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| I want to be this person's kid. |
While washing and tuning my bicycle in preparation for my daily "fantastic voyage" to the corner artisan stand for a cupcake and some bourbon, I reflected on the significance of a George Smitherman campaign vehicle caught parking in a bike lane and decided that there was none. I then reflected on the significance of his opponents' haranguing. Joe Pantalone, the personification of minimality these days, made convenient use of Smitherman's indiscretion to emphasize the likewise minimality of his own error in comparison to Smitherman's clearly larger and prolonged use of the bike lane for unauthorized purposes. Rob Ford in turn proved that his rapier wit is about as agile as his fat ass with this flaccid zinger: "“I hope he parked there by mistake because he was so busy looking for the $1 billion of taxpayers’ money he lost on eHealth." But even these condemnations were of no significance. What is significant is the all the feigned indignation over someone blocking a bike lane with a vehicle at all. I'm waiting for the remaining candidates to get caught too so that all of them could, in a rare moment of consensus building and shared responsibility, issue a public statement explaining their behaviour:
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| "Thy coilings stinketh as much as our coilings." |
At least then they'd actually be honest for once, rather than all this dissembling.
Continuing on the theme of misused infrastructure, I'm pleased to announce that a separated bike lane will be installed on University Ave after all. This Sunday, in keeping with Toronto's official bike lane installation protocol, a segregated bike lane to nowhere will be installed, used for purposes other than the efficient movement of commuters from points various to sundry, and then removed in deference to automobile convenience shortly thereafter. I refer of course to the heretofore ignored Queens Park Grand Prix, which only lately gained notoriety when Canadian competitive cyclist Ryder Hesjedal deigned to grace us with his presence.
Personally, I'm looking forward to the event. I enjoy attending such events, not only to ogle fit women in spandex ("So what? Everybody does it."), but also to take in the fascinating spectacle of pretentious white people trying to get more into competitive cycling for the same reasons they want to get more into soccer. It's a physically demanding athletic pursuit steeped in European tradition, making it an excellent hobby for discerning (read 'class conscious') white people who like to telegraph through their possessions and pursuits that they're not the type of person who would vote for Rob Ford.
Fortunately, for those looking to telegraph their voting patterns through frame choice but are blessed with only a moderate sense of taste and suffer from chronic lapses in judgment (known elsewhere as 'conformity') there is a made-in-Toronto solution: Cervélo. While not ubiquitous on Toronto's streets per se, thick flocks of Cervélos can be flushed out into the open with pro- tactics like decoying (ride a steel road bike on the Martin Goodman Trail) and baiting (erect a red stoplight on Lakeshore Blvd W or hang a sign offering espresso for sale).
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| Like a dingo to an unattended baby. (Field photography by Hellovello.ca) |
Their riders are rarely anything more than aspirants and, being copious in numbers and low on Power Gel, are readily easy to capture. The subsequent dilution of Cervélo's pedigree in Toronto is already starting to trickle down. Indeed, so passé is the Cervélo in Toronto that they're already being abandoned for commuting and fixie conversions, as seen here.
(For the record, fixie riders don't vote; they have a single-tarck mind.)
Those with more discerning tastes and a less than discerning sense of what they actually need, the GTA offers still more superfluity. Vitesse, an Oakville bike fitter that milks the concept of prestige harder than middle-class hotel and brands itself through 'lifestyle partners' like Porsche, custom tailors bicycles to demanding riders who don't find stock frames acceptable for whatever reason. This is supposed to sound prestigious. All it implies to me, however, is that the purchaser's probably a deformed clod with poor flexibility and delusional aspirations. But $6,000-$11,000 is a steep price to pay to learn that your old frame was fine and that you suck. Being adverse to risk (among a host of other allergies) I prefer to just assume I do and pocket the money.
On the opposite end of the pay scale, there are those in Toronto who labour to affect bike snobbery under the strictures of a budget and the result sometimes leaves me apoplectic. I do not refer to the uppity on Specialized aluminum road bikes with a 105 group. I refer to this:
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