Douchebag Arsonist Sentenced to Prison

The other day Gary Allen Lintz, a freckle faced 44-year-old who was featured here last year on charges of trying to burn Griffith Park to the ground was found guilty and sentenced to 16 years in prison.

Think Gary will be called fire crotch in prison?

A big reason why Gary was apprehended stems from the fact that while he was attempting his big escape Gary tried hide himself within a group of spandex clad cyclists.

Hopefully Gary will spend his incarceration fine tuning his criminal skills so if bicycles are still around when he's released in 2025 he'll be a little more aware of his surroundings and be caught riding with a bottle of kerosene in his bottle cage.

Why-o, why-o, did you ever leave Ohio?

Came across this chap yesterday on my way to the post office.

He was already waiting at the light and taking into account his bag and the lack of gears on his whip, I came to a stop behind him as logic dictates that a rida like this will naturally be fast.

While waiting for the light to change I was able get a closer look at this fella and realized he wasn't the urban street warrior I'd assumed him to be. Nope. He was fresh off the Greyhound from Ohio.

Had to be, because:

1) A trucker cap. Specifically a "Vote for Pedro" trucker cap. Even the ironic wearing of that headgear died in 2005 but things are always a little slow to catch on in the Midwest.

2) A Patagonia messenger bag. Really? Must have been a hold over from his My-two-favorite-things-in-life-are-shell-necklaces-and-the-Dave-Matthews-Band phase.

3) The rolled up black slacks and white shirt isn't the hot new summer time courier style but the time honored uniform of a waiter.

Nothing wrong with that. Guy's gotta earn a living somehow but please, Fresh Faced Youngster from Ohio, ride your bike a little quicker. I'm proud to say the worst decision I made yesterday was assuming you'd be riding your bike above a walking pace. Maybe you were just taking it easy since your chain was so loose it was dragging it on the ground. Next time you have some tip money burning a whole in your pocket, don't blow it on a Napoleon Dynamite Talking Key Chain but go down to the hardware store and get yourself a wrench so that you can ride a little faster.

Signed,

The Guy Passed You on a Beach Cruiser.

Cat III racers, oh how you disappoint me.

12 seconds in, suddenly the III's look like a bunch of V's.

Just in time for Mother's Day: Fetus Sweaters

Tomorrow is Bike Night at the Hammer Museum. If your ideal cup of tea on a Thursday evening includes hanging out with hipsters while eating vegetarian snacks and watching Breaking Away before experiencing an experimental violin/cello duo, you might want to go check it out.

One of the organizers of Bike Night at the Hammer is Lisa Anne Auerbach a textile artist, photographer and bike advocate. In case you're wondering what it takes to add artistic flair to the textile medium, a good start would knitting a protest sweater featuring not one but eight fetuses.

You've just been served tampon in a tea cup!

The Los Angeles Times has a nice story about Lisa Anne in which she labels Breaking Away as a film that's "super cheesey and kooky" then goes on to give it credit as "the film that spawned a hundred thousand bike people."

Lisa Anne then goes on to explain how she took up riding at the start of the Iraq War "to abstain from the oil dependancy that she saw as the root of Middle Eastern confilcts. She soon discovered she was 'addicted' to riding."

It's funny how the start of the Iraq War coinsides with the start of the fixed gear phenomenon. Talk about one of those things that makes you go hmmm.

However, on her personal blog Lisa describes her affinity for Breaking Away in further detail. Apparently she rememebers watching it in 1979 but but somehow missed seeing it again over the next 20 years until a fateful night in a hotel room:

"Anyhow, I saw Breaking Away again in a hotel in Utah when I was doing a story for a ski magazine ten years ago or so and I was totally jazzed. I'm pretty sure that seeing that film again, sitting on a yucky hotel bed while outside a storm raged, led somehow to the hanging up of my skis and the embrace of my two wheels. Skiing's great, but you have to go somewhere special and have a lot of gear. Biking's something you can do everywhere and it can change your life and you don't usually end up with frostbite. At least in LA, you don't. It's rare to find a movie that has an impact on your life. It's a cheesey, romantic, silly, sweet film, Breaking Away is, but it crept into my consciousness right at the right times."

So, what I think she's trying to say is that it's hard to ski on the streets of Los Angeles. Is that right? I never knew there was a rule that says you if you ski you can't also ride a bike.

You'd think as an artist, Lisa Anne would have been able to conceptualize a way to do both. Couldn't she have knitted a ski rack to her bike?

I might actually stop by the Hammer and check out the scene mainly because I'm intrigued by the idea of an all vegetarian spread. While hipsters and bacon seem to be heading towards a rocky divorce, bacon addiction is not an easy thing to shake and might just have to roll up with my lil' hotdog cart and set up shop if only to try and enicte a brawl between veggies and carnivores.

Hey buddy, your child will remember the trauma.

I stumbled across this finely engineered machine the other day and was socked with a flashback deep into the last century.

As a wee lad, a lot of time was spent wedged into a rickety plastic seat which was bolted to a rickety sparkle green Holiday Cruiser 10 speed that my dear mother picked up at a Holiday Gas Station in 1970 during her road trip to start college.

The bike was an impulse purchase along with a pack of gum. As I write this, I'm confused as to why a gas station would even be selling bicycles. It's not like a bicycle would have been any cheaper than a tank of gas, even back in the days of yore. Maybe gas stations sold bikes as a last resort remedy for all the broken down Volkswagens that would have been on the road during that era.

Talk about one of those things that makes you go hmm...

I would just love to be there the day daddy decides to branch out and give his son a front row seat introduction to the world of mountain biking. I have a hunch the look daddy will have on his face when he realizes he's impaled his son on a bar end will be rather priceless.

Apocalypse La Jolla

Last weekend I took a little road trip down south. I only went 110 miles down the freeway but I might as well have slipped into a portal and taken a trip to Bizarro World. By all accounts La Jolla was nothing short of a seaside bicycle paradise. Took a 60 mile ride and all but 20 of those miles had bike lanes. The ones that didn't weren't exactly mean streets as motorists were so friendly it was truly confusing.

Really? You're going to wait for lil' old me to make a left? Really? Cause in any other part of the world, that move just sets the table for a trip over the hood of a car. But if you do insist, I'll go right ahead.

About halfway through the ride I realized that this bicycle utopia was just a very clever ruse to disguise the fact that the people on bikes are by far the biggest kooks in the Western Hemisphere. Seriously, you could take the snootiest memeber of Velo Club La Grange and even he would think the average La Jolla cyclist's butthole was wound up more than a little tight.

What I'm about to write is a the request of my therapist. She said that writing down a traumatic experience, is a great way to take ownership and turn the tables on what traumatized you is a big step in moving forward with your life.

There I was in La Jolla. Riding along the coast minding my own business. It was about 8:30 in the morning. The Pharcyde was playing on the iPod and the clouds were starting to break. A great sign that the day was shaping up to be very nice.

Then suddenly without warning, the distinct sound of Wagner filled the air and the breaking clouds started to gather once again.

From behind I heard the whir of a giant fan blade and turned over my shoulder to see what was causing a noise not of this earth. I saw a guy on a tri bike. Then I blinked. When my eyes opened three were two more guys on tri bikes flanking the first one. If you are familiar with The Empire Strikes Back, this is what's known as "attack pattern delta."

It didn't take long to realize I was the next target in their sights. The were the cheetahs and I was the hunted gazelle so close they could already taste me.

The only problem was that I was already crusing at 20mph and this pod of triathletes, despite being in a paceline in their aerobars were only able to manage somewhere around 20.1mph which effectively means I was swarmed by the wild beast that is a group of triathletes pacelining in their aerobars.

I can't believe I was just able to write that without breaking down. But I did and now I'm stronger. For I have been in the belly of the beast, looked death in the eye, gave my self paper cuts then just jumped in shark infested waters for a laugh and a swim. I have been through the black hole and came out the other side without fear.

Thank you tri guys for making me afraid of nothing.

Quick, somebody get C-3PO on the horn...

We need him to calculate the odds as to whether or not this guy has ever been laid.

I'm not exactly a bookmaker but I'd wager that the chances of this guy having touched a girl who wasn't employed as a Bomber Girl at Interbike '02 are certainly greater than the line of 3, 720 to one Threepio dropped on Han Solo as he pointed the Millennium Falcon into the nearest asteroid field in a valiant effort to escape Vader's wrath.

What I like about his guy, aside from the fact that he might quite possibly be the biggest bike geek west of Guitar Ted, is that every possible nuance of his being was carefully chosen to ensure that he was the king of the bike geeks gathered at the Hope Rides Again Ride and that he would not be getting laid while in Hollywood.

Working from top to bottom:

1) Mellow Johnny's cycling cap. Did he take a trip to Austin or mail order one like a punk? I didn't find out because I didn't want to talk to him.

2) The mustache. It must be a newer addition since it has yet to be shaped like a handlebar.

3) You obviously can't tell by the pic but this gent is wearing a LiveWrong t-shirt. Ha-ha-ha what a punk. Everyone else is wearing a LiveStrong t-shirt and he's proudly rocking a LiveWrong shirt. Oh I'm sure he'll still be laughing about it right up to the point where Lance gives him cancer.

4) Tweed knickers that are more like elf pants. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that this pair of chick repellers were made at home while watching Klunkerz for the 42nd time.

5) Budweiser socks. If you're going deep you might as well put on every stupid accoutrement at your disposal. Seeing these Budweiser socks gave me a little flashback to 1980 when I was dropped off at grandma's for the weekend and before she took me on a field trip to her favorite bar, I attemped to put on three different sets of Underoos so that I could be three times more impressive to the neighborhood drunks. Oh how I had visions of them being in awe of the kid who had Bobo Fett, Luke Skywalker, and Green Lantern Underoos. Unfortunately grandma brought me back to earth by reminding me that she wasn't going to be doing any laundry and that if I stuck to my genius plan I'd be out of clean underpants after day one. OK, I now realize I probably should have saved that story for the therapist.

6) Sidi Dominators. These at least make sense since he's got a mountain bike and all but for a two mile ride you gotta think this man would have been capable of riding sans special shoes. And I only bring this up because there was a time back in the last century when I walked into a happening nightspot with Dominators strapped to my feet and had a conversation that went like this:

"No, these aren't rock climbing shoes they're for biking."

"Oh cool, what kind of motorcycle to do you ride."

"I don't have a motorcycle. I have a mountain bike. It's locked up outside if you'd like to see it."

"Uh no thanks. My friend just showed up. I have to go."

7) Finally, we've got the bike. Rigid. Singlespeed. 29'er. Pretty hardcore rig to most people but then again I have to assume someone of his caliber is only slummin' it with his 29'er until his custom 36'er is finished off. My favorite details by far though are the purple anodized bits one big ugly statement that this guy has been riding since the dawn of man- or at least 1993.

Hope may ride again but there's no hope for triathletes

Last Saturday night Lance Armstrong lead a ride through the streets of Hollywood. It was a two mile epic down Sunset and my Spidey Sense told me to make sure my camera's battery was charged.

Out of all the kooks in attendance the triathlete faction made sure it was well represented by this gal.

A two mile ride at a pace a couple steps quicker than your average marching band is just the sort of ride for which Cervelo P3 was designed. Of course a triathlete's only bike would be a P3 because why would they need another bike if all they do is train for and compete in triathlons? And of course they'd pull it out of they garage to ensure a sketchy ride is as sketchy and dangerous as it can be. All I gotta say is you know it's bad when the average brakeless fripster runs from a triathlete faster than they run from a pair of loose fitting pants.

At least she went as deep as possible by pulling out the compression socks for optimum muscle support. I just hope she didn't spike her heart rate over LT before making it to Vine Street cause that would just throw a huge wrench into her training program.

What's wrong with this picture?

Found one more gem hiding on the ol' SD card from the ToC's Solvang TT stage and it's a doozy. If miracles do come true this could be the photo that ruins the street cred of fixed gear bikes because it's pretty the white rimmed equivalent of your Uncle Kenny friending you on Facebook and proceeding to ruin your hard earned street cred by tagging you in a slew of embarrssing family photos.

Do you think the MASH crew even made eye contact with this guy when they rolled by?

The more I study this guy and his rig, the more I'm thinking he might be the most subtle mocking of the fix gear fad ever.

He's got the Pista, the white rims and the white Vittorias but after that the high flyin' aeroplane of fashion crashes right into a mountain. Let us count the ways.

1) Crank Bros mallet pedals. Really?

2) While he gets a pass on a brake, note the positive rise stem.

3) Seatpost mounted water bottle. He must not have gotten the memo. The only hydration options are cans of PBR or whatever you can fit into a flask.

4) White New Balance running shoes in lieu of Pumas, Adidas, Nike Dunks, or Asics Tigers.

5) Cargo shorts instead of girls jeans or proper knickers.

6) T-shirt tucked into cargo shorts.

7) A backpack that's not even up to JanSport standards.

8) Finally, the piece de resistance, sunglasses with the optional croakies upgrade.

Awesome. Just awesome. If you happen to find a detail I missed, feel free to let me know.

Douchebags at Bike Races Pt. II

Took a field trip up to Solvang, the Danish capital of California to check out the TT action provided by Stage 6 of the ToC.

Little did I know I would be encountering a hornet nest of Stage 6 Douchebags.

Let's whet your palate with this human powered vehicle.

I'm sure the human powering it rolled into Solvang with all the panache of the lone biker of the apocalypse hell bent on crashing the start house and reminding everyone just why recumbents were banned by the UCI- because nerds aren't allowed. Judging by the lack of definition of his legs this HPV must be very aerodynamic. My only question is why didn't he spring for the fairing with the limo tint upgrade? I would have done it in an instant and the ability to do my two favorite things, riding bikes and playing pocket pool in public without shame would have come together like Voltron.

Now to the good stuff.

I posted up on one the steep lil' hill heading out of town and while it was a prime viewing spot. The higher ground gave my implanted douchebag magnet a much stronger signal much to my amused dismay.

This is Jens Voigt charging up the hill. Pretty big turn out for a bike race on a Friday in America, right?

Notice how the crowd thins out in the second picture? That wasn't due to a lack of fans. It was due to these folks- Statler, Waldorf, and the chick they share family style.

Seriously, how lucky are these folks? The world's best cyclists are going past their house and they can't even cross their property line and plop down their lawn chairs alongside the invading riff raff. Instead they perched themselves far away from the action and yelled at any whippersnapper spectators who dared step into their line of site which extended a good 20 feet in both directions. I nearly fell over when I heard someone yell out "Gran Torino was just a movie, pops" after the standing fella gruffly shoo'ed a couple of people away.

Then there's this pile of turd.

This guy had more balls than Statler and Waldorf. He spent a good two hours yelling at the spectators at the bottom of the hill to move back to the curb to give the riders enough room and because they were obstructing his view. Really, people a block away are blocking your view? Oh, the humanity. My vagina weeps tears of blood for your suffering.

Apparently, this guy's never witnessed the mayham that goes on atop Alpe d'Huez. A bike racer doesn't need an entire road to make the magic happen. They're professionals and can do just fine with a foot or two of room on each side, thanks.

Of course when it was time for the race's main attraction to make his way up the hill who pulled out their camera for the first time all day and was the first guy to step in the middle of the road and instantly contridict his two hours of whining? You should be able to figure it out. I was just amazed that Waldorf able to manage out in the world.

Finally, no critque of ToC spectators can be complete without mentioning this guy who also came out of retirement. Maybe you've noticed him?

His horns locked into my implanted douchebag magnet and was within arms reach the entire day.I'm not kidding when I say a collective groan burped from the crowd the moment he showed up.

He's nice enough but really he's just the Dane Cook of cycling fans and chaps my hide as bad as the real Dane Cook and their lines of thinking are spooky similar too. Much like Dane Cook thinking that over enunciating words and slithering around on stage like a creep makes him funnier than other comics, this guy thinks that strapping on a ridiculous helmet and endangering racers as he foolishly runs alongside them makes him a bigger cycling fan. No, it doesn't.

Thankfully, course marshalls were on hand to keep his sprint on lockdown.

I like that he came prepared with a hat but would you expect anything less from a guy with the ingenuity to mount up a set of steer horns to a football helmet?

Saw him in a couple other spots too.

Any guesses on what they're talking about? My guess is they're crafting a plan of attack for pulling down podium chicks.

I still have yet to sleep well at night knowing Lance's biggest fan rides a Cannondale. Choosing a brand that's a rival to your hero's is something can get you killed in the world of NASCAR so why wasn't this guy mobbed by the crowd in Solvang? Oh that's right, because we were all ducking under his horns as he tried to weave his way through the crowd. If there's anything more annoying than somebody riding a bike through a crowd of pedestrians, it's a guy riding a bike while wearing steer horns.

Too bad we weren't at a NASCAR race. At least some yokel would have mistaken him for food and shot him.

Back from the dead, bitches.

There's nothing quite like bike race spectators to reignite the torch of scorn for bad taste on two wheels.

Took all of about two minutes of walking around downtown Sacramento for the Tour of California prologue to snap out of the lovey dovey John Denver funk I'd been in for the last few months. Really, there's no help for me. I hate everyone. Especially these knuckle draggers.

Dig the longjohns under the basketball shorts but c'mon everyone knows the tube socks go under the thermal underpants.

One of these lesbians might be Geogena Terry but since they're still wearing their helmets I can't tell. At they're safe from falling coconuts and muggers lurking on the other side of the tree thanks to their mirrors.

How to tell you're in Sacremento- three fixie riding hipsters and not a single Chrome Bag. That poor Jansport backpack would never cut it in the big city.

At least the guy on the right doesn't try to hide the fact that he's still using brakes.

The only guy to finish RAAM without having to stop for food.

Why's the green bike even locked? Like anyone is going to steal a bike that's impossible to ride.

Last but not least, the hippest girl in Sacramento.

You gotta give her big ups for her toughness though. She was able to stand next to a dude in sweatpants and not melt because as we all know sweatpants are a hipster's kryptonite.