Further to yesterday’s post, a reader made the following observation:
Well, being uncool is a passion of mine, and I headed directly to a popular auction site where I became the proud owner of this garment:
This is going to go perfectly with the Normcore Nostalgia Bike and my Spal-deen bicycle helmet:
Which means I’m officially ready for the Five Boro Bike Tour:
I really am going to ride the Five Boro Bike Tour, by the way, since my son wants to do it. We are going to CRUSH IT like the late Lawrence Orbach. (Yes, sadly, he’s no longer with us, he died in a freak accident while riding laps in Prospect Park; his Spinergy exploded and he was impaled on one of the spokes. His last words were, “On your left.” What a great man.)
Speaking of the Normcore Nostalgia Bike, after obtaining its predecessor all those years ago, one of the first things I did was take it to Central Park. So it only seemed fitting to head down there today:
It was threatening rain, which was also fitting, since the Trek used to be my “rain” bike. (Imagine, a rain bike that can’t even take proper fenders! Oh, to be young…) The park was quiet, apart from the professional dog walkers walking like 50 dogs each, and the flora was just starting to bloom in earnest:
I felt as though I had the park to myself, and the flowering trees were paying obeisance to me by casting petals in my path:
Just as I left the park, the rain started to fall in earnest, and by the time I got home I was soaked all the way down to my underpants. (I was cycling in jeans, of course.) Thank goodness for that tiny seatpost-mounted filth prophylactic, which at best bought me an additional four minutes of posterior dryness, if that.
Yes, spring means one thing to Americans, and that thing is “allergies.” But it also means baseball, and leave it to the local smugness media to somehow reveal an anti-bike agenda that isn’t even there:
Yes, they hate bikes because you can’t bring your helmet into the stadium:
Firstly, nobody’s complaining about the helmet policy. Stadiums and arenas have all sorts of bizarre policies about what you can bring in and what you can’t (they won’t even let you have the cap when they sell you a disgustingly overpriced bottle of water), and not being able to bring a large brick of hard foam in with you doesn’t even register on the Absurd-O-Meter. If there was pent-up demand to bring bicycle helmets into Yankee Stadium you can be sure some enterprising soul would be running a “helmet valet” operation down the street. Secondly, the only thing there’s less of a demand for than bringing bicycle helmets to ball games is second-hand bicycle helmets, which is why nobody is going to steal yours if you leave it with your bike. See, people steal stuff that has value on the black market, like catalytic converters, or baby formula, or, you know, your bike. But absolutely nobody has any use for or interest in your disgusting smelly helmet–not even the perverts who buy used cycling shorts? (Ahem, so I’ve heard.) Sure, you should probably run a cable through it or something so some bored teenager doesn’t decide to punt it down the street like a football, and you shouldn’t secure it low on the bike because someone’s liable to let their dog pee on it, but those are really your only concerns.
But most importantly…”pricey item?” The city is literally giving these things away every time you turn around! Who’s riding their bike to a baseball game in a $250 downhill helmet?
And none of this is even addressing that a lot of these games end pretty late, both the city’s baseball stadiums have easy transit access, many of these fans are drunk, and they’re a lot better off taking the train home anyway.
Hey, what happened to fawning the Dutch, who never wear helmets? Suddenly not allowing people to walk around clutching a foam good luck charm is discouraging cycling? If anything, I applaud this anti-helmet policy as a bold step towards normalizing cycling as transportation.
