Big Bikes

Without Bike Racing
I'm Really Just An Angry Bike Mechanic
With Nothing Nice To Say At All

Hey Cyclingnews, your new look sucks. I'm going back to Velonews. Or maybe I'll just get all my Dopingnews, uh, I mean news about cycling and Veloing through the filter of Cosmo. It's much funnier that way. OK Cyclingnews, your new look really just sucks the same as the old one, in a different way. It's as totally cluttered and illegible as always. Did you guys go back in time again and find that web designer from 1996 who designed the original site? Sweet.

See, aren't I so mean? Grr, ruf! Ow, I think I sprained something.

More snarky bike mechaniciness. People come into bike shops all the time with their kid's bike. The bike's rear wheel is destroyed, sometimes the rear triangle is squashed too. They ask if it can be fixed. "No, no I'm sorry it can't, what happened?". "I backed over it with the car". "Ya, that's probably gonna run you about thirty or forty bucks". "Really? I'm surprised it broke...just like that".

Yes, it's fucking amazing that you broke a child's bicycle wheel backing over it with a fucking car.

I'm going to give you the same sentence with a blank space where the word "Bike" should be, you fill it in with any other item you own and tell me if the end result would be any different or less expensive.

I backed over my ___ with the car.

Be glad you didn't back over your kid, you clown, you inept cretin.
Although, if you think about it (let me know what that's like), if you totally smoosh the kid, replacement cost is zero. Making kids costs nothing. It's the interment of the old one or dealing with repairing a kid you only partially smooshed that'll cost ya.

Then they buy a new wheel, put the bike on the hitch rack on their massive SUV and proceed to back into the telephone pole in front of the shop. "This is ridiculous, you people should do something about that...get it moved!".

But of course, we will get the town of ___ which won't maintain a crosswalk or decent sidewalks on ____ St. right over here to move a telephone pole because you are too oblivious not to back your car into an inanimate object which is about the width of a human being and about five times as tall.

Maybe I'm not being hard enough on people.

I actually have several non-bike related snarky things to say, but I'm scared I will truly have nothing to talk about tomorrow, so I will save it until then.

If you want something decent to read today, check out Colin's write up on how to ride a mountain bike, not like an idiot. Or This interview With John "Fuzzy" Mylne on how to ride a Single Speed. Good stuff.

-t