Dining With the Enemy: URS, Meat Paste, and the Dutch

Gathering together with family is often a momentous and healing experience, and joining in the giving of collective thanks creates moments of revelation and empathy.  Unless you're in my family, where your Mother forgets which holiday we're celebrating and festoons the house in preparation for Passover.

Though the remembering of the Spirit of the Lord culling the first born is always a fun-filled family event, I tried to gently and tactfully reorient the festivities toward the correct holiday.  I'd nearly succeeded when someone asked (as someone is wont to do every year in a desperate attempt to think outside a non-existent box), "Why don't we try something other than turkey this year?"

I was initially pleased to be spared an Homeric dual of with my arch-aminonemesis, but when my Mother decided to take cues from the Dutch in preparing the alternative mode of celebration and prepared hutspot and pea soup served in clogs, I took one look at what had been placed before me and fainted face-first into my dish.

Food?!

I'm beginning to fear the Dutch want me dead.  Their recipe for hutspot creates a goo with the perfect consistency to drown a man at a depth of 25.4mm.

The National Post captures the Dutch chanting, "Death to The Clog!"

For the time being, however, I am pleased to announce that I have survived all plots by the Dutch against my life ...and also against my palette.  To save the Thanksgiving feast, I fought fire with fire and, borrowing from both the Dutch technique of deep frying meat paste to create vaguely edible objects and Felt's advanced mold optimization strategies, I fashioned the hutspot into a turkey, deep-fried it to create the illusion of skin, and then baked it over a roaring clog-fueled fire.

The end result was an olfactory and gustatory obscenity ...but it was still better than hutspot.

Bidding goodbye to my family and returning to the other olfactory and gustatory obscenity, Toronto, I was affronted by headlines about Rob Ford dressing in drag to launch a tirade against cyclists eating the babies of poor harmless Scarborough drivers.  In search of more positive news, I turned to Herb Van Den Drool's blog and was enthralled to learn that the Urban Repair Squad has installed yet more infrastructure to guide and enable the cycling aspirants of Toronto for whom paying-attention-to-what-you're-doing is just too tedious.

Incapable of following basic traffic requirements?
That's OK.  Just go where you think is best.

Billed as another Toronto first, this unique piece of alternative infrastructure joins the pharrow as the second piece of Urban Repair Squad's program to provide alternatives geared to all riding skill levels ('incompetent boob' is a skill level in the Urban Repair Squad's manual) by alleviating Toronto cyclists of the responsibility to ride in any predictable direction.  Instead, the Urban Repair Squad encourages us, if we're incapable of riding sensibly, to go where ever we darn well feel like.

I'm pleased to see that the Urban Repair Squad is attending to the needs of all Toronto cyclists, and not just those of us with some sense and a will to remain alive.  The next time I'm riding downtown, I can look at the boob salmoning toward me in the bike lane and think "Thanks, Urban Repair Squad, for enabling this person to ride a bike."

When two imbecile cyclists collide head-on on this street, I hope I can be there to witness the coming together of misplaced entitlement and progressive infrastructure first hand.  If they're going fast enough, perhaps the world will be a better place afterwards.

Of Corn & Carbon: Happy Thanksgiving Weekend

Firstly, I am ambivalent to announce that Tom Mosher has decided to host yet another Hell Track event.  Watching the videos of previous Hell Tracks, one would think that Hell Track 3 will be riveting and unforgettable.  However, for those uncertain whether to imbibe this instance of 'bicycle culture', allow me to summarize the event in advance for your convenience.

The event is patterned upon the Official Toronto Hipster Cycling Event template:

Pre-party:  Authentic real-live messengers will congregate, drink beer, and make fun of each other while begging off racing on the grounds that they can't get injured because they have to work.  Their authentic real-live hipster attendants will circumscribe the nucleus of messengers in a desperate attempt to fit in and rub shoulders.  Tom Mosher will spend the entire time talking to his friends and ignoring the attendants.  Trick riders will attempt ad infinitum to execute various manoevres without success.  Holding your breath here in anticipation of seeing something awesome means certain death. 

Race:  The racing will be so lame that some imbecile who doesn't have to work the next day will attempt unnecessarily theatrical maneouvres under the auspices of 'epic-ry'.  This will make the race seem epic by association.  Do not be fooled.

Post-race: Prizes are assigned.  Given the poor organizational skills and levels of inebriation, this portion of the event is tediously drawn out.

The whole event will be like taking a poop after eating corn: You'll stand there and think "Is that it ...or is there more?"

Speaking of stool passage, I am equally ambivalent to announce that the dieting fad of colonics has reached bicycle frame design.  Felt's frame designers have data-mined the age-old technique of wrapping toilet-paper around a cardboard tube to develop their InsideOut Internally Optimized Molding technology, which enables them to shave off precious ounces of manufacturing dross that "is stuck to the frame walls like spackle or paste."  As Felt engineer Ty Buckenberger puts it:

“The bottom bracket and other junctions are all nice and clean with no excess material inside.”

Snickering aside, Felt seems to have truly pushed the boundaries in their work.  With their InsideOut method, Felt can now eschew the lug-&-tube technology of last century's carbon frames (no, that's not a typo) in favour of molds that shape the carbon sheets and minimizes excess material build-up internally.  The assembly culminates thusly:

"Finally, the frame sections are joined using a special co-molding technique. The individual sections are bonded together and then co-wrapped."

An internally optimized toilet paper roll demonstrates Felt's wrapping technique.

In other words, lug-&-tube redux.  Such advancement!  However, Felt assures us that process is worthwhile because it delivers a frame that--wait for it...--offers unparalleled ride quality and weight savings, but at great cost.  As an amateur performance cycling enthusiast on a budget (read, 'that wheel sucking ass with a Sora gruppo'), I'm not able to make such significant investment, so when I want to improve my own ride quality and shave off precious grams, I prefer to employ my patented system of taking a pre-race poop.  The weight savings are astounding!


With that 'out of my system', I am also ambivalent to announce that I will not be blogging on Monday due to prior engagements with a turkey.  I do not mean that I have a dinner date with Rob Ford (though that probably would be a very effective weight-loss strategy).  Rather, I will be preoccupied attempting the unnecessarily theatrical maneouvre of ingesting fowlry for processing in a prostate prostrate position.

Unfortunately I must, by medical necessity, lay down prior to gorging on turkey, unlike others, who prefer to repose after the fact.  Being a misshapen oaf prone to nervous gas and suffering an irrational fear of pacifiers, I was once attacked with a turkey baster and exposed to a near fatal dose of tryptophan.  Ever since, even the mildest amount of trytpo-laced turkey can induce narcoleptic fits of deep slumber.  Four Thanksgivings ago, I plopped face-down in mash potatoes and nearly drowned.

It is my own personal epic sport and I like to tempt fate and push the extreme.  Last year, I conquered a leg.  This year, I hope to tackle the breast.  Next year's summit: dark meat!

If I live, I will resume posting on Wednesday.  Until then, thanks for reading and have a 'fully crunk' weekend.