each day, or use robots to mass produce millions of widgets we then purchase, but their businesses are largely built on avoiding personal stories–so much so that, when they try to, it just comes off hollow and a little sad. Our bought and paid for government might have decided corporations are people, but companies still haven’t figured out how to tell convincing personal stories, because all they are to us is their product or service, whereas some people will want to contribute to Carson just because he’s Carson.

In other words, this has to be the most interesting time ever to be involved in marketing. I have profoundly mixed feelings about what I see as a major transformation in how businesses communicate, and what people choose to value about a business. How much should personal story matter? Would people have ever bought shoes from Tom’s if not for the compelling social story behind the company? Can appealing to our better angels be both marketing and genuine social good? The danger I see is that we’re increasingly unable to draw a line between the quality of a product and what we believe to be that product’s story. At the risk of overwhelming my point with too charged an example: typing on an iPhone just plain sucks. I don’t see how anyone manages to crank out emails with that keyboard compared to Swiftkey on an Android phone or even a clacky Blackberry, but ask almost anyone which smartphone has the best “user interface” and the general consensus is that nothing touches an iPhone, despite the fact that what many of us do on our phones to communicate–more even than talking–involves typing, and typing on an iPhone is just painful. But the iPhone keyboard has to be better because Steve Jobs was totally OCD about that shit. Right? “I heard he once threw somebody down a flight of stairs because he didn’t like the beveling on a Macbook.” That sort of thing.

The new reliance on personal story is significant. Really significant. I don’t expect we’ll ever see a return to a labor-driven middle class in America, for instance, in part because we no longer value hard work when it’s done in the background, as part of a team of people. Instead, we value narcissism, a lack of humility, and constant personal recognition for everything we do. If Carson makes great saddles, people should buy a lot of them, but not just because they like him, and not just because he likes himself. I could see a market for what he does–hell, if the leather was a little less artsy and the price could be dialed in, who doesn’t have a beloved saddle that had to finally be put down because of a ripped cover, and would’ve much rather sent it off to be covered in industrial strength leather to start life all over again? (And while we’re at it, who doesn’t want a nearly theft-proof bike light that looks like the chambers of a revolver?) Having a human backstory matters, but it shouldn’t overshadow the product (which makes me highly suspicious of epic bike rides across the country to “document” things).

So some well-deserved credit to Carson for putting a product out there, and sincere good luck to his business. If you want to get your brogue on–or maybe go basic black–you can get in touch with Carson through Kickstarter. Just don’t criticize the pelican logo, or his mom will bust your ass up.

The First Rule of Systems Analyst Club

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Feb 152012

By now, the painfully slow digestion of “Bike Messenger Culture” by the world of high-fashion and Walmart pop culture has been well documented. Really, really well documented. In fact, the act of documentation itself has become painful and slow, to the point that the whole sad thing now resembles a rabbit being eaten by a snake while also being interviewed about the experience by the snake. Eventually you don’t know if you’re sicker of the culture itself, or the half-assed infatuation soul-less types tend to have with it.

There’s some suspicion that all of this might culminate with Premium Rush, a movie featuring evil types pitted against a “who knew these dirty little fuckers were street ninjas” bike messenger.

But here’s why bike messenger culture won’t be over once this movie’s released: businesses need it.

No, I don’t mean that bike delivery is the only way for a stock broker to get his weed. I mean that, in this new age of massages at work, nap times, and (literally) free lunches for employees of ultra-competitive Silicon Valley corporations, the brutal competition to attract and retain young talent is going to drive businesses–particularly those that employ hipsters–to look beyond yoga and sliding boards. You need danger.

And not just any danger. Danger you can believe in.

Ex-bike messenger and now Northern Illinois University sociology professor, Jeff Kidder, has drawn attention to the role imminent death plays in the appeal of a bike messenger job. In his book, Urban Flow: Bike Messengers in the City, Kidder points out the obvious connection between the level of danger and more anti-social aspects of the job, and the dedication of those who do it. If there’s a philosophy here, it might amount to: any shit that can kill you gives meaning to your life, so why not make danger what you do for a living?

Which is great if you’re Travis Pastrana, but what if you’re generally uncoordinated, but really good with math?

By now it should be obvious where this is going. The next big trend in business productivity–inspired by bike messengers–is danger.

Forget all the new business books extolling the virtues of telecommuting and extremely flexible hours, nursing rooms and puppy fashion show Wednesdays. The future is way more extreme.

Chair uncomfortable? Try typing a memo on a laptop strapped to the bars of a Honda CRF50 while riding down six flights of stairs. Bad coffee at work sucks, but getting shot trying to rob a Starbucks because “it was your turn” really makes you appreciate life. Making a million bucks isn’t cool. You know what’s cool? Destroying a billion bucks with an all-out team assault on your competition’s headquarters in the office park just up the street.

I envision an entire new services industry for businesses built around helping Fortune 500 companies make the lives of their employees absolutely terrifying and chock full of “holy shit I almost died” meaning. And the productivity that comes along with it. Sure, they’ll balk at the expenses of alligator pits and grenade launchers, but once they see how much less they can pay employees that are primarily in it for the thrill of just surviving, it’ll all start to make sense.

The Rorschach Pelican Test

Bikes 6 Responses »

Feb 142012

This is not a picture of the most phallic pinwheel ever.

What do you see when you look at the pitches for Kickstarter projects? Having founded a company before, I see a lot of hard work necessary to make something worth owning, but I’m not sure every budding DIY entrepreneur shares that same feeling.

Next week I fly to Portland to talk to a guy about a bike. Actually a lot of bikes. Given recent non-disclosable developments with this whole suspension system I designed, I’ve been thinking a lot about the viability of a new bike company. Some very serious people I admire and respect have expressed interest in doing something with the design I’ve patented, and I’m humbled and more motivated than ever to develop some bikes. I think I’m just waiting for a fortune cookie that says, “Make bikes, dumbass.”

Like every other company that doesn’t exist yet, this one would conceivably be currently in the “seeking funding” stage. Carbon fiber molds ain’t cheap. Under the circumstances, I’ve been thinking about my old friend, Kickstarter. Could you use Kickstarter to help launch a bike company?

A lot of the bike projects I continue to see on Kickstarter tend toward the thinner definition of “manufacturing.” The t-shirt above, for instance, can be yours for only $60 if you’d like to help fund Alden Seats, a guy’s venture wrapping already produced bicycle saddles in stylish “brogue style” leather, which, one imagines transforms them from boring old “saddles” to luxurious “seats.” Brogue is the new hotness, and these saddles are fetching, if slippery and potentially brick-like.

Likewise, the artisan behind this, Carson Leh, seems like a nice enough fellow. It’s just that most of what I see on Kickstarter has a kind of non-committal quality, whereas I’m talking about actually producing things that would cost a lot of money to develop and a lot of money to buy. Consider Carson’s bio from his project page:

Son of the Pacific Coast, born in Marin County, raised in beautiful Port Townsend Washington and a graduate of Western Washington University. I’m currently enjoying America’s Riviera known as West LA. I spend my summers rafting the great rivers of the west from Arizona to Alaska. When not trying my hands at winemaking, architecture, and everything in-between, you can find me jumping curb cuts on my bike, eating tamales and climbing the waterfalls in Malibu.”

While my politics trend toward “angry-hippie” as much as anything else, Carson strikes me as primarily a young man with a bit of a work ethic issue. I’m apparently old and unhip enough to believe that if you’re quite literally asking people to give you money, you might want to tone down the “my life’s a perpetual vacation” thing a little. But, as indicated, I’m a stickler for accountability, and not entirely at ease with the latest forms of do-it-yourself business. If I were to consider partially funding a major production effort through Kickstarter, I’d just assume I had to be absolutely and unquestionably accountable to my investors. I’d have a hell of a lot to do, and I honestly don’t think it’d leave that much time for exploring “winemaking, architecture, and everything in-between,” and I can guarantee my waterfall climbing skills would go all to hell.

The dynamics of the new DIY economy are unique, though. Consider that one of the comments for the “Alden Seats” project states simply, “Carson…can’t I please have a t-shirt?” Clearly there’s some new form of “meta-freeloading” out there, wherein even asking people to give you money prompts some people to reply asking for a free t-shirt.

So could a new bike with what’s potentially the world’s greatest suspension system be partially funded by the people, for the people? It’s something I’m wondering. What do you think? We’d be talking straight gift certificates redeemable for their full amount. Maybe some t-shirts at a reasonable investment price, but I promise no bullshit poster pamphlets for those who’d donate their hard earned cash to the effort, and I vow, here and now, never to show that angle of a pelican on any t-shirt we’d ever make.

“Austerity Package”

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Feb 132012

Like many car companies, German automobile manufacturer Porsche has a long and storied history of stripping down and leaping head-first into the murky swimming pool that is the bicycle industry. Unlike, say, Jeep, our infinitely sensible German friends, however, traditionally take the time to make sure there’s water in the pool.

Jeep Shit Bike

I’ve honestly never understood why some car companies choose to license their name to such horrendous and potentially fatal “bicycle-shaped objects,” but I think it says something about American consumerism that there’s even a market for such a thing. A lot of us are dumbasses.

Speaking of dumbasses, the photo for the Jeep “Comanche Sahara” bicycle above was found on a site called Jeep Tech Tips, and is an example of something called “Content Marketing,” the “male-enhancement product” of the marketing world. In short, Content Marketing is the act of paying a mindless tool with no particular interests to write terminally uninteresting and useless text about a product and distribute this anti-information as thoroughly as possible on the interwebs, in the hope of catching the ~~Eye of Sauron~~ algorithms of Google. It’s an odd twist on the B-movie high-school paradigm, where the socially inept nerds try to attract the attention of the vacuous cheerleaders; here, the completely unoriginal and inane are hell-bent on figuring out how to win the affection of nerds who write search engine algorithms.

Hint: It's all about the shoes, ladies.

Eventually computers will write this mindless dreck, or the need to buy a really shitty Jeep bicycle will able to be added directly to our brains as an ingredient in Red Bull, but until then, some poor son-of-a-bitch writes sentences like this for a living:

While I agree that, “The Commando would be more idle for a young teenager (13 or 14 years old),” particularly considering that no one over the age of nine would be able to fit on the bike, I suspect the word our “content marketing” was searching for there was “ideal,” and with that, I have to politely disagree.

The problem with information written to get the attention of computers is that occasionally humans run into it, and accidentally read it. Considering the entire point of writing this shit in the first place is to attract eyeballs, you’d thing there would be a value in communicating information that would actually answer people’s questions, but Content Marketing isn’t about providing information–it’s about getting noticed. In fact, it’s sort of the opposite of providing information.

Consider: “The only performance difference is that the Comanche Toledo has a rear shock.” This refers to the blue bike above, the one that doesn’t have a rear shock. Content written, paycheck in the bank, another productive day over: well done, Content Writer.

Our friends at Porsche, meanwhile, do not put their logos on just any tack-welded piece of heinous shit that comes down the pipe. They go out of their way to put their logo on truly bizarre pieces of ultra-high-tech shit that comes down a hand-laid carbon fiber pipe. Remember the Votec bikes?

You have to admit, they always at least try to do something different, and they’re doing it again in 2012 with the “RS,” a carbon fiber 29er with XTR components and Crank Brothers everywhere. Brakes, of course, had to be Magura (this whole Euro crisis isn’t going to solve itself, you know), which makes you wonder how irked the German luxury brands must be to routinely have to spec Japanese or Italian components on their fashion-accessory bicycles. Speaking of Google, if only Porsche, Audi, Mercedes and BMW had “20% free time to develop your own ideas” concepts in place for employees like those guys do, maybe we’d already have a full German gruppo.

Sadly, at nearly $10,000 for the RS pictured at the top of this post, I think I’d probably stick with a better looking Air 9 Carbon or Highball frame and save my money for the only real Porschycle.

Friday’s Time Travelers and Blood Suckers

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Feb 102012

My hair is rich and full.

So the Court of Arbitration for Sport has decided to ban retired cyclist Jan Ullrich for two years, a shocking blow to Ullrich’s hope of contesting the 2012 Tour de France from a large, comfortable chair at his home in Germany, but also making use of their new time machine, the CAS Doping Offense Win Negator (CASDOWN), to “annul” Ullrich’s results from May 1st, 2005. This move follows the recent reshuffling of race results from 2010 following Tour de France and Giro winner Alberto Contador’s retro-active disqualifications for doping, and begs the question, “Does anyone actually win races anymore?” The newfound ability of the CAS, while honorable and necessary, creates forms of higher math and alternative realities traditionally only found in the study of quantum physics. In a bizarre twist, an engineer at Google today announced that, using a combination of advanced algorithms, urine samples from the past five years, and a brief financial analysis of personal debt levels of the current pro peloton, it’s now easier to predict the 2012 winner of the Tour de France, than to predict the winners from the past ten years.

Critics, of course, are already arguing the CASDOWN system is nothing more than a marketing campaign to try to make professional cycling more popular in places like the U.S. where cycling is currently seen as way more boring than football (real football, the kind played with hands, not feet), but where sports betting, revisionist history, and fleeting celebrity are wildly popular. In addition to wondering who’ll win each of the Grand Tours in 2012, now we can all put money down on results dating back at least into the 2000s. (Personally, my money for the 2005 Tour is on Servais Knaven from Quick Step.)

Many donut-enjoying, rarely-standing-while-climbing “power” riders, myself included, were fans of Ullrich, though, so I’m not insensitive to the human aspect of this result. On that front, I’m happy to report that Ullrich has capitalized even on this setback, by–and I’m not making this up–becoming a spokesperson for a German hair stimulant marketed as “Doping for the Hair.” Sadly, while it appears riders like Ullrich and Contador aren’t obligated to return any prize money or other gains acquired while “not really winning,” it does appear that the riders must be declared legally “non-existent” during the retro-active period of their ban from sport. While the scientific community is still unsure what this actually means for the racers, it seems clear that some form of “undead syndrome” may be occurring, which would partially explain some of the otherwise inexplicable behavior of Floyd Landis, as well as this statement, released by Ullrich yesterday (italics mine):

Shortly before the 2006 tour, I was hit: Suspension, headlines, ostracism, house searches, criminal complaints. I felt abandoned, fallen like a leaf. The whole world wanted to put me against the wall and then I went instinctively to ground, and eventually retired. As I said, I will not complain that not everything was warranted. Shortly after my suspension I wanted to explain my actions publicly but my hands were tied. On the advice of my lawyers, and as is usual in such cases, I have been silent on the allegations. Ultimately, this issue has polluted me for years so much that I was sick and I eventually broke down.”

Did you catch that? While I can’t be certain, I’m pretty sure Jan Ullrich just admitted to being a vampire. In and of itself, it’s a pretty shocking revelation, but like most things in pro cycling these days, it still raises more questions than it answers. While long-term, congenital vampirism would certainly cast a new light on the whole blood doping thing, it seems more likely, in Ullrich’s case, that blood sucking is a result of the ruling by the CAS, not the cause. Clearly, being forced out of existence for a few years by the CAS, and then having to go on living as a spokesperson for German hair stimulants, was really the last nail in the coffin.

Jan Ullrich in human form.

The Armstrong Conspiracy and Moscow Riverbottom Commuting

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Feb 092012

While I don’t know if Lance Armstrong is guilty of doping or not, at this point, I’m absolutely convinced he’s the most powerful man in the world. We know now that the nearly two-year investigation by the Feds into potential crimes committed by Armstrong as a result of allegedly doping while riding for the government sponsored U.S. Postal team was dropped suddenly, and that the decision to drop the case came from one man, U.S. Attorney Andre Birotte Jr.. After that, as often seems to happen whenever Lance is on the ropes, things get surreal. Cyclingnews.com has posted an article containing the following:

The Wall Street Journal has alleged there was some debate within the US Attorney’s Office as to whether the two-year investigation into allegations of fraud and doping that involved the U.S. Postal Service Team and Lance Armstrong should have been closed last week. Armstrong has denied ever taking performance enhancing and welcomed the decision to close the case. He may still face investigation from USADA.

The report follows National Public Radio (NPR) revelations that sources in the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and U.S. Postal Service were ‘shocked, surprised and angered’ and that federal authorities only had 30 minutes notice before the United States Attorney’s Office issued a press release to the media on Friday afternoon.”

Try as I might, I could not locate that NPR article to validate Cyclingnews. The closest I came was a transcript of NPR’s Tom Goldman reporting on the dropped case. The closest Goldman gets to implying anything nefarious is going on is a small mention of “another source who said investigators in this case stressed as recently as a week ago that the evidence was rock-solid.” That said, Cyclingnews clearly suggests the news that the case was being dropped was seen as extremely unusual–shocking, even, to the prosecution. As much as I enjoy Cyclingnews, they seem really fond of only linking to themselves (which makes for great search engine marketing, but creates an echo chamber around the Internet for the same article to be posted multiple places–generating a digital wild goose chase of fake citations). In short, depending on who you talk to, Attorney Birotte’s behavior was either highly unusual and suspicious, or pretty much par for the course. Quite a range, that. If anyone can actually cite and validate the statements Cyclingnews is attributing to NPR, well, then we have a truly weird story on our hands.

But don’t we already have a truly weird story on our hands?

For Lance to be blameless, an awful lot of people would have to be completely evil pricks, stark raving lunatics, or both–which I’m certainly willing to believe. Floyd Landis alone is enough crazy to power most cities.

Floyd Landis: would you trust this man with your criminal investigation evidence?

But after a while, the sheer depth of the crazy going on all-around Armstrong starts to say something. And the weirdest part is the way the totally bizarre is always peppered with a little reality. Take this Wall Street Journal piece where Landis is blathering out his bizarre theory that the Postal team didn’t have proper working bikes, because all the spares were being sold off on the Internet to raise dope money. Obviously, that’s completely crazy, except that even Trek admits they were seeing the bikes show up for sale in weird places.

Why in the hell would they do that? Even if I’m willing to take Lance and Johan Bruyneel’s word for it that Lance doesn’t dope–like take that issue off the table completely–why would the team be selling off bikes while racing?

My theory is that Lance Armstrong is the Kevin Bacon of strange. He’s somehow connected to everyone who’s ever had something weird happen to them, and not usually in a good way. He might be the leader of the Knights Templar, or something. Alien. Robot. Something there is fucked up, at any rate, is all I’m saying. Whether it’s doping or not, weird shit is constantly going down all around Lance Armstrong, and nobody can do anything to stop it.

Another guy who seems well acquainted with shadowy, strange events is Vladimir Putin, but apparently one of the more innovative forms of protest in Russia these days consists of losing your bike in the river while trying to avoid traffic. According to the Wall Street Journal, a 42-year old homeless guy crashed through the ice covering the Moscow river, managing to survive, but losing his bike. How bad does the traffic have to be in your city before you risk death to avoid it? Apparently all the powerful people in need of actually getting anywhere around Moscow take helicopters. It’s that bad.

So there’s a homeless guy in Moscow who could really use a snowbike. There’s a viral marketing campaign in here somewhere for Salsa or Surly, though I imagine in the coming days we’ll learn this homeless guy was somehow a material witness in a suit against Lance Armstrong, and since falling through the ice he’s lost the power of speech and wants to race NASCAR.

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