So I found it ironic (a word that I did come to understand better in that prior career, despite the bait and switch performed by Alanis Morrissette) that I ended up with a Cannondale for my first road bike. I shopped for it at the very shop where I now work, which is doubly peculiar (or ironic?) because I fault my salesperson with having set me up on a bike that was much too small for me. I ended up on a 44cm 2001 R500 triple women’s bike with 650 wheels.

Riding such a tiny bike like that seems absurd to me now, as I am certainly capable of riding a “regular sized” bike, and in fact have a long torso for my height, so the whole “women’s design” nonsense of having a short top tube does me exactly no favors. I suppose the salesperson offered the bike to me, and I liked it so much that I didn’t try anything else. What did he care, right? It was a sale – even if it was too small for me. I might – and did – upgrade. (What about the fitter, I might ask? Did he not think I was on a bike way too small for me?)

That first Cannondale was stolen – out of my bedroom, when some guys kicked down my apartment door in what I believe was collusion with my downstairs neighbors, who insisted that they didn’t mind when I rode my trainer, but I believe they decided to separate me from my bikes after all. (They were home when the whole thing happened, they said. Weird.) Despite the prime opportunity offered by having to buy a new bike, I went with exactly the same model again. And later I sold that second R500 to a graduating Harvard student when I upgraded to my first “normal sized” road bike.

Since then, I’ve returned to being essentially blissfully ignorant of Cannondale. Sure, I notice which pro teams ride them, but I haven’t wanted to try one. Even though I’ve sold a few at the shop (we’re no longer a Cannondale dealer but there are a bunch still knocking around), there have never been any of the good ones in sizes small enough for me to test out, so I don’t have any opinions about them.

Until I started making a casual, unscientific review which variety of bikes are ridden by what selection of riders out on the roads and the bike path. The ones who like to buzz me as they pass, cranking away in a huge gear with their hands in the drops while on a flat? Cannondales. The woman who decided to race me last week with no idea of cycling etiquette? Cannondale. The kind of dude you pass at an intersection, who you hear laboring behind you so he can pass you yet again, who then runs out of energy 50 feet up the road, forcing you to pass him again, beginning the whole cycle again? Cannondale.

Why is it that the most arrogant, entitled, aggressive riders out on the road are blessed with skills inversely proportionate to their opinion of themselves? More to the point, why do the riders with the biggest attitude and the worst skills so often ride Cannondales? Older, grubby Cannondales? Is there some kind of retro-grouch thing associated with Cannondales?

The Boston Globe printed an editorial this week by Monique Doyle Spencer about how she hates cyclists. (And yes, Monique Doyle Spencer, I will call anyone who rides a bike a “cyclist,” in the same way that I might call anyone who walks a “pedestrian” or anyone who operates a motor vehicle a “driver.”) I think it was meant to be a humor piece, but any idiot with half a brain at the Globe should have known better than to print this. I guess it’s August, a slow news month, and all the employees with more than half a brain are away on vacation. I’m not going to link to the article because I don’t want to introduce more site traffic to this execrable piece.

Monique Doyle Spencer is a cancer survivor who hates cyclists. Damn, I thought Lance Armstrong was at least able to convince cancer survivors that cycling was cool. I really wanted to not respond to her article, because it was just stupid paint-by-numbers hatred, but Boston’s bike czar asked me to consider writing a funny response. It has to be really funny, she said. The problem is that I really don’t think there’s a goddamn thing funny about any citizen getting to vent their hated of other citizens in a national newspaper.

MDS mentions wanting to drive up behind a cyclist in her hybrid and honk her horn really loudly at them. This is extremely dangerous, very stupid, and downright rude. I wonder if she would also like to find an Orthodox Jewish man and knock his yarmulke off on the street. Or shout at an interracial couple that they’re mucking up the bloodline. And what about the gays? Studies show that younger Americans no longer have much animosity towards homosexuals, because mostly they know someone who’s queer and it’s just not a big deal. If MDS knew someone who rode a bike, or who had been riding a bike when hit by a car, maybe she wouldn’t be so categorically assholeish.

I wanted to avoid the personal insults, but it’s my blog and I’ll cry “fat” when I want to. That’s right, MDS is incidentally a fat person . I have always suspected drivers who hate cyclists secretly have “ass envy”; they’re peeved that we have superior bootie. Now I have proof, in MDS’s absurd ramblings about how cyclist’s butts seem to talk to her at intersections. That’s right, our asses are better.

Intersections, she notes, that include the Longwood Medical Area at rush area. Honey, that’s a hideous area to drive, but the fact that so many people are on bikes means that you actually CAN get home. Each bicycle is one less car blocking your path to the freeway. Maybe the cyclists are getting home faster than you. Gosh, that really IS annoying.

If MDS were driving along a country road and spotted a woman out jogging with a baby in a stroller, wouldn’t she make a point of giving the duo wide berth in her car? But if that same woman were to ride her bicycle in the city, MDS would decide that said individual has made a poor choice for her safety and therefore needs to be threatened with a vehicle of superior weight and damage-causing potential. What about that thing that sometimes happens in the city, wherein someone in a motorized wheelchair is zooming down the street? Wouldn’t any person driving a car cede room to the wheelchair-driver to go on his way?

In both of those examples, an auto driver facing this human obstacle might think those seem like poor choices of transportation, but in both cases we don’t determine that the people making them are therefore bad people and need to be punished by scaring the crap out of them by swerving at the last minute, honking, shouting insults, or generally being a jerk of the highest order. A car is considered a deadly weapon; if you assault a cyclist with one, it’s considered the same thing as waving a gun at them (basically).

Lastly, MDS notes that she wants to keep cyclists movements limited to a specific area of the city. (And she wants to ban single speeds AND three-speeds. That one just puzzles me.) So, she wants to ghettoize us. The metaphor is obvious. And anyone who supports this will add “Boston doesn’t have the infrastructure for cars and bikes to share the road.” So what, am I supposed to stop riding my bike because of that? It doesn’t have the infrastructure for giant gas-guzzling SUVs, either – this city was built for horse-and-buggy travel. So shut the fuck up!

I’m so tired of the fact that people think it’s okay to slag off cyclists. Mocking the lycra, maligning the fact that we are proud of the fact that we’re not using gas, calling us all hippies or hipsters, depending on mood. And the line about how we need to pay for the roads too! Almost every cyclist I know owns a car too, and even if they don’t, they still pay taxes, so what the fuck is that one about? Because I’m riding a bike, that means I have somehow shrugged off the burden of citizenship? Wow, riding a bike really *is* liberating!

This is a nation founded on the idea that we are a diverse people and though we make different choices, we are all going to live together. We don’t hate the woman who wants to jog on the shoulder of a narrow country lane. We don’t hate the handicapped person for being handicapped and deciding to motor down the avenue next to the cars, instead of having to navigate every poorly managed curb cut. But a national newspaper still thinks it’s okay to let a fat woman – hardly someone who knows anything about cyclists – insult and threaten us in a public forum. I call it discrimination.

+ If your helmet predates Lance Armstrong’s Tour de France streak (especially if it’s older than your bike), I have no respect for you. And you don’t have any respect for yourself, apparently. Especially those models that look like pith helmets from the 70s – people, please!

+ If you are wearing underwear under your bike shorts, I have no respect for you, and once again you have no respect for yourself or your own pleasure-causing tender parts. (The worst offender in this case was the gentleman I saw wearing underwear under his Assos shorts.)

+ If I can see any part of the suspender part of your bib shorts, I have no respect for you. The shoulder straps of bib shorts are not meant to be worn over your jersey, over a flapping white T-shirt, or worst of all, over your naked torso. Making me close my eyes to avoid that sight threatens my safety.

+ If your bicycle is making a hideous, repetitive grating/clanging/banging/grinding noise, I am unlikely to have respect for you. Of course, if you’ve crashed your bike and are just trying to get home on your wounded steed, I am likely to take pity on you. But chances are that you won’t be trying to race me with your noise machine on the bike path, in that case.

Please, join the fun! What are other things that other cyclists do that make you kind of want to lecture them, just a little bit?

Did Contador and Armstrong get along during the Tour? Of course not. Unfortunately (or not), Contador doesn’t have a Twitter account like Armstrong, so his words are filtered through the Spanish press and then the sometimes shaky world feed translation. He has respect for Armstrong as a racer, he says, but not as a person. Armstrong says “there’s no I in team.” They’re both right; Contador needed the help of Team Astana, including Armstrong, to win, and I bet Lance isn’t much fun to spend time with.

Sounds like another recent dispute that’s been hogging the headlines for entirely too many days. I like to call it “Gatesgate.” I would like to suggest that everyone is wrong – and therefore everyone is right – in said ongoing debate. So now is a good time for my hearty disclaimer: (1) I went to Harvard for grad school. (2) I took a class from Professor Gates. (3) I have no good feelings about Harvard, whatsoever.

That said, I would like to side with those who suggest the scene a week ago Thursday on Gates’ front porch had nothing to do with race but everything to do with town/gown tension. The cop asked Gates for ID and he produced his Harvard card. Of course! He never has any reason to use anything else! It’s called the Ivory Tower for a reason, and that reason is that it’s pretty darned isolated from the real world. Gates has no reason to use his driver’s license in his regular milieu, and he surely used his passport in customs on returning from China. When I was a grad student, I got so used to whipping out my Harvard card for entry into libraries and whatnot that I would hand the wrong thing to bartenders and clerks at liquor stores. They didn’t think it was very funny.

If Gates was upset that the attending cop didn’t recognize him for the importance that he feels he wields in the world, I hope this week of ongoing media coverage makes up for it. I myself am SICK of it.

TWO CADBURY CREME EGGS!

How long they’ve been there is an important question, but I think they are probably from this year.

Now, what to do with them? Eat them now, or …. save them?

Admittedly I forgot my gloves (it’s always something), so I was lucky that it was warm enough to ride without gloves.

I’ve been lax here, again. I will catch up.

Considering that there’s a test that can identify “autologous blood doping” – reinjecting one’s own blood to create a performance advantage – couldn’t this theraputic treatment produce the same test results as blood doping?

I recall reading in 2003 about famous blood doping denier Tyler Hamilton having had a treatment for his fractured collarbone that involved injecting his own blood into the injured area. I may have misunderstood, or maybe that wasn’t what they meant – but if he was using platelet-rich plasma therapy, how different is that from blood doping?

Any hematologists reading my blog?

So the snot rockets favored by cyclists are the way to go, then.

This article from the NYTimes.