Homeric Payloads: Portaging Croissants On Your Forehead

Some people just refuse to accept limitations.  Sometimes this creates moments of remarkable achievement and personal transformation.  The rest of the time, however, it creates this:

I want to be charitable when I see the owner of an otherwise respectable hybrid trying to enhance the payload of their bicycle.  I want to think that perhaps, just perhaps, it was recently vandalized by a bicycle-hating stumblebum.  Or perhaps the air turbulence generated by the front wheel at road speed creates sufficient lift to hover the front basket while riding.  Unfortunately, no, the wear pattern on the front tire confirmed this as just another case of stupid.

Ever since cycling fell under the turning wheels of fatuous fashion trends, a plague of goiter-like payload enhancements has been ravishing Toronto's bicycles, threatening the health of the bicycle, and by 'extension', the rider's as well.

You see, after seeing two examples of suspiciously high quill stems on the Common Elite's blog, I've been monitoring the situation and found a veritable multitude, such as these:

Incensed, I convened an emergency meeting with Toronto's bicycle service providers to find out what the hell was going on with Toronto's bike mechanics.  No one showed up though, mainly because I'm just some wanker and they've all got better things to do.  Also, as a kindly hobo pointed out to me as we shared a cupcake and a jug of bourbon, most people are probably installing their baskets themselves or letting their ham-fisted significant other do it for them. 

I'm not sure when the 'pull-out method' became standard procedure for adjusting quill stems to compensate for generic front baskets.  I'm sure the manufacturer, Wald (whose designers I'm told speak fluent Campagnolo, as proven ever-so-woefully previously), did what they could to design a decent product to satisfy consumer optimism, and that the tag line "Know your limit, play within it" was already taken.

Unfortunately, consumers ravished by burning desire to cycle sartorially snapped up the product and during the--err... 'installation' eschewed the fore-play of 'carefully unpacking' the 'product' and 'reading' the 'instructions'.  Instead, they just threw out that little rubber thing that eliminates the need to 'pull-out' in the first place and went right at it.  I refer of course to the rubber shim that allows the brackets to be mounted securely in positions other than vertical, thereby allowing a veritable kama sutra of basket positions that allow for correct quill stem insertion depth, fender placement, and optimal cable routing. 

Or you could just replace your current stem with a, (*ahem*), longer one.  Just sayin'.

The Nitto Technomic at Rivendell; all 8" of it.  It'll hang your basket.  It'll hang it good.

And speaking of unlubricated rods rammed into tight holes, I regret to inform you all that there's still one more sleep till the next mass shaming of Toronto's hipsters.  I refer of course to Pirate Alleycat:

As much as I dislike going to bro-downs like this and watching Tom Mosher herd cats into something socially fashionable, Toronto's lone contribution to the collective culture of cycling, the alleycat, is one of the rare moments where I can watch hipsters huddling awkwardly at a distance, gazing longingly at real-live messengers who refuse to acknowledge the hipsters pleading for the sweet embrace of their approval and instead stand around, drink beer, and ridicule each other.

I thought about attending and even knitting myself a costume.  I'd hoped to dress up like that guy who asks for the DFL spoke card during registration (DFL isn't asked for; it's earned), but after buying in 100 cables of yarn and sharpening my needles, I had misgivings.  "Can an event featuring an ass skull be all that good?" I asked myself.

Pirate Ass-skull / Internet meme: J. Gresham Barrett winning an Asshat Award

One would think that anything featuring an ass skull would be truly Homeric ('epic' is so over), but after hiring consultants to decipher the semiotics and plumb the bowels of the asshat metaphor, I was informed that it's actually a testiskull foreshadowing the DFL prize: death by tea bagging.

Testiskull: Teabag of Doom.  As always, the lowly croissant preserves modesty.

Fearing for my chastity, I decided to stay away.  But if being tea bagged by people who consider you inferior is your thing (and if you commute by bicycle in Toronto, it probably is), then do attend.

Travelling in Style: A Matter of Life & Death

While my betters attempt to imitate their betters by attending things like the Toronto International Film Festival and making the correct sniffing noises at the correct moments of great poignancy, I spent the entire day stuck in a streetcar crawling along The Gardiner Expressway.  Thankfully, as an experienced Toronto commuter, I had packed supplies and a spare Crayon set, and hired a Sherpa from Parkdale to assist my epic voyage to Etobicoke and back.

We foraged for food on the streetcar's floor, kept warm by burning refuse and Metro newspapers, and when the light failed we drew pictures on the walls by firelight detailing our skirmishes deep into the rear of the streetcar, where an urchin kept a jealous vigil over an orange that had rolled into his territory during the steep assent over the Humber River.  Thankfully, I am pleased to announce that I eventually returned safely to Toronto, paid my Sherpa a fair wage (against Rob Ford's advice), and hiked the Pathway to Enlightenment back to my home.

I initially spent time scrutinizing the mass of faces hoping to glimpse some celebrity of note attending the TIFF, but since facial reconstruction has erased any vestige of familiarity in the celebrities that were popular back when I used to pay attention, I took to studying the rich mosaic of chewing gum on the sidewalk instead, until this caught my attention:

I understand suffering for money, but suffering for fashion confuses me utterly.  The impulse to adorn one's bicycle with detachable front basket stems from an urge to telegraph to beholders that "I am a European type of person who goes to market and buys fresh legumes with a reusable an therefore sustainable wicker basket."  However, orienting your brake levers into a drag-inducing, carpal-straining position to accommodate the aforementioned basket just telegraphs to the world that you're an idiot.

Speaking of idiocy and fashionable bicycles, I am concerned to announce that the good dilettantes of Curbside Cycle appear to be short on fatuously fashionable Toronto cyclists to photograph for their blog and, in the tradition of all Toronto cyclists suffering moments of self-doubt and anxiety, have looked to Europe for consolation and reminder, as seen here in this photograph of Christopher (because 'Chris' is insufficiently European):

I am pleased to note that there's very little wrong with Chris' bike, except the inadequately closed quick-release skewer on the front wheel, but since Curbside Cycle eschews modern componentry like the derailleur, the alloy rim, and the battery powered light, I'll give them some slack on the grounds of inexperience.

I will not however cut them some slack for missing gross stylistic errors, such as Christopher's misaligned buttons/belt/zipper, the black laptop bag that screams corporate IT nerd, and the whole lack of colour co-ordination.  That sort of inattention is inexcusable, especially when name dropping Alexander Mcqueen.

Before long, the Common Elite blog will be filled with fashion fox-paws like this foppish art student bobbing furiously along the Pathway to Enlightenment on a crappy mountain bike, every action being equalized by an opposite reaction from his dopey front suspension system:

Yet it is the tendency of all fashions to cycle every 20 years or so, and having counted the rings on Gary Fisher's jowels and carbon dated strands of his facial hair, I fear that a grand cycling of cycling fashion may yet make this sordid combination fashionable.  I fear we may eventually move from the Continental Period of Cycling Affectation to the Colonization Period of Cycling Affectation, when we will be suddenly beset by Eric Kamphoff hawking stump-jumpers designed by 'indigenous' Afrikaners for the rugged gated communities of Johannesburg to Toronto urbanites looking to 'slay' some epic sidewalk in style.

Fortunately fashion in Toronto is, at the moment, turning towards the cooler weather and therefore to warmer clothing, except this Queen St W store:

Looks more like 100% off to me...