The BipedFred Blog

Crap, I’m gonna DNF another cycling book. It says “The greatest cycling book ever written – Bicycling” on the cover, right above the title “The Yellow Jersey” by Ralph Hume.

In the first few pages the central character, Terry,  talks about sleeping with his fiancé’s daughter who is dating a rider he is coaching. And then Terry describes some of the women he’s slept with since he stopped racing, referring to them as “it”? Describing a woman:

“It was a bit prim and frumpy, but had a chest-and-a-half on it, I couldn’t drag my eyes away.”

I don’t find it particularly offensive so much as irritating.

Just too much crap to wade through, I’m DNF at page 35.

And now for something completely different: Book and Movie Reviews.

The book: “Ten Points” by Bill Strickland. In the opening pages he describes one crit race, an overly detailed description of his daughter’s potty training, an episode where his father is about to shoot his dog, plus many other little personal details I just Don’t Want To Know. So I quit reading at page 34. Sorry.

I got Apple TV on a whim and being able to select, rent, and start watching a movie in about ten minutes suits my miniscule attention span. Here are two movies I watched this weekend:

“Crazy Heart” with Jeff Bridges. An outstanding character study of an old, broke, alcoholic, former country music star.  Bad Blake drives around and plays one night stands at bowling alleys and bars, often running off-stage to throw up. Then he is interviewed by a young woman and they become romantically involved. She is very sweet and apparently without any sense of smell.  Bad Blake is a chain smoking, drunk, greasy old man, who is totally broke. Can you imagine how he would smell in real life, or taste? No young woman’s going to kiss that. No way. It ruined the rest of the movie for me.

“Iron Man” with Robert Downey Jr., Jeff Bridges, and Gwyneth Paltrow. This is probably my favorite Comic Book to Movie, movie ever. Robert Downey Jr. is great in this flick and, for once, the US Military is not portrayed as evil. So I liked it a lot, but a couple of things bugged me.

Tony Stark spends half the movie building, testing, and learning to use the Iron Man suit. But the bad guy (Jeff Bridges) finds Stark’s very first crude prototype and manages to build a bigger, better Iron Man in like five minutes. And he darn near kicks the real Iron Man’s ass with it.

And worse than that, Gwyneth Paltrow has been his trusted personal aid for years and he never noticed she’s hot until now??? Oh please! Yeah, it’s based on a comic but still…

I promise I won’t do reviews anymore.

Bicycling Magazine’s May issue headlines “The Top 50 Places to Ride”.  So I opened it to see where Fort Collins was listed since we are one of only thirteen places ranked by the League of American Bicyclists as Gold or Platinum Bicycle Friendly Communities.

Number one is … wait for it… Minneapolis, MN. Huh?

Number two is Portland, three is Boulder, then Seattle, Eugene, San Francisco, and then skip the rest looking for Fort Collins…. and we aren’t on the list anywhere.  But Denver and Colorado Springs are, and CLEVELAND???

What the heck?  Maybe Cleveland ranks above Fort Collins in the bizarro world.

I emailed Bicycling  (bicycling@rodale.com) to express my amazement that they overlooked Fort Collins and I tweeted them at @BicyclingMag.  I would have canceled my subscription except I got it free with my Performance team card.

Bicycling Mag has been around for a long time, but it’s looking more and more like a comic book.  Cleveland??

From now on, straight from my mailbox to the trashcan.  Cleveland?

The following doesn’t matter much because you and I will probably never get together to talk about bikes. But just in case, remember I’m a misanthropic curmudgeon and here are two things that bug me:

“Miles Ridden” mean how many mile you rode your bike and not “equivalent miles” from pedaling in one spot on rollers, or locked into a wind trainer, or watching TV is some health club. Log those stats anyway you want, just don’t call them “Miles Ridden”.

“Bike Weight” is what you get when you return from a long ride, get off your bike, strip off your bottles, and hang  your bike on a set of scales. That’s what it weighs;  I don’t care what the catalog spec sheet says.

And one last thing, the first round is on you. Thanks.

http://www.Ted.com  Billed as “Riveting talks by remarkable people, free to the world“.

I’ve watched three, so far, and each one has been well worth the time.  Here is a short vid to whet your appetite, this one presents a new idea for intersections:

So Tony Kornheiser and his moron cast laugh with “RUN THEM DOWN, like Wile Coyote’s, run them over.”  Lance Armstrong gets on his case and what does ESPN do?  They remove the podcast from their web site, like that’s gonna help.

He said it and he can’t hide it.

Over the last few days I’ve seen a dead raccoon, a killed cat, and two squashed bunnies.  I never wondered to myself if they had been run over by a bicycle.  Not once.

Or the McDonald’s bag and Happy Meal box.  I never pictured someone on a bike chowing down on some burgers and fries and tossing the cartons in the ditch.

Same with the beer cans, beer bottles, and Big Gulp cups on the road shoulders.  Or the rusted muffler.  Same deal when I saw the pile of cigarette butts in the parking lot.  I never thought of cyclists,  not once.

Go over to www.PeopleForBikes.org and read about this pledge: