Have you ever, say, gone for dinner with some friends? To a Japanese restaurant? And one of the friends? Invited one of his friends, whom you didn’t know? And his friend? Turned out to be a bit of an ass? The kind of ass who wheels his bike into the restaurant and jams it between your knees? And then says, “Could you watch that for me? I’m too worried about it to leave it outside”?
Yeah. Me neither. And I’m over it anyway.
By the way, at the last the Critical Mass ride in Vancouver of which I heard details, they ran into a little old lady in a wheelchair. Who was crossing with the light.
The unbearable bikeness of being…bourgeois:
and a slightly edgier iteration of the mindset seen today on the Downtown Eastside:
raincoaster 
Heh. You’ve worked with competitive riders?
It’s a bit like travelling with Gollum.
Is it sssafe?
Is it ssssafe, Smeagol?
Mmmmyyy precioussss!
Of course, in fairness what they’re riding is hardly my CCM ten-speed. These things are built with pluton-hybrid nanny-carbon fibre thingys, alloy whatsits, and wheels that are actually built into straight lines, only curved.
As you learn if you share a piece of furniture with any one of these tormented souls for any length of time.
I haven’t. I’d throttle the bugger before he bored me to death.
The bottom image has particular resonance since I just saw the documentary Carts of Darkness the other day. Maybe this was a North Van “enthusiast” who really liked the performance characteristics of his stolen cart.
Oh, Carts of Darkness is teh ossum indeed. Sadly, a lot of the guys in that film are dead now, mostly of diseases rather than injuries.
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This doesn’t surprise me. But it’s still really sad.