Cooler Heads Will Prevail – Bike Snob NYC

That’s why this guy said, “Fuck it,” cut down some bamboo, and decided to Gilligan himself his own goddamn bicycle:

Good for him.

Actually, I have no idea what he was doing with it, but I do know that foraging is unique to neither man nor beast:

As for my own experience with frame materials, I currently have steel, aluminum, titanium, and crabon bicycles at my disposal, and while I have not ridden bamboo I have ridden magnesium and of course wood:

Based on my extensive experience, I can therefore declare than the best material by far regardless of use is the only one I haven’t ridden, that being “Carbon Strand Grid:”

I mean come on, you can drive a car on it!

I can’t believe all bikes aren’t made from this stuff already.

In the meantime, on this very hot day I managed to make do with lugged steel:

I’ve been doing a lot of drop-bar road riding lately and it felt good to be back on dirt:

It also felt good to divest myself of my jorts and go for an illicit swim, which I’ve been determined to do more often:

Oddly, it is fashionable now to freak out and go all Chicken LIttle about the climate when it gets hot in summer, yet at the same time it is extremely unfashionable to cool off in random bodies of water. Swimming in and around New York City and its suburbs is highly regulated–you can only swim in certain places at certain times, and when you do see someone flouting the rules and swimming somewhere it’s not allowed it’s almost shocking, like when you see a person run across the highway.

Now, obviously there are very good reasons we regulate swimming–there are places where the currents are very dangerous, there are places where the water is very dirty, there are places where there’s heavy boat traffic, and so forth. Still, there was a time when, if it was really hot, you just went in the water instead of waiting on a really long line for a chlorinated public pool or traveling to a sanctioned beach or seeking out a “cooling center” or tweeting about how the world is ending due to climate change or whatever:

Again, I’m not saying people should be jumping in fetid bodies of water with deadly currents all willy-nilly, not at all. I’m way too lazy to look it up, but I’m going to go ahead and assume that both drowning deaths and heat deaths have gone way down since the turn of the last century thanks to public pools, public beaches, lifeguards, air conditioning, yadda yadda and so forth. Nevertheless, I am saying our relationship with temperature was less dysfunctional in the days before all these things, and it’s amazing how immersing yourself in a natural body of water mid-ride not only refreshes you but imparts a profound sense of relief upon both mind and body. Certainly it’s no accident that it’s rulebound citydwellers who are the most neurotic and the most compelled to foist their own neuroses onto others, deprived as they are of the freedom to do anything more complicated than scratching their own ass without first obtaining a permit.

They should all shut up and go jump in a lake once in awhile.