zero per gallon

First the news, then the less-outrageous fun.

Some video-game designer made a video about a proposed law in Idaho that would allow bikers to treat stop signs like yield signs, which seems strange because it’s the hicks who shoot up the signs, not the bikers, but maybe things are different in Idaho.

It looked like one of those newfangled “interactive” things, so I tried plugging in my Wii, but couldn’t figure out how to make the little dude go faster. Then I pushed a bunch of other buttons, and almost got it working, and then, right when he got up to speed and morphed into a bright green commuter outfit, really flying along, a giant red NO symbol (even worse than a sternly-worded warning not to hold the wrong end of a chainsaw) appeared on the screen, along with a large dollar figure. I figured I’d broken it, and the price tag was pretty high, so I closed the window and went back to Tetris.

Anyway, it caught my attention, because I recently discussed (or ranted, as the case may be) issues like this, and so much more, with the editors of Boneshaker: A Bicycling Almanac, which, for the record, is friggin’ wonderful. The first two issues were so good that I stayed up into the wee hours of the night gobbling them up. Take it from bike enthusiast who, on a recent bike ride, actually ran into three wild turkeys and maintained a brief but interesting gobble-laden conversation with them, and from a a literary elitist known for such profound statements as “Books is good,” and “Me like reading” — Boneshaker shakes my bones in the best possible way.

Here’s a hint of what I wrote. *Consonants have been removed for the author’s protection.

“ai e e oa ea ei an eae. I ea ei oeeae, a-aii, aie, a ioai — a eeeaie o e iyi oui. O a u i e ea e ee a oiia/oyi oe e ae ii o. O e a e ue eouio ei.”

Smart, huh?

In other goat related news, like 800 people alerted me to the goat on the front page of the NY times a few weeks ago, and the story that went with it: “Dr. Strangelove: How I learned to stop worrying and love the goat.

Stop worrying? NEVER! One redeeming feature of the story was the focus on dead goats — grilled, broiled, barbecued, or otherwise tortured — I mean cooked. Still, it made me shudder.

In other news, biking is hip these days. In Minneapolis and Denver, a wide range of “bike-people” — from white, affluent 25-year-olds to white, affluent 32-year-olds — are jizzing in their pants over two-dimensional representations of bicycles that they can hang up in their studios, thereby rendering bicycling less of an exclusive club activity.

I also got a bunch of other fan mail this week:

G., a serial lower-caser in Colorado Springs, sent me this note:

dear Jonny5,

I find your ZPG site to be seriously funny. by awesome coincidence, just last Saturday, as my wife and i were cruising the South Platte River trail north of Denver on our trusty Cannondale tandem, Janis (what can i say, she’s our blues-mobile), what did our eyes behold but a goat in a backyard next to the bike path. then today, i came across your site. i’m not usually one to believe in signs, but this is like a cosmic convergence is disconnected irrelevant information.

…watch out for the white vans…
-G.

I wrote back:

Hey G.,

Thanks for the encouragement, hombre. I, too, love living in the age of disconnected bits of irrelevant information, and am flattered to be considered the producer of some of it. Also, I dig the name Janis. I’ve been on that South Platte River trail, and never noticed the backyard goat, thank god. Rest assured, I’ll bring a weapon next time.

White vans? Am I missing something??

Cheers,
Jonny

Indeed, I was missing something. According to a brit named Ian Walker, drivers of white vans overtake cyclists an average of four inches closer than car drivers, while drivers of black cars give drivers the widest margins. Good to know. I’ll keep the eyes in the back of my head open.

Alert reader A. sent me a link to an SF chronicle “article” about flat biking routes in San Francisco featuring this atrocious wording: “if you just need to get to work without breaking a sweat or enjoy a weekend meander without performance-enhancing drugs, leave the mountains to the goats and cruise the flats.”

That’s what I expect out of a newspaper: practical, on-the-ground news-I-can-use, told in a tone that’s conversational, patronizing, and sounds like it’s coming from a vacuum-cleaner salesman, all at the same time. Ideally, it’d be in the present tense, so it sounds more ridiculous and faux-authoritative. Because that’s how my inner monologue sounds: “Why, look at that, today is Saturday. Methinks I fancy a weekend meander without performance-enhancing drugs.” The author, Michael Tanner, deploys an arsenal of big words like “topographically-neutral” and “no appreciable elevation gain” for the word “flat.” He also refers to “a short, walkable hump” — which made me think of the Mr. Tanner’s mom. For god sakes: if he’s getting paid to write this stuff, the newspaper industry is more royally F’d than I’d realized

Last but no more diminutive, W. tipped me off to a couple of scary goat-related developments:

Goat Finder, a “free nationwide listing of goats for sale” and Living Systems, here in San Francisco, where a woman named Charlotte will gladly rent you a goat. Prices aren’t listed, and apparently shipping is not available, and since there’s no FAQ section on the site, I can’t tell what would happen if, say, someone like me rented a goat for “grazing” and it somehow died as the result of a mysterious ritualistic sacrifice. Is Living Systems insured for stuff like that? Is a deposit required to rent a goat? Surely these questions have come up before

The weird part is that their “about us” page is so thorough and clear, much like my own “vision” page. You can read about the way they are “integrating community-based and ecologically informed models” to create “relevant and highly customized services for individuals, neighborhoods and municipal agencies” and how “long-term business relationships are valued and actively developed through multiyear contracting, direct marketing of long-term services, value-added long term services provided at discounted rates.”

It’s stuff like this, along with the use of “unnecessary quotes,” that makes the “new” “green” “movement” so awesome and accessible to the Hoi polloi. It is destined for greatness